Over the weekend I was in Montreal and staying downtown at the W Hotel. If you’re familar with the W Montreal you know its very well positioned for walking around the city. Its also right around the corner from Royal Bank’s form there head office during the 1920s. I’ve been using Royal Bank for about 10 years so I was kind of excited to see the office as its been featured in several movies. I walked over on a Saturday and the office was still accessible and even featured a bank machine on the main flour. To my surprise when I tried to use the bank machine it was out of order. I asked the security guard and he seemed unable or unwilling to do anything about fixing it. I could find no phone number of the machine for help so I left to use another machine, and in fact had to pay the additional $1.50 to use a Scotia Bank machine a few blocks away. No big deal but annoying…

On Sunday I returned to the same bank office as I now needed cash for the taxi to the airport ( after a night of drinking in Montreal… ). The fancy office was again accessible but the bank machine was still out of order. I find this very indicative of the overall banking experience over the last few years in Canada. They’ve really lost track of their customers. The reality is that I could just as easily sign-up with Scotia Bank, CIBC or TD and have a very similar experience. In most successful businesses the head office would be fully functionality, any employee would enabled to fix the situation or a phone number would have been available to correct situation. There are very fes businesses in the world that could exist like this though and continue to survive..