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Comment by dajohnson89 | Hacker News Reader

I am a very happy Bank of America customer. Their app is one of the best apps I've ever used, period.

But when I go to a branch, I want to see a person. This is my money were dealing with here. If I'm making a cash deposit, or exchanging currency or whatever, there needs to be a human there to make sure the count is right, and just smile and thank me for the business. Can BofA really not scrape together the $30/hr or whatever it pays the tellers? If my local branch got rid of tellers, I'd start looking for different banks.

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Sure, you prefer to deal with real people and many people share your preference. Banks know this and do keep tellers in most locations. However, much of America is under banked, especially poor neighborhoods. High costs prevent banks from opening up branches in these neighborhoods. Any efforts to bring costs down should be met with applause as this will open up low cost banking to many new customers and compete with higher cost financial service providers like payday loans.

I highly doubt any cost savings will be routed to anyone but shareholders.

The problem with BofA branches, for decades, has been the people in the bank don't seem to know anything or have any authority to fix things. When I've had problems in the past and gone into a branch they told me to call the corporate number. From my perspective not much will change when they get rid of tellers except I can't tell the ATM to give me new bills for gifts.

Alternate point of view: I have several accounts at different banks. None of them have branches in my state. I recently got a card from a bank that does have branches here and was planning on stopping by the one closest to my house or work. It's been months and I cant bring myself to go into a location and actually talk to a teller when I can do everything over their website.

I'd rather have software handling my money than a person I don't know.

This does require one to avoid cash though.

My banks has a special ATM where I can deposit money into my accounts or for buying EUROS|Dollars. This service is available when the bank is staffed or closed. Is it a question of trust or do you not have those types of ATM?

Many ATMs accept cash deposits (all Bank of America ATMs that I've seen do so). However, there are many other tasks you cannot perform at an ATM, though for most of them a teller would not suffice either.

Retail banking has become a low margin, discount business. Most people don't want to pay monthly fees for accounts, and there's a ton of competition. This is a response to that.

$30 per hour for a teller? You live in California?

It costs more to employ someone than what they're actually paid.

Yes but a bank teller total cost to employee is like $12 to $15 an hour.

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