I’m in uK at the moment for a few weeks. Cannot access my french bank a/c on line. Have sent e-mail to my branch office of french bank, giving all account details, and requesting up-to-date balance on a/c. Not yet heard from manager of local branch - 6 days now. Do french banks accept e-mails from outside france; and do they respond to e-mails from a/c holders who are temporarily out of france.
Frustrating; tax season is here, and need to stay on top of account - and no contact from french bank is infuriating. Anyone have any direct experience of similar situation please ?
You don’t say which bank you use. We use Britline who have given us 20 years of perfect service. They answer emails, sms, and phone calls from anywhere. They allocate a single person as your point of contact. If your online is not working from UK have you tried using a VPN set to France? I haven’t tried accessing our online bank app from UK (apart from when we first opened the account)
I think you’ll get better results by phoning and speaking to them directly.
As my French is not great - and I’m more than a bit deaf - I dread ‘doing things’ on the phone in France. Today was a case in point, I had to phone three different companies.
However I seldom, if ever, get a reply to emails so the phone is the best way of making progress . . .
I don’t think it makes any difference as to what country you email from, it’s difficult to reliably geolocate someone from an email and equally no reason why you shuldn’t be able to access your French bank account online from anywhere in the world, equally no geolocation restrictions exist on banking apps.
Have you emailed your bank before? If not it will probably have gone into their spam area. Banks, like many other French organisations get so many emails that they don’t deal with them at all, or aren’t very efficient about it.
My bank is now ok as have direct email for a specific member of staff rather than using a general address.
I am assuming that @Concorde does not have online banking set up, if she did then she could get an up to date balance with a few key strokes, also on their web page there should be a contact button so that a request for information could be made that way.
If not, can online banking be set up from abroad? I don’t see why not.
Many French banks no longer allow email via external email as a form of communication for requests between bank adviser and client, for security reasons. The Caisse d’Epargne is certainly discouraging direct email communication, now that their internal mail platform has been set up. I’m not supposed to contact them via normal email any more, and have been told to use the preferred, proprietary web email system instead. For that to work, you do need internet banking to be set up.
I tried to access my CA online account from the US this summer and was refused saying no access outside of the EU! Wise on the other hand were always there at a touch!
Yet one more good reason why I blew them out years ago but, I have to admit, I haven’t tried to log on to my La Poste account from the UK, and am unlikely to ever be able to do so. I can, however, log on to my Yorks and Lloyds accounts easily from here.
Perhaps CA need to be warned that a client has US connexions (?)
Americans with a 2nd home in our village do continue to access their French CAgricole account while back home in US. They need to ensure there are sufficient funds to pay the various property taxes and other bills as and when …
Unless this is a very recent change to the setup..
A while ago, I recall Lloyds blocking our Lloyds bankcard ‘cos they thought someone had knicked it and was on a spending spree over there. They advised us to let ‘em know when we would be visiting UK so there would be no embarrassment. This year, we went straight to our UK Bank and said hello and “please note our changed/amended address” with the official letter from our Mairie.
I am with Credit Mutual I can go online, and send a message to my English speaking bank advisor from anywhere in the world, phone or internet .I never had a problem always had a response. I would always send a message if I was away from France, so that there would be no problem with any banking issues with using a bank card abroad. Just to add it seems that they have changed the rules, I can write a message in English. but now answer in French?. Bien cordialement,
For regulatory reasons all our emails are now in French, thank you for your understanding
Thank you everyone for extremely helpful - and interesting - posts. I have ‘never’ been able to do on-line banking; despite numerous requests my pin and a/c never seemed to link - and I gave up asking. Never used the bank card - french bank for direct debits, and all other purchases made using UK Visa - or cash withdrawals. Personnel at local bank changes - and present manager, although extremely pleasant, has very little english (despite branch being in area with many Brits - sorry everyone). He also has a very strong accent. I struggle with french language, and on the phone it is almost impossible. From all the useful advice everyone has been kind enough to post it seems that I should really write both to area office, and to the local branch manager, advising them of change of circumstances, and need frequent up to date bank statements sent to UK. Hope that works.
Thank you very much everyone for all the useful info; maybe I should think about changing banks once I’m back in france . - I’ve noticed the personal recs about certain banks - very interesting.
Thank you everyone for taking the time to post - much appreciated.
We have never had a problem with our bank. CA. We set up on-line banking at the branch we use in France despite the person helping us not speaking any English which would have been helpful with us not knowing banking terms in french. It should have been a lot easier.
We did have one very strange experience with them. We received a letter from the bank in the UK. It was in an ordinary envelope and , when opened, it contained a letter which looked as if it had been written by a five year old and not on bank headed paper. It said something like our bank account was going to be closed as they had not received the information which was required. Absolute rubbish. We had indeed given them all the information which had been asked of us. Apparently this is possible to close down a bank account in France like this! We got through to our bank and spoke to someone we knew spoke English as our designated person did not speak English. Couldn’t consider trying to get all this sorted out in French. All was well eventually and the account was not closed. It seemed a very unprofessional way to deal with this.
