Do you get the impression that banks are trying to do away with the human touch? When you visit your usual branch, have you been met by a sort of "greeter" who intercepts you on the way to the counter and extols the delights of carrying out your transactions on the telephone or, preferably, by pressing the buttons on a cashpoint machine?

And have you encountered the financial "penalties" being imposed by some banks on counter transactions to persuade us to switch to people-free banking?

I'm sure it makes a lot of commercial sense to do things this way, from the bank's point of view. The more customers who can be converted to postal or telephone banking, or to withdrawing or investing their money via cashpoints, the less need there is for costly branches in high streets. No point in having counter staff sitting around doing nothing. Get rid of them!

But what happens when they have been got rid of, and when we're all dealing with our bank by pressing buttons on the telephone or playing the cashpoints like fruit machines? Bet you that's when charges will start to be imposed for transactions on those, too. And we'll have little choice other than to pay them.

Personally, I rather like cashpoints when you want some money quickly and easily - although I do hate queueing and having a stranger standing close behind me when I'm conducting my transaction.

But I hate entrusting money to one of these machines on those rare occasions when I have any to put in.

I'd much rather hand it over to a proper person, exchange a few pleasantries, and come away with a proper receipt confident that the deal has been officially completed.

The latest trends in banking are part of a general move, in the interests of profit, to cut human beings off from making contact with each other - and that, as a T&A reader points out elsewhere on this page in another context, can only be a bad thing all round.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.