Depositing Change

This is going to sound daft, I'm sure. But..

How do I deposit coins? Do you need to go somewhere special inside the bank? Or do you just go to the 'Cash/Cheque' line?

(I bank with the Bank of Scotland, if that matters.)

Hi,

It's not daft!

You just go to the normal line and queue to be served by the bank staff. Plenty of people do it, usually you'll find anyone with a cash based business will have bags and bags of coins either being deposited or taken out

Cheers, DtM! West London & Slough UK!

I'm even dafter (is that a word?)

in the US, we get given rolls to roll our coin in by the bank, like .50 pennies, $5 dimes, $10 for quarters, etc.  In fact many US banks won't even take your coin unless it's rolled (unless they have a counting machine).  I've noticed businesses in the UK open up little plastic bags of change instead of rolls, so how do you deposit coin? Do you ask for the bags or just use regular sandwich bags?  Do you hand them your jar and let them weigh it?

Hiya,

I've never had the need to deposit or withdraw coins from my business account, only really seen others at the bank do this. It seems that it's your responsibility to count out the Coppers, and silvers, put them into an appropriate marked bag and hand it in. they then weigh those bags to check the amounts. If you turn up at the cashier and begin to count out, theyll more than likely throw a number of bags at you and ask you to step aside whilst you count up etc!

Cheers! DtM! West London & Slough UK!

there's no such thing as a daft question on UK-Y! Trust me, it took me a few minutes to figure out how to deposit anything at all at those ATM type things they have inside the bank. It also prompted one of the more hilarious conversation with my DH that went something like:
me: you can only deposit IN the bank?
DH: yeah, so?
me: what if you have something you want to put in on a Sunday? Or after 5?
DH: ehh, you just don't.
me: that's lame
DH: (with perfect seriousness)not it's not; it's British.
At which point we both cracked up.  That and the 30 minutes it took me to figure out how to turn on the £$£"% oven we have are my favourite "fish out of water" moments so far.

Bf used to work in a shop, where he usually did the bank runs.  He still rants about coins!   His advice to me was to make sure not to roll the coins, or the bank usually won't accept them.  Also, count it all up before you go, because he's gotten tellers on more than one occasion who wouldn't accept his bag of change unless he could tell them the total (give or take a bit), despite the fact that the first thing they did was dump them in a counting machine. 

Becca - oh! I didn't even think about that! My US bank doesn't roll coins, we use coin machines, so I didn't even consider rolling coins.. Ugh!

And thank you everyone I feel better

Just ask at the counter next time you go in the bank, and they'll give you a bundle of the little plastic bags.   Each bag will usually take coins up to these sort of values (but you can hand over partially filled bags if you wish):

me: you can only deposit IN the bank?
DH: yeah, so?

Most banks in the past did have a night safe which was accessible for deposits from the outside, although it was often only holders of certain types of account (e.g. business accounts) who were given keys.

Most branches have a deposit point which you can use to deposit in outside of banking hours, you put your ATM card in, a slot opens and you deposit the coins/cash whatever.

Our Natwest has a coin-sorting machine now (Like coinstar, except no commission!) It's awesome.

I read on moneysavingexpert that HSBC also has a free coin counting machine