I went through a similar situation myself and had a similar yet more positive experience. > Why did we need to migrate accounts? Because you could only deposit

I went through a similar situation myself and had a similar yet more positive experience. > Why did we need to migrate accounts? Because you could only deposit cheques in the same department as your local branch. Not true for all banks, national ones (like BNP) always allowed to deposit anywhere, and for most you could mail directly to the account branch (no need to go through a friend). Also, online banks solve this nicely. > Why were we depositing cheques?! Because half of France (including my fiancées' employer at the time) still uses them for everything (which is also great fun if you're in a rush in Super-U and the person in front decides to pay with one). "Half" is overemphatic, even for 2013. This is not the case anymore, huge majority now pays via chip and pin cards and waiting in line is not so much of a problem with self-checkout machines.