A Dublin-based reader has been in touch after being charged above the odds for lodging a cheque from an overseas bank to his account at home.

He lodged the €400 cheque, drawn on a Spanish bank, into his account with AIB and was shocked when asked to pay €14.50 or 3.5 per cent of the value of the cheque to cover costs. He was further dismayed when he realised that exactly the same transaction in Ulster Bank would have cost him just €4 or 1 per cent of the value of the cheque.

"What bugs me about this is that I wasn't notified in advance by the cashier," he says. If he had been notified he would have had the choice of going to Ulster Bank, where he also has an account. "But there's a limit to how much shopping around you can do," he adds.

We contacted AIB to see how they could justify charging so much for providing what appears to be a pretty straightforward service. We were told the charge was accurate and was clearly advertised in its banks. "The minimum charge for a cross-border cheque is €3 and the maximum is €19 for cheques up to €600 and a minimum of €19, maximum of €60 for cheques over €600," a spokesman said. "Handling paper payments is an expensive exercise for all banks. Clearing a cross-border cheque in Europe is a particularly complex task. There is no pan-European paper clearing system which means that each cheque presented to AIB has to be physically sent to the drawee bank for settlement. The charges for this item are available in all branches in our brochures and also on the charge notice on display in all branches." The spokesman declined to comment on why Ulster Bank was able to handle the "expensive exercise" for so much less than AIB.

One place our reader could go in search of better value banking is the website of the Financial Regulator, which contains surveys on the costs banks charge for making money from your money. While the last survey, published in January, has no details on the specifics of our reader's complaint it has some illuminating information on other charges many banks impose. A quick glance shows Permanent TSB is the winner when it comes to cheaper banking.

Water, water everywhere

Last week we carried an item about the apparent absence of tap water for diners at Tiger Becs restaurant in Dublin. When a reader asked for a jug of tap water for her party of four she said she was told there was no tap water available and was given bottled water with a fairly hefty price tag of €6 for 700ml instead. The restaurant denied operating a policy of refusing to serve its customers non-bottled water and said our reader's experience must have been "a one-off oversight" on the part of the waiting staff.

But another reader, Eilish Ni Dhufaigh, "had a similar experience" in Tiger Becs in December. She and five others asked for tap water to accompany their meal but were told "there was a problem with their supply" and it was unsuitable for drinking. She "questioned this with our waitress who got a more senior person who confirmed that this was the case and they could only give us bottled water".

So we contacted Tiger Becs again and were given this statement: "Tiger Becs can assure all customers that if they order tap water this evening and thereafter at the restaurant, they will be served it. Tiger Becs apologises to any customers who have not received tap water when requested in the past. As standard practice, customers are asked whether they would like sparkling or still water when ordering water and the restaurant does not have an official policy of not serving tap water."

Notary note

A Dublin solicitor has been in touch seeking to clarify the situation re notary publics in Ireland and offering a strident defence of solicitors' fees. After a Dublin-based reader was charged €100 to have two documents signed by a notary public, a Wexford reader got in touch, describing the charge as "outrageous".

He said in the US almost every bank manager is an official notary public and they would often witness documents for nothing. That may be so, but "the concept of a notary public in this jurisdiction is completely different," says solicitor Roderick Tyrell.

And comparing our notary publics who charge handsomely for their services with US notary publics who don't is unfair. While solicitors witness the signatures of many routine documents for free, he says, notary publics, who are regulated by the High Court, are only needed to witness complex legal documents which transcend international borders, and so are justified in imposing higher charges.