Banking

One of the first things I did when arriving in Ireland was to open a bank account. Direct deposit is the only way to be paid here. As with most things, it is not hugely different from the US, but there are some Irish/European quirks to it. To open a bank account you need a PPS number -- the equivalent to an SS number in the States. After applying in person at a branch of Bank of Ireland (BoI), I was told that it would take three to five business days to activate my account. A credit card would take six months or so, since I had not credit history here.
Two weeks after I applied, I called to inquire about the status of my account. The lady on the phone said the account will go live in a couple of days. (This was in my early days here when nothing would happen unless I called twice. It seems better now, but that may be because I already have signed up for all the services I need.) It took another week to get the ATM PIN in the mail and then another four days to get the ATM card (with embedded micro controller!)
In my contract with IBM it said they would pay me about 1,400 Euro out of my relocation expenses up front, within seven days, to ease settling in and cover the period until the first pay check. Of course that seven day period did not start until I was able to supply them with an activated bank account. So this "immediate" assistance wasn't that immediate at all and I spent a lot of money paying for things through my American credit cards.
As soon as I had an account, I signed up for online banking. The web page said I would receive the PIN in three to five business days, which took two weeks. In case you are keeping track, you know now that the number of quoted days for something to happen here needs to be multiplied by about four to arrive at a more accurate estimate of when it will actually be done.
The PIN didn't work online, so I called and was informed that that PIN is for telephone banking, but she could set me up with online banking. Use the Internet to sign up for phone banking and use the phone to sign up for online banking...
I always felt SLFCU provided the services I need and did so reliably and with low overhead. (Despite that, McConkey called it a toy bank ;-) I was one of SLFCU's early guinea pigs of their online banking. The first version, used with a dial-up modem, was pretty basic, but it worked and didn't require a user's manual. The one BoI provides works too, but it is quirky and looks and feels like it had been designed by the bank's president's eight year old nephew.

Click on the images to see a larger version.

This is the login screen. The advertisement promises a new look, but it hasn't happened yet. Maybe the nephew took an HTML 5 class?
After you click on login, you have to enter your user ID, which is an eight-digit number, then it will ask you randomly for either your birthday or the last four digit of your contact phone number. After that, it wants three of the six digits of your PIN.

It randomly changes which three digits it asks for. I guess that is to prevent shoulder surfers from stealing your PIN. The phone company and some other places here have a similar scheme.
Now you are in and can click through to your account to see activity and balances; eight lines at a time. There is a timeout of five minutes idle time. After that it logs you out without warning. If you click on the logout button it takes you to a new screen where you have to confirm that you really want to log out!

There is a way to see more than eight transactions at a time, but it involves clicking a bunch of things and requesting a date range. The picture below is an example.

Look at the description for each transaction. It's complete gibberish. For many of them I have to guess by the amount listed. Two of the credits listed with the helpful description of "-------", were expense reimbursements from IBM. Of course, IBM gives me the sum of what they have transferred, so I have to go look at my expense reports to figure out what I got paid for. One of the "-----" I may have known at one time what it was for, but I don't anymore. The statement certainly doesn't help. For that matter, I don't know what I paid the 60 Euro to UBLE37715 for. The M2309CH was something I paid 14 Swiss Franks for and got charged a 0.46 Euro exchange fee. Whatever it was, it seems I bought two of them, but the second one did not trigger that MRO CHRG fee.
I should mention that the above examples of descriptions as the final ones. For the first day or two after a transaction appears online, it sometimes is even more cryptic. I guess it gets updated and "enhanced" after the transaction has completed.
You can register your cell phone with the bank, which again takes several days. But, once you have it, you can add people and institutions you want to send money to online. They send an activation code to your cell phone, and you can start using the payee immediately.
I can't wait for the redesigned web page coming soon ;-)