"We are older, but not idiots", "we want a solution

for the elderly who do not have a computer"

, "the digital divide is a social divide"... The elderly of the Madrid neighborhood of Orcasitas have protested this morning against the bank mistreatment that they say suffer every day in the branches of the Usera district.

Users report

the huge queues they have to endure

at the doors of the CaixaBank and Banco Santander branches, where they sometimes have to wait between one and two hours to be served.

Neighbors criticize that the branch staff ask them to

do the paperwork online,

when the majority are older people who do not have a computer or understand technology.

"We are fed up. We are older people who do not use computers. If you ask the bank for help, they charge you two euros for management every time you sit at the table. You have here the account of a lifetime and it is impossible come in.

They close the door in your face

," complains Charo Paredes, one of those affected.

According to his testimony, the situation of the branches has worsened after the pandemic and the malfunction has increased considerably

after the merger between CaixaBank and Bankia

.

"You can spend two hours to be attended to and you have to arrive before 11 because, after that time, they send you to the ATM," says Esperanza Guillén.

The Orcasitas Neighborhood Association has made several requests

to the directors of both offices to improve their services

and fed up with their demands not being heard, they have called a protest this morning to demand that customers be properly served.

"In the first nine months of the year,

CaixaBank obtained a profit of 2,457 million euros

, 17.7% more than the same period of the previous year; and the entity headed by Ana Patricia Botín

7,316 million euros

, 25.1% more than the previous year. How is it possible that with such benefits the service they provide is getting worse each time?", they ask themselves from the neighborhood association.

Older customers

criticize the "exploitation and humiliation"

to which they are being subjected: "This cannot be put up with. They don't even process your receipts. We are not going to let them continue to humiliate us. They treat you as if they were nightclub bouncers. We have to depend on our children to help us do the paperwork," said Félix López-Rey, councilor for Más Madrid present at the protest through a loudspeaker.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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