Coin-counting report gets up ASB's nose

A major bank has launched an attack on the Herald's The Banks series, taking a full-page advertisement in today's paper, trying to challenge a report about its charges for counting coins.

The ASB featured on the front page of the Weekend Herald last Saturday in a report about the Cool School Lunch company, facing charges of $57 a day for counting 2000 coins.

The advertisement follows a written complaint by managing director Ralph Norris to the Herald alleging a concerted campaign to discredit his bank, political interference and journalistic bias.

The Banks series has run in the past three Weekend Heralds and has drawn a substantial response from readers about the performance of their banks.

Of stories involving the five main banks, ASB has faced criticism just three times in thousands of words examining banking issues. That puts it second lowest among the banks.

However, it has chosen to lash out over last Saturday's report, saying the article did not include a range of "facts."

These include the fact that the lunch company is a business, that it deposited 5000 coins "almost daily" and that Cool School Lunch did not count and bag coins in advance.

The ASB says fees would have dropped by two-thirds had the lunch company accepted overnight counting of the coins by the bank.

The advertisement does accept that one fact supposedly ignored by the Herald, the $400,000-a-year turnover of the lunch company, did appear in the original story.

The advert says a number of ASB customers were upset by the article and the bank's "alleged actions."

It claims the news story alleged that the ASB was "ripping off schoolchildren."

But Herald editor Stephen Davis said the Weekend Herald report, by senior journalists, did not imply ASB was ripping off schoolchildren.

The story included substantive responses from the ASB marketing general manager, Barbara Chapman, he said.

The facts as reported remained unchallenged and the paper stood by its story.

It was one of a number of stories that day about banks, bringing to almost a dozen the total number of reports in the Herald series.

The banks - a Herald series

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