Since the person was banking in France, and there is no limit there on cash payments between physical persons in a private setting, I'm wondering if banks can legally place a limit on withdrawals in specie. I don't know the answer.

The person was young and naïve, and perhaps didn't want to answer any friendly yet embarrassing questions about what the money was for. This was in a bygone golden era when banks kept up some sort of tradition or pretense of human contact with the clientele.

For my part, until a couple of years I had my accounts in a very small town, where staff turnover at the bank was low, and there was indeed friendly personal interaction, leading often to going the extra mile in the customer's interest, which is obviously a sub-optimal behaviour in terms of cost effectiveness (assuming they had a captive client). In recent months, having moved to a city branch of the same bank, it's clear that there's none of that nonsense going on there. In fact, I am in conflict with the bank over a sum of a few thousand euros, which they bloody well will reimburse me in the end (even if they don't know it yet), but it wouldn't have taken several months if anyone at the bank had simply had the customer's interest at heart.

The result of this is that I will change banks when the dust settles. Either to a small co-op bank, which will no doubt be inconvenient and offer fewer services, but which might be expected to behave itself better. Or to the cheapest virtual bank I can find : just the services, with no illusions about human involvement.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}