Many customers have complained that they were asked to pay extra fees when completing payments in Vietnamese coins at several banks. On December 3, Trung, a resident of Ho Chi Minh City’s District 11, visited a Sacombank branch in Cho Lon to pay his electricity bill. He paid the bank around VND1 million, with VND200,000 worth of coins in VND5,000 denominations. However, Trung was asked to pay an extra VND55,000 as “the counting fee for the said amount of coins,” he reported. “The fee is 25 percent of the amount I paid in coins,” he told Tuoi Tre. “Hence, in order not to lose such an unreasonable amount of money, I reluctantly paid the VND200,000 in banknotes.” Meanwhile, Mai, a District 3 resident, said she was recently rejected by an Agribank branch when she attempted to pay her bills in coins. “The banker told me that the coins are no longer used in the markets, and asked me to exchange them at Agribank’s headquarters,” she recalled. Mai said she has a huge amount of coins, which she has collected as change from her transactions at bookstores, supermarkets, and the post office. “Now that no one accepts them, the coins are only used for collecting,” she remarked ironically.Inconveniences A Sacombank representative told Tuoi Tre that the VND55,000 fee its branch charged Trung is the fee to count payments in small denominations, as permitted by the State Bank of Vietnam. But Le Thi Thanh Hang, deputy director of the SBA’s branch in HCMC, said the bank is not allowed to charge such a fee when customers are paying their power or water bills, a regulation that is included in the contracts between banks and the utility suppliers. “When asked to pay a fee for coin payments, customers should ask the banks which regulations they have based the decision on,” she advised, adding that banks are not allowed to reject payments in coin. Meanwhile, other banks have said they can only accept coins, and cannot distribute them, as no one wants to receive the metal. The banks thus can only return the coins to the central bank, a process that is too complicated, they complain. “We have to classify them by denomination into bags, each containing 1,000 coins, before sending them to the central bank,” a banker said.Poor quality In late 2003 the government reinstated the coins in a bid to increase automatic payment for vending machines. The new coins, in denominations of VND200, 500, 1,000, 2,000, and 5,000, initially excited local residents thanks to their reappearance after many years, but soon become troublesome as the metal easily drops out of pockets or becomes tarnished. No new coins have been made since 2010 due to rising steel prices, which made it more expensive to produce coins than polymer banknotes. “The central bank is also collecting the coins and will not release any more,” said Hang of the HCMC branch. The coins, especially those in denominations of VND200 and 500, are also of little use, as consumer prices have soared.