Coffee at EPFL was (is?) only 1.5 CHF. Once I used a 1000 CHF note to buy a coffee. Funny that the lady there accepted it without raising her head.... 3 months later I had problem with a taxi driver in Paris over a 20 Euro note! He made me walk to a shop to get change!

Yes, wrote too fast in my reply

60% of the value of all circulating notes... Still puzzled

i have never seen one..

In the old days before ebanking, when we had to go to the post office with our little yellow book, I would often have a stash of 1000s for maybe half an hour.

Same here. I also traded 18 of these for my car.

I also get them from the ATM when we withdraw money from our overseas account to transfer into our CS account. Don't ask, it's a long story.

Brian.

I worked in a coffe bar and a regular customer used to come and try to pay with a 1000 claiming it was all he had which we could not change, used to pull up with his jaguar and order his wine and stuff , did this quite oftan. Later we found out he did this in other bars too , it was when he was broke and wanted to drink on slate ,he must have been carrying that thousand note round for years.

Wow, that's very unusual, i've never seen an ATM give out 1000 notes since i been here (28 years) and i quite often take amounts upto 5000 out. I would have thought from a security point of view it's unlikely as if you knew where a machine gave 1000 frank notes, it's got to be a target.

All i've used seem to give 20, 50, 100 or 200's

A week ago I watched a "small" post office counter clerk counting her balance, and she must have had around CHF 100,000 in cash. I wonder if the post uses 1,000 CHF notes for internal transfers?

I used 20 of them to pay for my car (20,000). I was quite shocked to see them aswell, but bank didnt seem surprised me asking for 20K in cash either.

Should say, my first and only contact with 1000 CHF notes was when the woman buying our car left 30 of them as a deposit! Insane.

I was fortunate enough to draw out 500 chf from the credit suisse bank and instead of the 5 * 100 I was expecting the machine gave me 5 * 1000. I of course tried it a few times over with the same result. I was just p'd off I only had a 1500 in my account. Of course next day it wasnt so generous

Why?.................

Don't spend it. If they can trace it back to you, they'll ask for the money back. You see, you knew the money wasn't yours, so you can be prosecuted for theft.

Because every now and then they do get attacked. There is also the risk of cloned cards and people being kidnapped and forced to use thier card.

If you were a thief, would you go to a machine that gave out Chf 100's or 200's or directly to the machine giving out Chf 1'000's ?

I know where i would go.

If the machine goes wrong and gives out double money or whatever, with 100's, it's not nice but bearable for the bank, with 1000's it's 10 times worse.

but it's in the airport, how can it be attacked?

If the grandmothers were fearing inflation, the last thing they should do would be piling hoards of cash. In some ways, inflation is a tax on cash.

Anyway, 1000 CHF bills are handy when paying a rent deposit or, as some of you already mentioned, are buying a used car. I think Swiss people like cash payments more than Americans, or Scandinavians for that matter..

Fine can't be attacked easily; cloned cards, forgeries, stealing from people who have taken from the machine, machine mal-function.

ATM machines are relatively standard, 1000 note is not a standard size so the machine needs to be re-jigged for 1000 notes. With an ATM you are usualy limited to the amount that can be withdrawn at any one time, is it Sfr 5'000.-- per card/account ? so the need for 1000 notes is very limited. As people have pointed out that unless you're buying a car, its feasible but not easy to pay with a 1000 note.

Really, every time I withdraw 1000chf from my US account the Credit Suisse ATM gives me a nice shiny smooth 1K note.

I don't really want to say how many times I have done this but it happens quite often.

Brian.

on a slightly (completely) different topic, if I walk into my bank branch (CS) can I withdraw cash in other currencies? Is it the same rate at their ATM?

You can withdraw Euros from my CS machine at the going bank rate.
I think you are limited to 50 and 100 euro notes.

Brian.