Another Six Months In Limbo!

I disagree with everthing Dhahran2001 writes. Yes we can survive if any service provider goes to the wall due to sharp practice. Institutions, like any business would do well to recognise that they wouldnt exist without customers!
Personally, I never needed an overdraft - for 6 years - because I always had money left at the end of the month and all my debits organised properly. Till THREE organisations messed up which would have put me in the red by £10. I was ill in the two days it took for the bank to bounce everything so I hadnt been near a PC to check my account online and no-one from the bank bothered to contact me about this obvious disaster where they had done so before.
They stole over £500 from me, queered my pitch with every service provider I had and continued to act abominably toward me throughout the next 6 months.
THIS type of situation is why banks have some discretion on these charges. They can arbitrarily decide to screw you into the ground through no fault of your own ... or not!
Ordinary people who have to pay the piper need to be protected against crooks and idiots - this is also when I discovered that the Direct Debit guarantee is absolutely useless.

Hi. Would it not be possible to petition our collective MP's through your kind resources, (crawl crawl) to force the banks to suspend all charges until the outcome of any enquiry is completed ?

WHY NOT LEGISLATION THAT IF PROVEN BANKS (AS WE KNOW ARE FLEECING CUSTOMERS) AND THEIR SHAREHOLDERS HAVE TO COMPENSATE CUSTOMERS OUT OF THEIR OWN POCKETS, AS THEY HAVE POCKETED THE CUSTOMERS MONEY.?

Shastra hasn't answered my question 'why should the bank make an assumption that your future cash inflow is secure'.

Banks are not a social service which you can tap into.

If you think retail charges are excessive, try corporate finance. That will really take your breath away.

You can get your "own" money from supermarkets...cash backs.Why can't we put money into our banks through check out points?
There are far too many Bank Branches when Building Societies where aloud to act as Banks!
Close half of these...most are not needed !Internet banking ?

We all make mistakes occasionally (or those of us who are human do) and I don't mind paying for my mistakes but I DO mind paying through the nose. I also think it morally reprehensible for banks to "trap" less canny/low income customers into paying often disproportionally high charges.

Yes, a strong banking sector is the cornerstone of a steady economy but the banks have been behaving like pigs with their noses in the trough. Strong does not mean stiffing their customer base for often minor errors when that same customer base is being made to pay for the banks fiscal incontinence on a grand scale which has led to the current situation some banks now find themseleves in.

A quick note to tell Mr Cliff "ever so cunning" D'arcy that I'm watching. [He'll probably be quite smug now with all the comments his post is prompting].

I won't be commenting much because if I did it would not be to the liking of Cliff, TMF generally or most of you on here because I would be telling you the facts, in a similar way to Dhahran, futurefix and goldpaw.

And you don't want that do you? You would rather stick your heads in the sand and wait for the Knight on his white charger (FSA / OFT etc) to come to your rescue. But sorry folks we're out of white chargers and saints these days. Stop behaving like children and learn to be responsible for your own actions. Take heed when the bank sends you a current account tariff which says "issue a cheque with insufficient funds on your account to meet it and we'll bounce it and charge you ?30" (it's a deterrent by the way and bears (and should not necessarily bear) no relation to any actual or perceived bank costs in the matter).

Why are you so surprised when you see the ?30 charge on your statement?

If you are having problems balancing the account take a leaf out of Alvin Hall's book and take out a pro rata amount of your residual salary (after DDs / SOs etc) each week in cash to spend. This is not meant to be pompous, its meant to be helpful.

RR

PS: Cliff - plenty more articles for you to write on this story then if at least 18 months to run!

OMG, some people actually believe their own cow dung !!! - People should be held accountable for their own actions? True that's why the banks have paid back over 100 million to ordinary people who took them to court in the first place to reclaim their banks charges.

If the banks were sooooo right, why not hold out paying anyone at all? Maybe because they thought "hold on" we may be taking the michael and we might lose.

It took a corporate decision and some nervous calls between them to stump up the courage, plus a little prodding by the OFT to say ok let's go to court. Guess what they lost there as well!!!
Now I got some guys telling me how righteous the banks are? Do me a favour! I am soooo sorry that your banks shares are plummeting, but you only have yourselves to blame.
Remember shares values can go down as well as up.
Or did you not read the small print?

Futurefix - Banks don't make that assumption at all! On the contrary they act like the MAFIA in my experience.
Social service - WTF are you talking about! I paid a service charge for my bank account to have an up-graded service - I got screwed that's all.
And another thing... I've worked for 2 banks in the past "one where I reported them to an inhouse fraud & investigation for stealing from customers and in the process lost my job!"

To all those righteous people out there who seem to think that those of us who don't manage our accounts properly deserve all the bank charges we get they should try living in the real world. I have only ever gone into the red when a DD has been paid early. My budget is fairly tight so I need to know exactly what day things are going out of my account on. When a couple of DDs went out early on a couple of occasions incurring a £38 charge each time I was told that it was up to me to make sure that the company applying for the DD payment didn't do so early. When I tackled them about this they said they had to apply for the money a few days before the due date because it took 3-4 days to process. Why does it take that long when we live in the age of hi tech and I can deposit monies from one account to another instantly? They said they couldn't be held accountable for the DD taking less days than they assumed. So basically I was given the two fingers by both the company who insisted I pay for their service by DD and the bank who didn't seem at all interested other than to ensure that they took their charges before anything else which in turn left me short once again and so the story goes on.

As for a deterrent I was under the impression that bank charges were in direct relation to their admin costs. Not to serve as a punishment or deterrent. Why should I be punished for somebody else's actions. If it really is the case that I should ensure no DDs leave me account early then there should be the facility on my account to hold these payments up until the date they were set up to be taken from my account. Unfortunately the bank doesn't seem to be able to or interested in doing something about this. They say they have no control over DDs. They are applied for from an outside party. It seems to me that anybody who has the details of my account can dip into it when they feel like it and the bank cannot do anything about it apart from charge me exorbitant amounts of money for the privilege of depositing my heard earned money with them. If only I could be paid in cash and pay my bills that way too. I would close my account down tomorrow.

I do agree with 1Dee. There should be an intelligent system or software fix available on a customer's account to deal with the problem outlined. There is a need to smooth over the monthly cycle and the system could use the previous monthly pattern to forecast and facilitate that.

Ideally that would include a feature which recognised the security of future income.

There could be a simple code which indicated the customer was in employment on three months notice, for example.

It could well be productive if upset customers and regulatory authorities directed their efforts with the banks to that end.

The bank could then include the service in their declared terms and conditions and banking code of practice.

oceantreader could be helped by this too.

Having read the "SmartAlec"'s supposed useful (and totally one-sided) contribution to this thread I am compelled to comment. For someone who believes themselves to have the facts right and to be presenting an unbiased comment, where is your advice to those customers, and there are multitudes of them, who do take responsibility for their own actions and still get screwed by the banks and their charges.

We have little choice but to use bank accounts and are at the mercy of the service provided. To take an example, if I set up a standing order or direct debit I complete a form giving explicit instructions on how this is to be handled. I don't care about excuses for taking payment early and messing up my account, there aren't any excuses. If I specify a particular date I expect that date to be when funds are taken (with the exception of weekends where it is clearly understood that funds will be taken on the Friday before) not before and not after AND I certainly don't expect to be charged for the bank or other 3rd party's mistakes. In fact given that the banks think it appropriate to levy such high charges perhaps they should also be prepared to pay the same charges to customers whose accounts they mess up through no fault of the customer.

A friend recently set up a 12 month direct debit for £73.00 a month only to find that someone at the bank/3rd party had keyed in £730 instead.No one queried it. There was no reason to suspect this and the bank duly paid the direct debit and the 3rd party happily accepted the mony without question, while the person was away on holiday in the States. They returned to absolute bank account hell and who do you think is having to sort out the mess, who is making countless phone calls, who had their debit card cancelled, whose other direct debits were all refused. AND do you think either the bank or the 3rd party have offered anything in the way of compensation.....NO. If this friend were to levy charges on the bank/3rd party for this it would easily be several hundered pounds.

I totally agree that people have a responsibility to manage their own affairs and that where the services of the bank are being abused they have a right to levy an appropriate charge. But we must not forget that the banks are not whiter than white by any stretch of the imagination and that there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who do take full responsibility for their finances only to find themselves being abused by the banks and, if it's right for the banks to levy charges, it's also right for customers to expect something back for those times when the banks get it badly wrong. It's a two way street.

Good discussion on the bank charges. Firstly, we all know the banks are screwing us. If you can't accept this try having a strong black coffee to wake you up and then do your research.

Secondly, ask yourself this: If a bank makes a mistake i.e cancelling your card in error, embarrassing you in public when a card machine refuses you're attempt to pay for goods, wastes you're time in trying to sort it out, and then handsover x number of £'s over the counter from the WRONG account (one of you're three accounts held with the same bank)then should you not put a claim in to compensate you for the banks POOR MANAGEMENT?!!

They make millions in using our money deposited in to bank accounts by investing a large part of it. They can claim over 20% interest on the amount overdrawn but only pay us less than 10% on the money they borrow of us to invest!

They are tying ropes round the necks of thos e who are too poor to fight back whilst bleeding the weak dry!

Yes we have the convenience of withdrawing and spending our money better than we did when all we had were cheques decades ago but we have earned it! It hasn't come free.

See ya ta ra!