Banks are scarieand are responsible for some hardship

Hi , i have today emailed my bank and all my meps with this letter hoping to stir the lazy devils into life - am i dreaming ?




-- the WriteToThem.com team




Wednesday 30 September 2009

Dear Mike Nattrass, Michael Cashman, Philip Bradbourn OBE, Nicole
Sinclaire, Liz Lynne and Malcolm Harbour,
Hello to all ,i am sat here at my computer having just come off a
telephone call to my bank, the word despair is not far from my mind, in
May this year my wife and i began claims for bank charges against the
Royal bank of Scotland totalling jointly £85000 including interest,This
amount was accumulated over 5 years of normal every day banking and to
be frank we ourselves were flaberghasted when realising the total,
after all we are just a normal working couple with 2 children a dog and
a mortgage , i work . my wife unfortunatelty due to illness cannot, but
always has until she was ill, without digressing too far from the point
our income is low £20,000 and our outgoings are similar and we know
from people around us that this is pretty average so how the rbs
managed to syphen £8500 from our accounts is beyond belief - however
they have ,and in the process have been ( now that we have woken up to
the fact ) one of the main reasons we find ourselves in financial
difficulties , bank charges of £38 per transaction have created a
situation were a bank charge gets taken from our meagre funds and then
a direct debit gets returned as there is now insufficient funds to
cover it which then generates another bank charge ????.
The fact is we are now in a position of hardship so appealled to the
bank on those grounds , my wife whose basic income of child benefit
only £130 per month goes into her account was immediately turned down
and charges continue to be applied to her account ( 3 charges can soon
swallow up her child benefit )so she phoned the bank explaining this
and telling them she was finding it hard to play catch up - They in
turn extended her overdraft by £80 to £180 which they are reclaiming at
£20 per month and on occasion still apply her £38 charges ???.
As for me, i work as a low paid lorry driver putting in long hours to
earn overtime and most of my wages go to paying bills, we have very
little for luxuries such as holidays , clothes , nice cars etc - we
litterally live from hand to mouth,This we bear without moaning and
with a smile for the childrens sake , but when we get treated by the
bank as we are it becomes very hard to smile even for the kids, i will
explain my despair

---

After writing to the bank and asking for my bank charges to be returned
as i was finding it hard to make ends meet i was sent a polite letter
explaining about the court case and that i was to wait until it had
been sorted unless i believed i was in hardship in which case i should
phone a 0845 number for a form ( 0845 numbers cost a lot and make money
for the bank )This i duly did and returned it on the 25 sept this year
and am presently awaiting a reply, However charges are still raining
down on me at the rate of £38 per time and last month amounted to £134
( half a weeks wage )and are causing things to be bounced ,
consequently the bank wrote to me today staing they are freezing my
accounts even though some were in credit i have 3 - 1 savings ,1 joint
and a current account which primerally incurs these charges - but even
that is well within its limit this week , but the bank decided i had
used my card overly and froze all my accounts ? , i was astounded so
decided to ring my bank and clear the matter up , it was then i
realised i could only deal with this by ringing another 0845 number but
as i now had no access to ANY of my accounts i had no option but to
ring the 0845 number, i was answered by a - you are on hold and will be
answered shortly message which i had to listen to before getting
through to a polite customer services person, 25 minutes later she had
extended my overdraft again on the proviso i repaid it at £40 per month
for 6 month's ( how much the phone call cost me she would not say ) i
suspected i was being dealt with very slowly and rbs were certainly
benefitting from the charge of the phone call- meanwhile she politely
informed me i now have another £172 bank charges pending and this
extended o/draft would ease mre through them - what utter twaddle ! i
had no option, if i did not agree to this i would not be able to use my
accounts -- in short i was stitched up by the bank again , my question
to you is this - Does anyone have the right to do this to me in this
day and age , does any one care do you care or is it to go on unabated
until people have been pushed into bankruptcy by the very people we are
dependant on to safe guard our finances, do we allow this legal robbery
to continue as we are now all paid into the bank and they take their
share before we can pay our bills,and can restrict access to our money
by suspending all our cards and account until we agree to overdrafts we
can ill afford , i remember as boy reading of the truck acts where
employers were no longer allowed to pay employees with their own coins
which they could only spend in the employers shop and were restricted
from taking amounts from wages for tools- are we returning to those
conditions by being paid directly to unscrupulous banks - i know this
reads like a rant but it is a very very serious situation to me and my
family , i am a hard working genuine honest family man who is going
under from the heavy handed and downright greed of my bank - will any
one take them on ( i know of the oft case ) but i am talking about the
ethics of banks and their trampling over poor people such as i and my
wife , do any of you care enough to highlight these cases or are you
too , under the illusion banks are doing their best for every one
?????? HELP !!!

ps i have heard there are a lot of people in this situation one guy at
the bank said he too was in this situation and he recieves hundreds of
telephone calls each week from other customers in the same
situation.HELP . HELP. HELP.

Yours sincerely,