Bank Charges - illegal?

homer_j_3

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/working_lunch/4218500.stm

dchurch24

Thanks for that - sadly I'm at work with no soundcard or access to RM!!

I'll have to wait until I get home.

homer_j_3

just had tel call from mbna - my charges are being refunded in full..another victory for the consumer....

just to add though in case anybody else is going through with a claim with mbna that they did ask me to close my account. As it happened, I was doing that anyway and had paid off the balance in surplus to the claim last week.

They did give me the blurb about how it was not an admittance of charging incorrectly but as a gesture of goodwill...

dchurch24

It was goodwill; but goodbye too - hardly 'goodwill' like.

Promsan

Promsan wrote:

I've heard about all this before, but I only decided to look into it today after seeing it on Working Lunch today.

We got a charge for going over after using it in a supermarket just before Capitalismas - the cash machine said we had enough. The bank sent us the usual notification, but they deigned to avail themselves of £30 English pounds instead of £28, and on the 10th instead of the 19th - this could have left us with another charge (being church mice etc...), I think it's a bit "pearl necklace" (reckless, feckless, ...) and "King Kong" (wrong, pong, large meaty don[snip] [never mind]...).

What really piped me up though, was how in May 2005, we got a charge of £28 for [gulp] going 37p, yes, a vain and vulgar 37p over the agreed overdraught [correct spelling] for a digraceful three days before my wife's pay decided to land after circling the bank account.

Being a dab hand at the old manual calculator as an engineering student, I was able to calculate that the interest should possibly be 0.000814p in total at 2.2% a month, making the total debt still a matter of pence even with bulk stationary [including the "free" hole-punching (I'd like to punch their holes... erm, on second thoughts...)], ink, electricity and sychophantic staff costs for the "Armitage Shank" (bank).

This charge came at a bad time for us, and led to a naughty knock-on charge (as them making an unfair charge caused me to "break T&Cs), the following month, of £28 as we were shoved over the limit by the first charge! - and to an even more profligate sum of £12 over . That naughty little 37p had exponentiated 151 times to £56 in charges.

I think back to us shuffling into the branch like a pair of Oliver Twists gazing up at bespectacled Scrooge, humbly scrunching our tawny threadbare clothcaps, asking him if (begging your pardon sir) he might let us off the charge... "Sorry I can't" boomed the clarty fecktroll without making eye contact - I bet that felt good, made his willy seem like a mighty obelisk of middle-class alpha male power. (and people wonder why poor people damage and steal?!)
Anyway, the cheek of the feller with hindsight - he was breaking the law! (I should have had my butler thrash him to within an inch of his lucrative retirement package).

So, I've totted up a couple of other less impressive but similar "charge" events (they once pinched a tenner off me for going £6.23 over in 2001 and I want interest!), and thrown in a couple of other refunded errors due to staff incompetence ("Ah fink ah prissed vuh rong buh'on Trayce" "Ooh, you go 'ava tea break lav, you've bin on yer ahrse awl mownin'"), and I've decided to round it to a nice binary figure of £100.

This will constitute my charge to the bank for posting me a letter saying they we going to charge me one amount on one day, and then actually a different amount on a different day - strike three, as far as I'm concerned, because what it adds up to is them putting me in a position where I might break T&Cs, which being the third error (a previous one was charging me for NOT going over my limit; and setting payments to go to the wrong account incurring a compouding charge - both refunded without me charging them for incompetence), and coupled with that 37p experience, it's an absilyute phacking cheek Carruthers.

Not that they're a bad bank, but like all of them, if you don't know yer maths or yer law, they'll do yuz.
Seriously though, I've done the online small claims thing before, it was quite cheap if I remember... surely I can still DO VEM for 100 nicker?

The other thing I don't get, is people keep talking about "refusing to pay", well don't the banks just take it anyway?
Perhaps my bank (The Perfidious Royal Colombian Racehorse Bank & Pawnbrokers of Corruptistan) is a special case?

- - -

My thoughts on reading this thread - I won't name any names ('cos I can't remember 'em), but all that sanctimonious "ye merrie folk of englande suffering 'cos of a few bad apples deliberately mismanaging their accounts" crap is, well, utter, crap.

It's not like most middle-earners can't afford to pay a few pence a month for services they decreasingly use as t'inter seeps into every fetid crevise of life.
All we want is the fair price of summat - I've been poor for quite a while, and they make a tidy profit of my credit card (same bank) thank you very much - as they do with most proles.

I don't need some insolent sibilant spotty tvvat telling me "it's not our job to manage your finances sir" down the phone to me after I've listend to Chris de Burgh over and over again for half an hour. As far as I'm concerned, if I an't got the money in my account, then the payments should be declined, not profiteered from usuariously. (...but of course, I'm being idealistic, the whole capitalist system is a giant status-anxt-based usuary and pyramid-selling racket - paah tu tha peepoo!)

And now we've got a loan from them (don't athk), a huge chunk of which big dribbly gravy covered profit. You want thympathy? You want me to lithen to the merrie middle clathh of englande being fleeced whilst they sit in their very Chelsea tractors? you want me to weep at wail of the bank's diamond-encrusted stradavarius, I'd sooner smash it over their heads, the cheeky cun...[snip]

BUMP!

Well, I didn't need to loose the hounds, I barked them into submission over the dog and bone... £56 back, job done.

The other two charges are for going £51 and £19 over, so I can't complain about the amount... HOWEVER!!

I noticed something... all the charges seem to share a common characteristic:

They all ensue as a result of going over a bit a day before payday.

There is an ATM issue! A DISPLAY BALANCE ISSUE!

...and I have the receipts to prove it.

We take money out of the bank that we justifiably believe we've got; later we find out that the display was a cruel deceit, and we feel wronged to get a charge for going over a day before pay day.


Now, the Armitage's Customer Schmoozing Department, attempt to apply the "straight bat" (cricket terminology) by saying that:

"The bank can't tell what you've paid for; you need to keep a running total..."

They say, that it's up to shops you spend with when they (the shops) take the cash out, and the bank is also being wronged (poor bank, there, there,... hugs... mmmmwah! is it better?)

It sounds fair, but summat just don't feel right about it.

We (the consumer) are being penalised because of the shop's action (or lack thereof).

Shouldn't the shop take a hit for being tardy?

I can't (yet) summon up enough evidence to suggest the bank might be giving a dishonest display of the balance; but I know that there is some ambiguity over when you've got money or not.
Cleared funds etc... I'm able to transfer money between my accounts before a cheque clears, so if the bank can do that, then why does the same principle not extend to switch payments?

I'm an electronics student, so I take an interest in these machines as I could very well be employed designing them one day...

Q: When you Switch/Maestro a transaction, doesn't some data go to the bank to check whether there are available funds?

A: Surely yes? and if there's nowt there, it gets declined doesn't it?

So then, when I go to the supermarket and Maestro my shopping, doesn't the same search for available funds take place?
Are those funds not then "bagsied" for the retailer?

So why then does the transaction get delayed? Why am I being penalised for paying with money that I'm being told I have?

This is the core of the issue - when is purchase, a purchase?

Can anyone help?

Promsan

Promsan wrote:

I've heard about all this before, but I only decided to look into it today after seeing it on Working Lunch today.

We got a charge for going over after using it in a supermarket just before Capitalismas - the cash machine said we had enough. The bank sent us the usual notification, but they deigned to avail themselves of £30 English pounds instead of £28, and on the 10th instead of the 19th - this could have left us with another charge (being church mice etc...), I think it's a bit "pearl necklace" (reckless, feckless, ...) and "King Kong" (wrong, pong, large meaty don[snip] [never mind]...).

What really piped me up though, was how in May 2005, we got a charge of £28 for [gulp] going 37p, yes, a vain and vulgar 37p over the agreed overdraught [correct spelling] for a digraceful three days before my wife's pay decided to land after circling the bank account.

Being a dab hand at the old manual calculator as an engineering student, I was able to calculate that the interest should possibly be 0.000814p in total at 2.2% a month, making the total debt still a matter of pence even with bulk stationary [including the "free" hole-punching (I'd like to punch their holes... erm, on second thoughts...)], ink, electricity and sychophantic staff costs for the "Armitage Shank" (bank).

This charge came at a bad time for us, and led to a naughty knock-on charge (as them making an unfair charge caused me to "break T&Cs), the following month, of £28 as we were shoved over the limit by the first charge! - and to an even more profligate sum of £12 over . That naughty little 37p had exponentiated 151 times to £56 in charges.

I think back to us shuffling into the branch like a pair of Oliver Twists gazing up at bespectacled Scrooge, humbly scrunching our tawny threadbare clothcaps, asking him if (begging your pardon sir) he might let us off the charge... "Sorry I can't" boomed the clarty fecktroll without making eye contact - I bet that felt good, made his willy seem like a mighty obelisk of middle-class alpha male power. (and people wonder why poor people damage and steal?!)
Anyway, the cheek of the feller with hindsight - he was breaking the law! (I should have had my butler thrash him to within an inch of his lucrative retirement package).

So, I've totted up a couple of other less impressive but similar "charge" events (they once pinched a tenner off me for going £6.23 over in 2001 and I want interest!), and thrown in a couple of other refunded errors due to staff incompetence ("Ah fink ah prissed vuh rong buh'on Trayce" "Ooh, you go 'ava tea break lav, you've bin on yer ahrse awl mownin'"), and I've decided to round it to a nice binary figure of £100.

This will constitute my charge to the bank for posting me a letter saying they we going to charge me one amount on one day, and then actually a different amount on a different day - strike three, as far as I'm concerned, because what it adds up to is them putting me in a position where I might break T&Cs, which being the third error (a previous one was charging me for NOT going over my limit; and setting payments to go to the wrong account incurring a compouding charge - both refunded without me charging them for incompetence), and coupled with that 37p experience, it's an absilyute phacking cheek Carruthers.

Not that they're a bad bank, but like all of them, if you don't know yer maths or yer law, they'll do yuz.
Seriously though, I've done the online small claims thing before, it was quite cheap if I remember... surely I can still DO VEM for 100 nicker?

The other thing I don't get, is people keep talking about "refusing to pay", well don't the banks just take it anyway?
Perhaps my bank (The Perfidious Royal Colombian Racehorse Bank & Pawnbrokers of Corruptistan) is a special case?

- - -

My thoughts on reading this thread - I won't name any names ('cos I can't remember 'em), but all that sanctimonious "ye merrie folk of englande suffering 'cos of a few bad apples deliberately mismanaging their accounts" crap is, well, utter, crap.

It's not like most middle-earners can't afford to pay a few pence a month for services they decreasingly use as t'inter seeps into every fetid crevise of life.
All we want is the fair price of summat - I've been poor for quite a while, and they make a tidy profit of my credit card (same bank) thank you very much - as they do with most proles.

I don't need some insolent sibilant spotty tvvat telling me "it's not our job to manage your finances sir" down the phone to me after I've listend to Chris de Burgh over and over again for half an hour. As far as I'm concerned, if I an't got the money in my account, then the payments should be declined, not profiteered from usuariously. (...but of course, I'm being idealistic, the whole capitalist system is a giant status-anxt-based usuary and pyramid-selling racket - paah tu tha peepoo!)

And now we've got a loan from them (don't athk), a huge chunk of which big dribbly gravy covered profit. You want thympathy? You want me to lithen to the merrie middle clathh of englande being fleeced whilst they sit in their very Chelsea tractors? you want me to weep at wail of the bank's diamond-encrusted stradavarius, I'd sooner smash it over their heads, the cheeky cun...[snip]

BUMP!

Well, I didn't need to loose the hounds, I barked them into submission over the dog and bone... £56 back, job done.

The other two charges are for going £51 and £19 over, so I can't complain about the amount... HOWEVER!!

I noticed something... all the charges seem to share a common characteristic:

They all ensue as a result of going over a bit a day before payday.

There is an ATM issue! A DISPLAY BALANCE ISSUE!

...and I have the receipts to prove it.

We take money out of the bank that we justifiably believe we've got; later we find out that the display was a cruel deceit, and we feel wronged to get a charge for going over a day before pay day.


Now, the Armitage's Customer Schmoozing Department, attempt to apply the "straight bat" (cricket terminology) by saying that:

"The bank can't tell what you've paid for; you need to keep a running total..."

They say, that it's up to shops you spend with when they (the shops) take the cash out, and the bank is also being wronged (poor bank, there, there,... hugs... mmmmwah! is it better?)

It sounds fair, but summat just don't feel right about it.

We (the consumer) are being penalised because of the shop's action (or lack thereof).

Shouldn't the shop take a hit for being tardy?

I can't (yet) summon up enough evidence to suggest the bank might be giving a dishonest display of the balance; but I know that there is some ambiguity over when you've got money or not.
Cleared funds etc... I'm able to transfer money between my accounts before a cheque clears, so if the bank can do that, then why does the same principle not extend to switch payments?

I'm an electronics student, so I take an interest in these machines as I could very well be employed designing them one day...

Q: When you Switch/Maestro a transaction, doesn't some data go to the bank to check whether there are available funds?

A: Surely yes? and if there's nowt there, it gets declined doesn't it?

So then, when I go to the supermarket and Maestro my shopping, doesn't the same search for available funds take place?
Are those funds not then "bagsied" for the retailer?

So why then does the transaction get delayed? Why am I being penalised for paying with money that I'm being told I have?

This is the core of the issue - when is purchase, a purchase? When does it happen?

Can anyone help?

dchurch24

tylerdurden_167 wrote:

I have just seen BBC2's Working Lunch and they had a feature on the banks being sued, it was very interesting. I presume the guy that was on it is the one from BAG.

Bizzarre!!

Have finally managed to get it work on-line - I had to use IE instead of Firefox (Firefox would default to last Friday's edition odd.)

How odd though - I opened it up - expecting to see Stephen Hone on the programme and it turns out to be ...... ME!!!!

It was footage they had of me from last summer!

Surreal!

Turning_into_scrooge

dchurch24 wrote:

Bizzarre!!

Have finally managed to get it work on-line - I had to use IE instead of Firefox (Firefox would default to last Friday's edition odd.)

How odd though - I opened it up - expecting to see Stephen Hone on the programme and it turns out to be ...... ME!!!!

It was footage they had of me from last summer!

Surreal!

Lol

Blimey will you sleep tonight

dchurch24

That was funny - wasn't expecting that!!

Tabs_2

dchurch24 wrote:

That was funny - wasn't expecting that!!

Are you Dave? The guy in the white and blue shirt?!!

Just watching it now - good to put a face to a name :wave: