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banks need to be brought to book
malc161
Posts: 49 Forumite
Hi all i have today emailed this letter to my meps in despair in the hope they may take a second look at banks , am i dreaming ?.
we can all do this by emailing our meps:
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 £8500 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 questions to you are -
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,
we can all do this by emailing our meps:
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 £8500 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 questions to you are -
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,
0
Comments
-
I really feel for you malc161, I was in tears today after a set to with Nat West, I can't advise you, but I decided to write to my MP about the greed and inflexibilty of the banks and the way they seem to punish and penalise those with the least money, often trapping them in a spiral of debt. Can you open another a\c and get stuff paid into that? Best wishes to you and your family in these hard times0
-
Correct me if i am wrong, but if your account is in dispute over the charges, can they still continue to levy charges and interest on the account?
Also, do be careful of off-setting, where banks take your money from one account to another to pay off a debt, such as savings to current account to remove an overdraft.
As above, I don't disagree with your argument/rant above, but the more charges they place the more you will reclaim back. I don't see why they have frozen your accounts that are in credit, but i advise going elsewhere. If the account is frozen, then money can be paid in but not out. So if that is the case i advise moving your income elsewhere.Although no trees were harmed during the creation of this post, a large number of electrons were greatly inconvenienced.
There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies0 -
Hello malc161,
I do not disagree with the points you are making and I hope you will get meaningful replies.
However may I suggest a couple of things for the future.
1) Because you have not used paragraphs in your letter it is very difficult to read and hold someone's attention. remember use paragraphs in future.
2) Your story will mean more if you quote exact figures and not round them to - £85000. remember when someone says £85000 the first question to be asked is "are you sure". BUT if you say £84392.35 this leaves little room to doubt the number.
Good LuckThere will be no Brexit dividend for Britain.0 -
This has already been posted.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=25561921#post25561921
Unfortunately the letter is a non starter as it is so poorly written. Maybe it will go round the office for a laugh, but that's about all.0 -
This has already been posted.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=25561921#post25561921
Unfortunately the letter is a non starter as it is so poorly written. Maybe it will go round the office for a laugh, but that's about all.
Did you need to be rude? Just coz you have posted a number of times doesnt make you perfect. How about offering some construcive advise...after all thats what all these boards are for..particularly DFW.
As the poster a few up said try breaking it down into paragraphs to help the eye of the reader. Other than that fair play to you for taking the time to sit and tak action. The more people do the more likely politicians will have to listen and start to take more action.
Anyway, what ever happens i would advise you to change banks, get a basic bank account else where and have you wages, tax credits & any benifits paid into the new account paying in a small amount every month to pay towards the OD on you old accounts.
Also ask the bank to freeze charges and interest on the account will you pay it back.
Good Luck and dont worry about the few rude and arrogant people on here most of us are nice i promise!
GOne day some company will do what they say they will do and charge a fair charge.:T
Not doing the opposite of that which they promise and charge you a fortune for the privileged.
Or maybe not:mad:0 -
Hi
I must agree with some of the other posters, the letter has a number of mistakes so I do hope you have proof read it before you sent it, ie £85000 and £8500.
Firstly you are in difficulties so open new basic bank accounts else where totally unconected with the RBS group, sit down and do a statement of affairs so you know where you stand. Once money stops going into your old accounts you will be able to make arrangements to pay back any overdrafts with them but having done your SOA you will know how much you can afford.
Continue claiming your bank charges but with the soa you can prove your hardship and you stop getting more charges by effectively closing the accounts and starting a fresh with a new account.0 -
Ok so my letter is poorly written , its about the plight of a me, and i am a lorry driver not a academic ( which you obviously are ) the point is i have written it and put my despair in a letter, a lot of people will not and if they do and find responses such as you have posted may not do so again.
Thankyou to every one else for your kind support , The letter was paragraphed but has lost shape in the copying and pasting .:T0 -
In reply to people saying i should try to switch bank accounts , i can do this but this situation was brought about by people letting me down with payments not from my money mismanagement .
It as always been my policy to deal with things with dignity and honesty so i approached the bank with cards on the table and have suffered heavy handed treatment from them ever since, i will continue to work this out but alas i feel i now have no option but to change banks.
Unfortunately i still think there does seem to be some similarity between the truck acts and present day banking and employer payment system , perhaps some of the academics out there could further this point.
0 -
The letter was paragraphed but has lost shape in the copying and pasting .:T
That's what I suspected happened when I made my other reply.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=25561921#post25561921I would guess the original has been copied & pasted which has thrown all the formatting to pot.
My point is that you should have sorted the letter out before sending. Get someone to proof read it, everyone makes mistakes.
Your error of £85k throws away any credibility the letter has.
My advice would be to start again, but take the advice in this, and the other thread, to construct it in such a way that you get across what you expect them to do.
If you don't explain what you want them to do, it is just a rant.... a worthy one.. but still just a rant and will go no further.
Good luck..
p.s. (to biggaz26) never be concerned about someone's post count, it means nothing and certainly doesn't suggest the poster is an expert at anything.0 -
With respect, £20,000 is a very good salary in my eyes, although not sure that holds with a mortgage.
Good to get it off your chest.Hi, we’ve had to remove your signature. If you’re not sure why please read the forum rules or email the forum team if you’re still unsure - MSE ForumTeam0
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