Please give your feedback on personal current accounts

jambosans

typos1 wrote: »

the banks make it very difficult or impossible for you to keep track of your payments-ie cash machines dont show latest transactions or they allow card payments when you havent got the balance available or allow you to take money you havent got out of a cash machine, then charge you.

You don't need the bank to keep track of your spending. Your bank may provide the tools to help, but no system is fool proof, so instead of soley relying on the bank you should be keeping track with your own records (I have a very simple spreadsheet for example).

typos1 wrote: »

They set up a series of traps and then wait for you to fall in whilst rubbing thier hands together with glee, pound signs appearing in their eyes.

Ah, "The Great Banking Consipiracy", the banks cause the problems, nothing to do with people's inability to keep their own finances in order.

typos1 wrote: »

And then some people say "well you should run your account properly" when the fact is you cant because the system is set up so you cant but you still have to pay when you cant.

You can, and I do. Infact my bank provide some usefull aids such as free internet banking, a text service (if I require), telephone banking, branch, and an entire country's worth of free ATM's.

typos1 wrote: »

Its grossly unfair and unreasonable, nothing annoys me more..apart from maybe the people that say "run your account properly", most of whom clearly have the luxury of NOT having to work down to the last penny to survive... only to find out it wasnt the last penny-the system had allowed a payment through and now youre £1 overdrawn and you ve been charged £30 for it.

Those "having to work down to the last penny" tend to have a pretty tight control of their finances, and don't need the bank to hold their hand when budgetting.

typos1 wrote: »

It should be no available balance=no money out, no payments made, no charge. Payment made or money transfered=instantaneous, whatever method used cheque included (well instantaneous soon as the bank gets it if cheque).

Sounds like a good idea. Oh, BTW, your bank called, and they want £10 per month to implement these changes.

typos1 wrote: »

Anything else is not acceptable. The current situation is the banking equivalent of legitimising those cowboy builders who charge 5000 grand to change 4 tiles on an old person's roof. What is an outrageous con in the field of roofing suddenly becomes perfectly legitimate in the field of banking and it has got to stop.

o_O

Incidentaly I have not commented on this "cowboy" banking system that is designed to con you at any given opertunity. Well, I've never had any of the issues you've mentioned, the real issue seems to be that you expect your bank to keep your house in order, which is not what banks do. If you're truley on top of your finances, then you wouldn't need the banks assistance at all, the fact the bank do help is an added bonus IMO.

Alpine_Star

jambosans wrote: »

Sounds like a good idea. Oh, BTW, your bank called, and they want £10 per month to implement these changes.
.

Why would the bank need to charge you £10 a month for implementing not providing you with services you don't want?

Why should you pay for the non provision of any service? Do you realise how ridiculous that sounds?

I'd genuinely be intersted to know.

leemack

Alpine_Star wrote: »

Why would the bank need to charge you £10 a month for implementing not providing you with services you don't want?

Why should you pay for the non provision of any service? Do you realise how ridiculous that sounds?

I'd genuinely be intersted to know.

I think what jambosans seems to be saying is that they are very happy that other people struggling on the breadline and paying loads of charges mean that jambosans gets free banking, because others are paying for it. If the less well off didn't pay charges then banks say they would have to charge for banking to make money, or charge for cash machine use.

Quite frankly why should there be a problem in a computer age with your current balance showing exactly the money you have left available taking into account pending transactions, if there is no money available then payments should not be made. no payment=no charge, as has been said before you shouldn't get charged for not doing something. I would not mind paying £5 a month for this type of service and piece of mind, £10 a month is too much.

jambosans

Alpine_Star wrote: »

Why would the bank need to charge you £10 a month for implementing not providing you with services you don't want?

Well, if your read the orignal post I quoted, I was referring to more than just so called "non-services". Also, in context, the £10 was figuratively speaking (and part of the general satire of my post).

typos1 wrote: »

It should be no available balance=no money out, no payments made, no charge. Payment made or money transfered=instantaneous, whatever method used cheque included (well instantaneous soon as the bank gets it if cheque).

The poster (for example) suggests banks implement a system in which cheques become available instantly (amongst other things). These services cost money, and if the poster had their way with banks abolishing charges, then I am suggesting we would have to start paying for things like Faster Payments, etc.

Alpine_Star wrote: »

Why should you pay for the non provision of any service?

Read above.

Alpine_Star wrote: »

Do you realise how ridiculous that sounds?

Edit: oh, and it's worth mentioning, Lloyds TSB already charge for providing non-services, it's called Control, and funnily enough, it costs £10 per month.

jambosans

leemack wrote: »

I think what jambosans seems to be saying is that they are very happy that other people struggling on the breadline and paying loads of charges mean that jambosans gets free banking, because others are paying for it.

How presumptious, I didn't realise the charges argument boiled down to either all or nothing, and I certainly didn't suggest that. It's also equally presumptious that only the poor struggle with charges. There are plenty "struggling on the breadline" who have never paid a charge in their life.

leemack wrote: »

Quite frankly why should there be a problem in a computer age with your current balance showing exactly the money you have left available taking into account pending transactions,

My banks do this already. There's only a rare set of circumstances when pending transactions don't show (i.e. pay@pump petrol stations).

leemack wrote: »

I would not mind paying £5 a month for this type of service and piece of mind, £10 a month is too much.

I cannot understand why you would want to pay anything for your bank to keep on top of your finances. As I've said before, almost everyone is perfectly capable of doing that themselves.

Alpine_Star

This is painfully simple:

A paid item fee or non-paid item fee is a charge for the service of 'consideration' of whether the bank grants you an unauthorised overdraft or not. And this is because a payment instruction is deemed - by the bank - to be an informal request for an overdraft.They assume that is what you want. There should be no reason whatsoever why you should not be able to instruct your bank that any payment instruction given where funds are not available should not be deemed as a request for the consideration of an overdraft and to decline this extremely expensive 'service' in advance.

The Federal Reserve has recently passed a law whereby a customer has to opt-in for the consideration service for certain types of payment instruction and there is no fee for opting out, because no service is provided.

And I'd bet a cotton chomping dollar that opting in or out of this 'service' will happen here soon.

jambosans

I'm not sure if the last post is directed at me? I think I've made it clear from my reply, that I was not referring specifically to the debate surrounding whether or not informal overdraft requests should be an opt-in or opt-out service. I was commenting more generally on the use of charges for the cross-subsidy of banking

leemack

jambosans wrote: »

How presumptious, I didn't realise the charges argument boiled down to either all or nothing, and I certainly didn't suggest that. It's also equally presumptious that only the poor struggle with charges. There are plenty "struggling on the breadline" who have never paid a charge in their life.

I said 'less well off' not poor. I don't believe its presumptuous to give my interpretation of what you posted. I was saying what I understood by what you had written, as I do not mind read and only have the written word by which to interpret your meaning. If you feel so aggrieved about being mis interpreted don't post at all or be clearer about what you are saying.


My banks do this already. There's only a rare set of circumstances when pending transactions don't show (i.e. pay@pump petrol stations).

Then you are lucky, please tell us which bank. My bank regularly removes pending transactions if the store hasn't provided proof of purchase within 2 days. I have had a transaction appear 3 months after the purchase was made, causing charges.

I cannot understand why you would want to pay anything for your bank to keep on top of your finances. As I've said before, almost everyone is perfectly capable of doing that themselves.

Banks are a business and regardless of their effect on the recession the service that they provide to customers has to be paid for, branches, salaries, telephone banking etc. It has been hypothesised by people in the industry and banks themselves that were the banks only able to charge cost for refusing a direct debit or sending a letter etc, then they would have to charge customers for having a current account in order to cover the costs of running the accounts and services. At present the charges that banks recover allows for free banking. I would rather pay for an updated and fair system where a person isn't charged £35 for having a direct debit refused - it doesn't cost this to refuse a direct debit, it is done by computer, there is no unauthorised overdraft, no additional cost to the bank as I expect that it costs as much to pay a direct debit as to refuse it, and yet £35 is charged.

Congratulations that you have never had a charge. I have an older family member, who is not computer savvy and doesn't understand really how banks work. She has to have an account to have her wage paid in and so that she can have direct debits and aviod the penalties that companies charge for not paying by direct debit. She is on a very low income and believes that the balance shown on her account is correct (she uses telephone banking to check her balance as she's scared of cash machines) she uses her debit card regularly and occasionally falls foul of the 'ringfencing' system and incurs a charge. She has never borrowed money in her life and is terrified when she gets a charge, but falls into the trap that one charge leads to another and then doesn't eat in order to get her account back into credit. She's too proud to ask for or accept help and has only very basic literacy and numeracy. A simpler transparent system would help her to be able to avoid charges.

You are lucky Jambosans, you obviously are intelligent enough that you can keep track of transactions, download or design a spreadsheet, and know when you go to make your purchase exactly what the state of play is with your account. Please accept that not everyone in the world is as lucky as you and may struggle more with these type of things - for instance older people and people with mental health problems or learning difficulties, even people with very mild learning difficulties can have problems managing their account.

A better system, whcih is realy just slightly changing the way things are done would mean an awful lot to people who have difficulties, and it would not take much to implement. The question is are the banks willing to lose the profit that they are making off these people?

Sorry, couldn't make the multi quote option work!!

leemack

Alpine_Star wrote: »

This is painfully simple:

A paid item fee or non-paid item fee is a charge for the service of 'consideration' of whether the bank grants you an unauthorised overdraft or not. And this is because a payment instruction is deemed - by the bank - to be an informal request for an overdraft.They assume that is what you want. There should be no reason whatsoever why you should not be able to instruct your bank that any payment instruction given where funds are not available should not be deemed as a request for the consideration of an overdraft and to decline this extremely expensive 'service' in advance.

The Federal Reserve has recently passed a law whereby a customer has to opt-in for the consideration service for certain types of payment instruction and there is no fee for opting out, because no service is provided.

And I'd bet a cotton chomping dollar that opting in or out of this 'service' will happen here soon.

I hope so!

jambosans

leemack wrote: »

I said 'less well off' not poor.

Regardless of how it's worded, I still stand by what I originally said. Better wording have been "financially inept".

leemack wrote: »

I don't believe its presumptuous to give my interpretation of what you posted.

Of course it is presumptuous, by the very definition of the word, unless I have actually stated it within my post you are simply making a presumption through your interpretation of my post. Incidentally, I didn't think there was much to interpret, but just to be absolutely clear, I was suggesting that if charges are completely abolished and services (such as instantaneous cheque clearance) were introduced, then banks would be likely to charge everyone under this model. There are half-way comprises that would see those maintaining their account in credit not charged, while those borrowing (not simply unarranged, see Halifax Reward Current Account charging structure), charged more.

leemack wrote: »

Then you are lucky, please tell us which bank.My bank regularly removes pending transactions if the store hasn't provided proof of purchase within 2 days. I have had a transaction appear 3 months after the purchase was made, causing charges.

No, you are unlucky. My experiences are generally considered the status quo, a transaction debiting 3 month after purchase is an anomaly. Also, most banks pend funds for 5 to 7 working days, nothing unusual about this. Again your bank seems to be the exception.

leemack wrote: »

Congratulations that you have never had a charge.

I never said that.

leemack wrote: »

She is on a very low income and believes that the balance shown on her account is correct (she uses telephone banking to check her balance as she's scared of cash machines) she uses her debit card regularly and occasionally falls foul of the 'ringfencing' system and incurs a charge

Most bank's telephone banking services can provide a breakdown of pending/ earmarked/ authorised debit card funds. If your family member keeps her receipts she can easily check with the bank to corroborate any payments due off. If, in the rare instance a payment is not showing as earmarked your family member can easily identify this, and thus leave additional funds in the account to cover the missing authorisation.

leemack wrote: »

You are lucky Jambosans, you obviously are intelligent enough that you can keep track of transactions, download or design a spreadsheet, and know when you go to make your purchase exactly what the state of play is with your account.

It does not take a great deal of intelligence to perform basic budgeting.

leemack wrote: »

Please accept that not everyone in the world is as lucky as you and may struggle more with these type of things - for instance older people and people with mental health problems or learning difficulties, even people with very mild learning difficulties can have problems managing their account.

I do accept this, but in reality, this is a minority of bank customers. Plus there are work arounds which don't require everyone to be charged a monthly fee. For example, handle cash only and don't use the debit card functionality. Or even as I've suggested to Alpine Star, services such as Lloyds TSB Control.