Lloyds TSB: Another Victory for the Whingers

dchurch24

We have people eating nothing but dry breakfast cereal for 2 weeks because of the unlawful activities of banks.

I have no URL for this. I met with this woman and saw her bank statements - her entire benefit was taken up by charges - and then some more, forcing her overdrawn again, and thus incuring more charges. She told me she had nothing to eat for 2 weeks apart from dry breakfast cereal as she coulnd't even afford milk, and I believe her.

I will find the URLs for the others.

Paul_Herring

dchruch24 wrote:

I met with this woman and saw her bank statements - her entire benefit was taken up by charges - and then some more, forcing her overdrawn again, and thus incuring more charges.

She told me she had nothing to eat for 2 weeks apart from dry breakfast cereal as she coulnd't even afford milk, and I believe her.

I vaguely remember it (or comments relating to it) cropping up on. I'll understand if you don't personally have the answers to these then, but your feelings on them would be interesting:

How did it get to the point where bank charges were sprialling out of control?

Were the bank completely heartless when she went to them when the problem started and asked how they could help her reign in the recursive fees? If she didn't go straight away (the answer may be related to the answer to the next question), why not?
Did she ever go?
Was the bank manager involved?

What caused the charges to be incurred in the first place? i.e. what triggered the first charge?

This last is the one I'd really like the answer for. If it was 100% the fault of her own bank, then I'll give you this one - the bank is 100% to blame. If it was because of a third party, e.g., pulling a DD before they should have, or benifits were paid late, then it's not totally the bank's fault.

How much it was the banks fault however, and I agree they do have a part to play in (unusual) cases such as this, relies on the answers to the other questions.

felixdahousecat_2

Sorry, but I will put this as simply as I can.

Most people have no choice over whether or not they have a bank account; it is now a necessity. I would guess that debt levels were much lower when people dealt in cash, on a weekly basis.

Most bank accounts are pretty similar, apart from overdraft levels etc.

Once the bank has your money it can pretty much do what it likes with it, leaving the customer to complain/claim at their leisure.

Now once you have a bank account you are induced to use it to pay monthly by direct debit, pay online for discounts, leading to many people having a very fractured structure to their monthly outgoings against their weekly or monthly pay day.

I would think that the wealthier are more pre-disposed to check online balances, due dates etc than the lower paid worker (maybe at work even ??), leaving them less likely to fall prey to bank charges.

Now to the banks.......

The banks exist to make a profit of course, no arguments there, my problem is the size of the profit. Is £5-£10 billion an acceptable profit for a company which produces nothing ? Maybe it is.

Do you monitor your account 24 hours a day to check you have not gone overdrawn ? No. They do.

Is it morally acceptable for the financially disadvantaged to pay for free banking for the better off, when they had no choice whether or not to join this club ? I have personally seen people waiting for £30 or £40 to appear in their bank accounts to pay for food, only for it to be taken as an admin charge. If it were any other industry they would be sent a bill for it, but the banks have the luxury of taking any arbitary amount at source. If these charges were fair and legal surely they would feel comfortable issuing a bill the same as everybody else.


Last point:

"But frankly I have a £500 interest-free buffer on my main current account and I don't see what stops people opening an account with the same provider "



erm, how about low income, family breakup, illness, frequent house moves, inherited debt, job loss.

Sometimes I wonder...

jhxmt

To make sure I remain mostly on topic, I'm just going to respond to the original post:

alexjohnson wrote:

But no, those who do occasionally just forget about a cheque or perhaps get their mental arithmetic wrong will now get penalised, while those who are disorganised not just once but all the bl**dy time will pay less. And this is supposed to be a good thing? Makes my blood boil.

Why does being disorganised mean that people are irresponsible and don't deserve a bank account (implied by later posts), whereas getting your mental arithmetic wrong or forgetting about a cheque doesn't mean the same thing?

I'm not really arguing either way, here, I'm just curious as to where you draw the line between what is 'acceptable' irresponsibility and what is 'unacceptable' irresponsibility...?

Hereward

felixdahousecat wrote:

... Now to the banks.......

The banks exist to make a profit of course, no arguments there, my problem is the size of the profit. Is £5-£10 billion an acceptable profit for a company which produces nothing ? Maybe it is.

Do you monitor your account 24 hours a day to check you have not gone overdrawn ? No. They do...

If you compare the size of bank, and building society, profits to their turnover, the profits that they make aren’t very large. The problem lies with the fact that £5-10bn profit is a big number: I don't see many people here complaining that Tesco's made over £1bn profit in the first six months of their financial year. BTW banks, and building societies, create (produce) wealth, which is where they derive most of their profits from; however, the person on the street is unlikely to use most of the banks wealth creation services.

Whilst banks, and building societies, monitor their account holders balances 24 hours day, through electronic means, the majority of the public monitor there accounts manually (usually in there heads); therefore, barring spells of forgetfulness, the general public know roughly how much is in their account at any one time, albeit not very accurately.

MPH80

felixdahousecat wrote:

Do you monitor your account 24 hours a day to check you have not gone overdrawn ? No. They do.

I don't do it 24 hours a day - but I started with a book and when I made a purchase I wrote it down ... I knew how much was in my account and how much was still due to go out - I knew I couldn't spend more than that.

Now I use MS Money and haven't incurred a charge in years. Not because I track it 24/7 - but that I spend 5 minutes a day.

Is it morally acceptable for the financially disadvantaged to pay for free banking for the better off, when they had no choice whether or not to join this club ? I have personally seen people waiting for £30 or £40 to appear in their bank accounts to pay for food, only for it to be taken as an admin charge. If it were any other industry they would be sent a bill for it, but the banks have the luxury of taking any arbitary amount at source. If these charges were fair and legal surely they would feel comfortable issuing a bill the same as everybody else.

You know - there's a suprisingly easy way around this. When your wage/benefits/pension come into this bank account you are forced to have - you withdraw all of it and put it in a safe place at home and spend the cash.

You don't HAVE to pay your bills by Direct Debit - it can be more convienient to do so - but only if you have a way of tracking it. You can still go to the bank/post office to pay them.

This way - this bank account you are "forced" to have simply becomes a receptical for your money. You take it out and don't touch the account again for a week/month/year - whatever period.

M.