Do banks have a duty of care for their elderly customers?

Steve_xx

regularsaver1 wrote:

Steve - x x - how do you know that member of staff at the bank gets commision - often they do not - and not on a rejigged loan either


also you have to remember - what if the bank member of staff said they would not do a loan based on custoemrs age - would there then be grounds for ageism?

I don't know whether the bank staff get commission. But it's not unheard of and they can bias a deal to suit their interest. Like the endowment mortgage scandals that have been ever so prevalent. These were sold by bank clerks, weren't they?

I didn't infer that a bank shouldn't make a loan based on someones age. But what I did infer was that the bank ought to be doubly sure that they are selling what the person needs. Clearly, in this instance, the couple in question were sold something which was not suitable.

jayne6mp

UPDATE - SUCCESS

After Barclays refused twice to rectify the situation I wrote to Head Office who investigated the matter.

They have said that my parents had every right to change their minds about the borrowing within 14 days and they should have been put back in the situation they were prior to the new loan being taken out. They said they were given incorrect information when they returned to the bank. They have also offered them compensation as a gesture of goodwill.

Thank you Head Office of Barclays.

Steve_xx

Excellent news, and quite right too.

Banks do owe a 'duty of care' to their customers and your result has borne out my point. These over-zealous bank staff are all too ready to put their commission before their customers best interests.

Let's hope Tootsie Roll in post #21 sees the funny side of it still!

krisskross

jayne6mp wrote:

UPDATE - SUCCESS

After Barclays refused twice to rectify the situation I wrote to Head Office who investigated the matter.

They have said that my parents had every right to change their minds about the borrowing within 14 days and they should have been put back in the situation they were prior to the new loand being taken out. They were given incorrect information when they returned to the bank. They have also offered them compensation as a gesture of goodwill.

Thank you Head Office of Barclays.

However this has nothing to do with the original problem. The bank have agreed that your parents should have been given the 14 days grace to change their minds about the loan. Therefore procedures were not followed, nothing at all to do with whether your parents should have been 'allowed' to have the loan in the 1st place.

inmypocketnottheirs

Steve_xx wrote:

Let's hope Tootsie Roll in post #21 sees the funny side of it still!

I doubt it!

jayne6mp

The original problem was that my parents came out of the bank with a loan they did not need and the bank would not rectify the matter when asked twice, even when procedure was followed by going through Customer Complaints. They certainly did not consider any duty of care to my parents.

However, persistence paid off but I had to write to Head Office to get a result.

Tootsie_Roll

Steve_xx wrote:

Excellent news, and quite right too.

Banks do owe a 'duty of care' to their customers and your result has borne out my point. These over-zealous bank staff are all too ready to put their commission before their customers best interests.

Let's hope Tootsie Roll in post #21 sees the funny side of it still!

Actually no - I don't see anything funny in this at all - exactly the opposite.

The bank have offered compensation as a gesture of goodwill not because they have done anything wrong. As the person who issued the deadlock letter when dealing with complaints for the bank I worked for I would often do the same thing just to get the complainant to go away. It is often far cheaper to do this than to 'investigate' the complaint thoroughly especially when in all likelyhood it will come down to 'he said this' - 'no I didn't' type scenario.

I think it is scandalous that this is common place and that we exist in a society where we take little or no responsibility for our own actions - really very sad.

Steve_xx

Tootsie_Roll wrote:

Actually no - I don't see anything funny in this at all - exactly the opposite.

The bank have offered compensation as a gesture of goodwill not because they have done anything wrong. As the person who issued the deadlock letter when dealing with complaints for the bank I worked for I would often do the same thing just to get the complainant to go away. It is often far cheaper to do this than to 'investigate' the complaint thoroughly especially when in all likelyhood it will come down to 'he said this' - 'no I didn't' type scenario.

I think it is scandalous that this is common place and that we exist in a society where we take little or no responsibility for our own actions - really very sad.

Oh well, glad to hear that you've managed to stop laughing.

The bank have offered a "gesture of goodwill" because they have done something wrong. They have knowingly ill-advised and misled two elderley people who were not quite as familiar as they once might have been with the sums and intricasies of the contract they entered into. Then, to make matters worse the bank staff did not advise these people that they had a right to cancel within fourteen days. The result has been untold distress for these people and their daughter who has had to intervene in order to sort it out because the bank would not readily revoke the contract.

inmypocketnottheirs

Tootsie_Roll wrote:

Actually no - I don't see anything funny in this at all - exactly the opposite.

The bank have offered compensation as a gesture of goodwill not because they have done anything wrong. As the person who issued the deadlock letter when dealing with complaints for the bank I worked for I would often do the same thing just to get the complainant to go away. It is often far cheaper to do this than to 'investigate' the complaint thoroughly especially when in all likelyhood it will come down to 'he said this' - 'no I didn't' type scenario.

This attitude is very probably why banks don't give a damn about their customers. If it is cheaper to refund than to fully investigate, then there is clearly no incentive to do the right thing in the first place. Banks can therefore act with impunity and without any duty of care to their customers.

Troll has fully illustrated the poor standard of banking we have become accustomed to in the UK.

Tootsie_Roll

Steve_xx wrote:

The bank have offered a "gesture of goodwill" because they have done something wrong.

No they haven't

Steve_xx wrote:

Then, to make matters worse the bank staff did not advise these people that they had a right to cancel within fourteen days.

They don't - the bank have made a mistake - the cooling off period only applies to agreements that weren't signed on the bank's premises.

Suppose that's another claim for compensation !!