How will reclaiming bank charges impact banking discussion

Graham_Devon

Consumer Action Group is a completely biased website. It's great looking at that and bringing stuff from it. But, it's like deciding which car to go for, looking on the manufacturers website and it telling you how great it is. Of course it's going to tell you that. And of course consumer action group are going to tell you what you want to believe.

Dragonlady_2

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Ivan, superb post, simply superb.


I have not yet come across one person on this site who's willing to go out of their way and spend 20 minutes a month doing something which will totally irradicate any charges. Not one.

So I need educating? Maybe, but I don't think so personally. I think attitudes across this board need to change dramatically. But once your all together you all get each other going and you tell yourself all this is right, especially with the help of martin and the board guides. Not one of you will help yourselves.

Now this is OFFENSIVE. It takes me approximately two hours every month to pay my accounts manually. I listen to all the options at national rates, these take approximately two to three minutes, then hit the correct option, sometimes I am connected, sometimes I am disconnected and I have to start again. To pay clyydesdale Finanacial Services last month took me FIVE days,. their sytem was temporarily out of order - for five days. i found their ordinary number and guess what, same accented voice telling me how good they are and to listen as they had changed their options and what happened, pressed the option IO neded and got disconnected. You lucky it takes you 20 minutes. I am told by all these companies, set up up a DD and it will you save time...:eek: . My husband was horrified at the number of cut offs and this is to pay six bills, but this is what I have been doing since last Sepotember, so some of us do know about paying manually, again not an easy option and I am lucky, I work from home, so can do this with ease. Oh yes, Clydesdale had the hide to send me a late fee letter. I started to try and pay this account three days before it was due.

Graham_Devon

Dragonlady wrote: »

Now this is OFFENSIVE. It takes me approximately two hours every month to pay my accounts manually. I listen to all the options at national rates, these take approximately two to three minutes, then hit the correct option, sometimes I am connected, sometimes I am disconnected and I have to start again. To pay clyydesdale Finanacial Services last month took me FIVE days,. their sytem was temporarily out of order - for five days. i found their ordinary number and guess what, same accented voice telling me how good they are and to listen as they had changed their options and what happened, pressed the option IO neded and got disconnected. You lucky it takes you 20 minutes. I am told by all these companies, set up up a DD and it will you save time...:eek: . My husband was horrified at the number of cut offs and this is to pay six bills, but this is what I have been doing since last Sepotember, so some of us do know about paying manually, again not an easy option and I am lucky, I work from home, so can do this with ease. Oh yes, Clydesdale had the hide to send me a late fee letter. I started to try and pay this account three days before it was due.

It wasnt offensive at all. It was the truth. I tried again earlier with tanz when he said he wants to try and stop them. He told me where to go.

Anyone I have tried to help does the same thing and starts abuse and never ending tails about how bad their life is and I could never understand because I'm so rich and my parents give me everything. Not the case, but the same everytime, it's happened twice today.

natweststaffmember

Graham we are all biased it's just some of us have had the opportunity to talk to the Yorkshire Bank Whistleblower who gave those details to the bbc whistleblower. I am biased and you are biased and CAG is biased and MSE is biased. Yorkshire bank and clydesdale bank did not deny that the system was theirs merely that they would not comment until they knew the name of the whistleblower(you cannot tarnish someone's reputation if they are annonymous).

IvanOpinion

natweststaffmember wrote: »

charges in the last 5 years have risen 100% and stationery costs are being reduced, cost income ratios when they announce profits. I am sure I have read a thread with regards to stationery on Consumeractiongroup which stated that the costs are not anywhere like the figures you have mentioned.

To be fair I have not mentioned specific costs except for a couple of extreme examples to highlight possibllities that could cost customers heavily if companies are ultimately allowed to charge actual costs involved. We can all say they will never do it .. but if they are entitled to do it .. they may well do so.

However, in contract the individual makes and can vary that contract, so a strategy if you do not like the charges regime is something dragonlady has done, cross out conditions on opening or write to the bank given 30 days notice of a variance in the contract. You can and the bank does.-

Agreed, shrewd move and one I have done in the past as well (which ahs sometimes worked and sometimes has not worked).

Where will it end? well, OFT ruled on Credit Cards and do you pay for having a credit card? Nope except fee free transfers went out of the window.

However interest rates on some cards have almost doubled in the last few months. The question 'where will it end?' is the one that scares me ... I know that we will all lose to different degrees out of this however I believe the biggest losers will be those that can least afford it.

Ivan

Dragonlady_2

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Look, there is one way to escape ALL charges. You also get longer to pay your bills, you get reminders if you do not pay them in the 28 days allowed, you have time to source money from elsewhere, pay that into your account and THEN pay your bills and you STILL wont get charged.

.

GD,

How can you source money from elsewhere if there is no other source?

Some people have to live from payday to pay day with no other way of obtaining money. :rolleyes:

In our case, no family to borrow from and I know my cats don't have a stash. If my clients don't pay on time it limits my cash flow and I will not borrow against projected earnings because my line of work is all done on line and from overseas.

I think you need a reality check. Just my opinion.

IvanOpinion

Dragonlady wrote: »

I started to try and pay this account three days before it was due.

A small tip. If something like this happens immediately drop them an email or contact the call centre (which I think you tried) . If you subsequently get charged then the date/timestamp on the email or the call centre contact will provide you with the evidence that you had tried to make the payment.

Don't try to bluff this though because most places keep very very strict records of availability. The last place I worked for could tell the up/down times of their web sites to the nearest 1000th of a second.

ivan

Graham_Devon

God point about the credit cards. Anyone with a Virgin card will know this and will know I am not making it up.

When the £12 charge came in (i.e. the lower one) all Virgin (or MBNA) customers recieved a letter. There was a mass thread about it on the credit cards board at the time. I will try to find it, I started it.

Anyway, it was about a month after the new, lower charges (which I had never been charged). My interest went from 15.9% to 24.9%.

Strange co-incidence? People on the same thread who had recieved the same letter didnt think so, and there were many of us.

Of course, card is ditched now, but some will be stuck with that 24.9% with an amount outstanding. Who are these people going to be? Yes, those who cannot balance transfer? Who are those people? Yes, the ones who most probably paid on time, but don't have much money, so can't just change as easy as someone else could.

It's a perfect example of what happened thanks to your reclaiming. I can't believe that it was pure co-incience it happened just 2 months after the ruling.

lindilou39

IvanOpinion wrote: »

A small tip. If something like this happens immediately drop them an email or contact the call centre (which I think you tried) . If you subsequently get charged then the date/timestamp on the email or the call centre contact will provide you with the evidence that you had tried to make the payment.

Don;t try to bluff thos though because most places keep very very strict records of availability. The last place I worked for could tell the up/down times of their web sites to the nearest 1000th of a second.

ivan

oh I bet You can...

Graham_Devon

Dragonlady wrote: »

GD,

How can you source money from elsewhere if there is no other source?

Some people have to live from payday to pay day with no other way of obtaining money. :rolleyes:

In our case, no family to borrow from and I know my cats don't have a stash. If my clients don't pay on time it limits my cash flow and I will not borrow against projected earnings because my line of work is all done on line and from overseas.

I think you need a reality check. Just my opinion.

Oh come on, get real.

Loans, Flexiloans, Credit Cards, Overdrafts, Family, Working extra, Savings.

It really is not my fault or anyone elses if you cannot get any of those due to bad credit reports. I cannot do anything about that if you cannot get them.