For those that think that it will only be FD that charge see comments from Nationwide

M_Thomson

amcluesent wrote:

>A bank has to make money out of trading to exist, and cannot possibly provide 'free banking' to all.<

On current accounts, the bank can make plenty of money by loaning to the market at one rate of interest and paying account holders a fraction of the interest received.

How much does a 'dormant' account cost to service, it's just a few bytes of information sitting on a computer disk and a fraction of a second to calculate the interest paid.

This is profiteering and shows that banking is still a cartel where cosy deals are done in the clubs off Pall Mall.

What you say is true about making money from interest in the case of the bank accounts with the big four banks. Although, I disagree with you regarding Dornant accounts. Issuing a card, Chequebook and statements cost money. Current accounts which pay 4-6% interest do not make any money for a bank. They are loss leaders, which is why they will try and cross sell as many products as possible.

dhug

Just to throw something in to the debate, why should banking be free?? you pay for every other service provided so why not banking?

Now dont all shout at me at once but we are always hearing about poor customer service so if other banks follow FD and start charging then doesnt that put the power back into the hands of customers as already said if you are paying for banking however that is worked out and customer service falls below a certain point then you can demonstrate your annoyance by moving. At the moment it seems to me there are more complaints about the dreadful level of service provided by most banks than there are compliments ( with prehaps the exception of FD who it seems most people acknowledge have excellent CS) well if as suggested the other banks follow suit then they are going to have to buck their ideas up over CS and rates or risk losing customers

By the way I am a FD customer who is in the position of not having to pay the charge and who has no intention of leaving

Hazzanet

dhug wrote:

Just to throw something in to the debate, why should banking be free?? you pay for every other service provided so why not banking?

In essence - we do.

We normally get a poor rate of return on our current account balances, and get charged to the hilt if we go over our limits.

I'm not bothered with the piddly bit of interest I get on my current account. I get about 2p a month at Smile, probably because the money is there one minute, gone the next, so gazillions of percent interest is of no interest to me.

I'm not keen on being charged per transaction for my current account. Just pulling out the statement for last month, I have 55 transactions through my current account. If we take an arbitrary 25p charge per transaction, I'd be £13.75 down.

I'd sink a £5/month service fee, but I would be unhappy with anything much higher - certainly not £10 a month.

There are two possible ways I'd like to see this go:

1. Heavy handed:

a) No charge on current accounts in the black.
b) Authorised o/d with a high(ish) interest rate.
c) No interest on credit balances - that's what savings accounts are for.
d) Account closed on third bounced cheque/DD/Debit card transaction.
e) Overdraft LIMIT strictly enforced.

-- Basically, if you can't play by the rules, you don't bank with us. Bank's money is made on depositing funds and not paying credit interest --

2. Softly Softly:

a) £5/pm service charge on a/c in the black.
b) Service charge for authorised o/d, with 'reasonable' interest rate.
c) 1% less than base rate paid on credit balances.
d) £12 a shot on declined transactions.
e) Going over the overdraft limit is not allowed to happen - if the money isn't there, the transaction is refused.

-- Strict adherence to the overdraft, money raked in on service charge (possibility to get some rebate back through interest when a/c is in credit), rest of cash made on o/d charge & interest, and those who don't play by the rules --

I'm a strict believer that people should be penalised for spending money that isn't theirs... For example, if a shopkeeper left the till open, and I grabbed £20 out of it and ran off, I'd expect to be punished by the police etc. Similarly, if I spend the bank's money without their permission, I also expect to be punished.

We're all looking at the unauthorised overdraft as if it's a right - it isn't. I think it should be made a criminal offence to incur an unauthorised overdraft as it is in some other countries. That'll stop the problem altogether!

AndieJagain

KTF wrote:

No bank is ever going to say that they will never introduce charges so thats the sort of generic reply all the banks will be putting out at the moment.

They will also be watching FD like a hawk so see what the fallout is.

I spoke to Smile this morning and was informed they've had a memo sent around stating they have no plans what soever to introduce such charges.

and I've had a thought. there are loopholes on the FD deal, namely own a credit card or savings account of theirs. I suggest that, rather than CLOSING current accounts, we transfer everything out & use someone else BUT, leave the account open, & take a card/savings account out to circumvent the fee. Thus, FD don't see the low balance accounts leave (clearly, they want to lose the smaller low balance low profit accounts). Instead, they have them open., and have to send statements on two accounts monthly, both with nothing, or very little in them.

If they want to play dirty, so can we.

CopperPlate_2

The end result of that is simply they will have the review periods set to a shorter timescale and if they find that accounts are dormant over a set period, e.g. 6 months or longer, they'll just shut them for you and circumvent the need to charge you £10 a month. I'm sure there's something in the T&C's about accounts lying dormant and the timescales required for them to shut them automatically.

AndieJagain

Hazzanet wrote:

In essence - we do.

We normally get a poor rate of return on our current account balances, and get charged to the hilt if we go over our limits.

I'm not bothered with the piddly bit of interest I get on my current account. I get about 2p a month at Smile, probably because the money is there one minute, gone the next, so gazillions of percent interest is of no interest to me.

I'm not keen on being charged per transaction for my current account. Just pulling out the statement for last month, I have 55 transactions through my current account. If we take an arbitrary 25p charge per transaction, I'd be £13.75 down.

I'd sink a £5/month service fee, but I would be unhappy with anything much higher - certainly not £10 a month.

There are two possible ways I'd like to see this go:

1. Heavy handed:

a) No charge on current accounts in the black.
b) Authorised o/d with a high(ish) interest rate.
c) No interest on credit balances - that's what savings accounts are for.
d) Account closed on third bounced cheque/DD/Debit card transaction.
e) Overdraft LIMIT strictly enforced.

-- Basically, if you can't play by the rules, you don't bank with us. Bank's money is made on depositing funds and not paying credit interest --!

regarding D. there'd need to be stricter regulations on the way banks process transactions before such a thing is introduced IE payments IN processed before payments OUT on any given day (and not charging me £50 for taking a £10 payment that puts me 30p overdrawn before processing a £100 transfer in on the same day, as a certain bank did to me recently)

Hazzanet wrote:

2. Softly Softly:

a) £5/pm service charge on a/c in the black.
!

No, unless free when £500 paid in per month or balance maintaned above £100 (FD's idea on this is OK, but their £1500 is too high)

Hazzanet wrote:

b) Service charge for authorised o/d, with 'reasonable' interest rate.
!

reasonable being no more than 10% above base rate, or 2% higher than standard loan rate for that amount

Hazzanet wrote:

c) 1% less than base rate paid on credit balances.
d) £12 a shot on declined transactions.
!

make it £120, they're still illegal so we'll still claim them back!.

Hazzanet wrote:

e) Going over the overdraft limit is not allowed to happen - if the money isn't there, the transaction is refused.
!

can't argue with that, half the problem with banks is them authorising payments that aren't covered, then charging the earth for them. or at least a warning should come up for the customer 'this will take you into overdraft - do you wish to procede?' - yeah, it's 10pm & payday tomorrow - and i just filled the tank up!.

Hazzanet wrote:

-- Strict adherence to the overdraft, money raked in on service charge (possibility to get some rebate back through interest when a/c is in credit), rest of cash made on o/d charge & interest, and those who don't play by the rules --

I'm a strict believer that people should be penalised for spending money that isn't theirs... For example, if a shopkeeper left the till open, and I grabbed £20 out of it and ran off, I'd expect to be punished by the police etc. Similarly, if I spend the bank's money without their permission, I also expect to be punished.

We're all looking at the unauthorised overdraft as if it's a right - it isn't. I think it should be made a criminal offence to incur an unauthorised overdraft as it is in some other countries. That'll stop the problem altogether!

civil offence maybe.

on additional thing. I'd like to charge THEM £5 for every marketing company they sell MY details to. mailing companies aren't so bad, they're letters are ideal fire-starters, but the phone calls, !!!!!!!. if FD paid me £1 for every piece of sh, er, junk mail (sorry, products I might be interested in) they sent me themselves, it would cancel out this £10 fee !!

AndieJagain

CopperPlate wrote:

The end result of that is simply they will have the review periods set to a shorter timescale and if they find that accounts are dormant over a set period, e.g. 6 months or longer, they'll just shut them for you and circumvent the need to charge you £10 a month. I'm sure there's something in the T&C's about accounts lying dormant and the timescales required for them to shut them automatically.

then that's 12 statements + admin more that we've cost them

although it took yorkshire bank 15+ years to shut a friends account down recently, untouched with 67p in!.

MPH80

on additional thing. I'd like to charge THEM £5 for every marketing company they sell MY details to. mailing companies aren't so bad, they're letters are ideal fire-starters, but the phone calls, !!!!!!!. if FD paid me £1 for every piece of sh, er, junk mail (sorry, products I might be interested in) they sent me themselves, it would cancel out this £10 fee !!

Erm - you can stop it - write to them and ask them to stop under the data protection act. Everyone has a right to be removed from marketing communications.

Of course - this doesn't stop you being sent marketing with statements - but it'll reduce the junk.

You also have a right to stop your information being sold to third parties.

Exercise it!

M.

AndieJagain

dhug wrote:

Just to throw something in to the debate, why should banking be free?? you pay for every other service provided so why not banking?

Now dont all shout at me at once but we are always hearing about poor customer service so if other banks follow FD and start charging then doesnt that put the power back into the hands of customers as already said if you are paying for banking however that is worked out and customer service falls below a certain point then you can demonstrate your annoyance by moving. At the moment it seems to me there are more complaints about the dreadful level of service provided by most banks than there are compliments ( with prehaps the exception of FD who it seems most people acknowledge have excellent CS) well if as suggested the other banks follow suit then they are going to have to buck their ideas up over CS and rates or risk losing customers

By the way I am a FD customer who is in the position of not having to pay the charge and who has no intention of leaving

to be honest, I think you'll find people only worry about CS when something goes wrong, so long as the ATM works, and you wages go in, DD's go out etc, all of which is computerised, I don't think CS matters that much until things go wrong. 10-15 items of junk mail per month on the otherhand may give reason to jump ship from FD. 15 years I've been with them, as things stand, I would need to pay the fees, I could avoid this fairly easily, open CC or saving acount, or pay a cheque into another account, wait for it to clear, then pay it back everymonth to make up the shortfall. but why should I?, i can go elsewhere, have no fees, and get better interest. I got more interest from smile last month with £67 sat in, my FD account hasn't been below £800, why the hell didn't transfer sooner?

AndieJagain

MPH80 wrote:

Erm - you can stop it - write to them and ask them to stop under the data protection act. Everyone has a right to be removed from marketing communications.

Of course - this doesn't stop you being sent marketing with statements - but it'll reduce the junk.

You also have a right to stop your information being sold to third parties.

Exercise it!

M.

yeah, I'm aware of that, the point I'm making is, if we give permission for OUR details to be SOLD, shouldn't we get a cut?
to be honest, I don't get that much (though a lot of it IS FD's), and I don't answer withheld numbers anyway. just a thought, if they want to charge for the privelidge of being there customer. I wonder how long Tesco's would last if they asked for £10 entry, refundable only if you spend £1000.