800,000% overdrafts

meer53

Lokolo wrote: »

I was being sarcastic....

(most of the bank employees I know on here are those branch level, not senior investment management level!)

Oops ! Sorry Lokolo, my sarcasm radar seems to have been affected by the high wind here(along with my Blackberry) ! Senior Investment Manager ? I wish
I've been in banking quite a long time, different departments, including Customer Relations. People like Lanza (why does he thank every post ?) make my job enjoyable. He won't like my latest position, i have the power to grant refunds for charges, (yes, even when it's the customers fault), increase and remove overdrafts and close accounts. With regard to charges where it's customer error, i will refund a customer on the first occasion if they ask. After that, the computer says "no", if it's a bank error, they will always be refunded. No questions asked.
Glad to see we think along the same lines though

lanza

RuthnJasper wrote: »

Lanza,

Many on here have tried to give salient and helpful feedback or advice, only to be rebuffed in quite a belligerent manner when their opinions do not exactly accord with your own.

I hope that you are able to get the help you need; in life and in your banking issues. Having a go at others rarely assists either objective.

The opinions of sheeple who haven't been conned (yet) or bankers themselves is really of no use.

lanza

meer53 wrote: »

Oops ! Sorry Lokolo, my sarcasm radar seems to have been affected by the high wind here(along with my Blackberry) ! Senior Investment Manager ? I wish
I've been in banking quite a long time, different departments, including Customer Relations. People like Lanza (why does he thank every post ?) make my job enjoyable. He won't like my latest position, i have the power to grant refunds for charges, (yes, even when it's the customers fault), increase and remove overdrafts and close accounts. With regard to charges where it's customer error, i will refund a customer on the first occasion if they ask. After that, the computer says "no", if it's a bank error, they will always be refunded. No questions asked.
Glad to see we think along the same lines though

I am not sure whether to believe anything you say

1. Its the internet.
2. You are a banker.

Lets say what you say is true, do you

A. Get any financial or other renumeration for allowing the bank to retain charges ?

B. Have any pressure put on you, or questions asked if you refund too great a percentage of charges ?

meer53

A. No
B. No

lanza

meer53 wrote: »

A. No
B. No

Bloomberg

lanza wrote: »

An understatement dont you think. There isnt any middle ground here. Its either at loan shark levels and methods or it is not, so dont try to downplay it by trying to say their is a moderate position on this matter.

I will be searching through your backposts as well to see where you are coming from. So far this thread is crawling with bank employees (two admitted it so far) or people who when you search their back posting have unusual amounts of insight that are indicative of either working in the finance system or being part of group, family etc who are.




Read that as its more worth their while to keep you around and nail you for the big kills.



Sure, but what they cant figure is every situation where there can be an error, how that works, how they know about it, and how not to end up financially destroyed over it.

The banks monopolize a basic facility everybody now needs to survive. You cant run a life without direct debit anymore and buying goods is increasingly impossible without cash. The slightest error and the poorest end up financially destroyed. There has to be a peoples bank of some kind for this. The current situation is just outrageous.



that says quite a lot about where you are at.



That was in coherent in the sentence you put that in. I think you have it the other way around. Its the bankers that want something for nothing.

For setting up and managing little more than a super-size staffed accounting system, they pay themselves enough wages to build a school, but instead spend it on self glorifying tittle tattle. While professionals with IQ and creativity that eclipse these people work their lives trying to research and battle against diseases and increase our lifespan barely manage to get by.



Singling out the banks because the mobile phone companies are not causing a world wide recession.



They are..

Thank you for sharing your limited insight with other forum readers. Like I said if someone makes the odd mistake and goes overdrawn the bank will waive the charge - they can be very reasonable indeed. Nowadays it is easier than ever to keep track of your money. If someone borrowed your money without permission I dare say that you would accuse them of theft - I rest my case.


You mention that the slightest mistake and the poor are financially destroyed. Ordinarily long term excessive spending and burying one's head in the sand lead to financial destruction. One the subject of the poor suffering, if the banks were not able to charge the current overdraft fees then free banking would end and poor people who run their accounts in the black would end up having to pay monthly fees which they can ill afford.


Admittedly mobile phone companies are not causing a world wide recession but I never said that they were, the issue was their mark up. The banks are not single handedly causing a world wide recession. What about all the people that have borrowed and spent excessively. People who were stupid enough to think that their houses were money boxes and kept re mortgaging to release the equity in order to get a better car than their neighbours and compete in the rat race. What about people who have recklessly maxed out their credit cards?


Another thing which you have overlooked is the cost of furnishing and running a branch. For your information some flagship branches cost about £6m to construct, this money has to come from somewhere.


Something else which seems to rile you is that people who doing life saving work against diseases etc are paid a relatively modest wage. The reality is that you cannot pay people according to how important their job is. Dustmen do an important job, no doubt you think that they should be on a six figure salary. Sorry to break it to you but we live in a capitalist society.

lanza

Bloomberg wrote: »

Thank you for sharing your limited insight with other forum readers. Like I said if someone makes the odd mistake and goes overdrawn the bank will waive the charge - they can be very reasonable indeed. Nowadays it is easier than ever to keep track of your money. If someone borrowed your money without permission I dare say that you would accuse them of theft - I rest my case.

is that the best you can do. I am not even going to reply to that junk.

You mention that the slightest mistake and the poor are financially destroyed. Ordinarily long term excessive spending and burying one's head in the sand lead to financial destruction. One the subject of the poor suffering, if the banks were not able to charge the current overdraft fees then free banking would end and poor people who run their accounts in the black would end up having to pay monthly fees which they can ill afford.

More junk. You are just here repeating rote statements you have not even examined . Those are the common excuses for years that are made up projections. Then prepaid cards came on the scene and we got an insight into what it really costs to run an account and still make a profit.

I can buy a pre-paid debit card and it costs me 0.3% per transaction and £5 per year admin. These companies are doing fine and have not increased their fees in the 5 years (due to moores law on computing costs for them) i had been with them. They also have different packages so you pay £25 per year admin and the transaction fees are limited if you make large purchases. And thats for accounts where there is no requirement for regular pay in, so interest on stagnant savings must earn them very little as people use them like PAYG phones.

IF they can do it for that, and they are small companies and not getting bulk server rates, then what does it cost the bank ? Banking systems are now ultra cheap to run for the basic services we are discussing here due to computer power increasing by a magnitude per decade. Most people are also plugging into a network of merchant systems the banks do not even own and the shops themselves pay for.

What is left when it comes down to the bare essentials in regards to cost and function the bank is now a glorified database running on a server. Say i do 40 transactions a month over a year thats 240 mb of bandwith on the server (almost nothing today) and about half a megabyte of storage for account details. That must cost about £2.50 a year at most for military grade server rates. The rubbish customer service is now paid for by the customer to the call centers. Insurance is paid for by the customer. We dont even need local branches. One per major city is enough for those who want to arrange larger loans or mortgages. Most of that can be done online, and closed with 45 minute appointments in the main branch.

Where do these £5-10 per month fee projections for basic accounts come from ? With the low cost of computing the bank can easily take their cut by having a 0% interest account on basic accounts or have transaction fees like the prepaid cards. £5 admin per year is more than enough to make a profit for server time in case an account is dormant. In 5 years £2.50 admin will be enough for a dormant account. .

I think I am over-estimating the costs of a military grade server for a bank here. It may even be as little as 50p /year per average customer, considering the bank may be running the entire server themselves for a million accounts

The actual justification you make is nonsense then. Given a choice what does the average worker want just to have a system where their wages are paid into and distributed back out. A very simple low level service.

1. A system that requires them to spend a week studying small print, constantly watching their account for errors and worrying the bank might make an error for which it requires days of work and stress to sort out, none of which may work and could result in fees from £150-2000 (many which could ruin them financially) depending on how good they were at understanding it all. Then they also have to find time to go round looking for changes to that system, which they are rarely informed off, so need to remain in a state of constant hyper vigilance like many of the members here. For what ? dealing with a service so basic most of the background programs running on your PC now are more complicated.

2. Pay 0.3% per transaction (or forgo interest), pay £5 per year for an account that never authorizes an overdraw, unless you approve it, and not have to worry about the above. Get on and enjoy life.

Admittedly mobile phone companies are not causing a world wide recession but I never said that they were, the issue was their mark up. The banks are not single handedly causing a world wide recession. What about all the people that have borrowed and spent excessively. People who were stupid enough to think that their houses were money boxes and kept re mortgaging to release the equity in order to get a better car than their neighbours and compete in the rat race. What about people who have recklessly maxed out their credit cards?

blame the customer again. You just cant help it. We all know that this problem was caused by bankers in america having the lending system De-regulated in the late 80's, so they could basically go about selling risky mortgages and credit to anybody. Regulations that were there to stop the wrong kind of people getting tempted. You offer a kid or many types of people a credit card, they will spend on it. That was the money of the regular investors they were using to do that.

Then these institutions built so called so safe investment schemes to everybody else on that risky setup they created in the first place, basically lied about how risky it was by burying it under complex packages nobody could understand. That by the way is a deliberate strategy the top systems even admit to using. They are also using agent based Ai systems that perform automated investment trading at such speed and so fragmented in operation, that its basically battle of the supercomputers and their algorithms running the system just now. Thats why we get massive dips and peaks in trading today. Nobody but a handful of people in a few institutions, actually knows whats going on in these systems anymore. Some think that nobody actually knows whats going on at all. If nobody out there actually understands it, at least it has the advantage it cant be manipulated. It also means the entire system can collapse due to some bug or out of range error. Thats the wonderful system that has evolved from rampant capitalism and you want to blame the customer.

Another thing which you have overlooked is the cost of furnishing and running a branch. For your information some flagship branches cost about £6m to construct, this money has to come from somewhere.

Why should i pay for that. I never have to use a branch for anything today, and when i do they are basically useless. A branch made sense when we had managers that actually made local investment decisions pertinent to that community, people made most transactions by cash n cheque and we had no internet, ATM and wired up merchant systems were not in every shop. We dont need local branches any more. One per town is enough for business use, large loans, investment accounts and mortgages.

Something else which seems to rile you is that people who doing life saving work against diseases etc are paid a relatively modest wage. The reality is that you cannot pay people according to how important their job is.

and what is so important about a bankers job ? Nothing really. A degree level education covers everything required for a manager to understand finance. No creativity required. The actual cognitive intellect required to be in this industry is just above average IQ. A car mechanic today dealing with thousands of different vehicles and all their various computerized systems has a far more complicated job. You think bankers should have status ? After the dog and pony show of the last two decades. They are free agent !!!!! that run everything into the ground playing poker against each other. The entire system should be nationalized.

Dustmen do an important job, no doubt you think that they should be on a six figure salary.

A salary should be calculated on the basis of investment required to become skilled and maintain that skill, rarity of skill (which often reflects creative insight), service level to society, effects of job on quality of life and any danger/stress involved. Banking is medium overall. The reason why people go for jobs in finance is because money is the lowest level common denominator transaction currency for life. i.e People value what others value, so the most common value system attracts flies like a turd. Are you aware of the work of Robert Hare ? After studying sociopathy in prisons he decided to carry out these tests on people in everyday occupations. financial institutions are where most of the sociopaths were found. However they are a different strain to the prison types. They had enough self control to ensure their manipulations could remain consistent with rules and law. The cleverer ones even alter law..i.e. finance deregulation, even though it was completely irresponsible in the long term (typical sociopaths trait).

If you dont understand sociopathy its a disorder of motivation, so since these people have problems finding motivation within themselves they tend to drop out from them selves. They are shells of people that tap into the motivational system of others. Over time they fine tune themselves to the large value systems of others. i.e Banks or large investment systems, where the risks and stakes are so high a feeling of empowerment finally emerges for them. Regulations getting in the way of their life size game of monopoly ? Screw whats right and wrong. just hire a lot of clever people to figure out ways to get round or rid of all these pesky laws made by stupid society that possesses those pitiful weakness empathy and responsibility for long term or other far reaching consequences of irresponsible behavior.

Thats why the system needs taken apart. It has to be completely unattractive to sociopathic traits, and they can go do something else for excitement like dirt biking (in excrement hopefully).

Sorry to break it to you but we live in a capitalist society.

Not for much longer. Clearly you aren't in touch with what most people want now. We still want business and competition. What we want rid of is pure investors, their schemes and the wrong kind of people working in the finance system. i.e. Ethical capitalism or all the new variants that are under development. Cognitive screening for sociopathy would be a good start as a standard requirement for anybody wanting to enter these professions (and quite a few other professions as well).

RuthnJasper

lanza wrote: »

The opinions of sheeple who haven't been conned (yet) or bankers themselves is really of no use.

Actually, I have been the victim of a bank error, which left me without money for food for a weekend.

I complained to the bank, initially in a 'phone call which was followed up by a strongly-worded but civil letter. I received a letter of apology, a full refund and a small but satisfactory additional amount as a gesture of goodwill. And that was the end of the matter.

Not a word of abuse, threats to whack anyone, or internet-forum taunts were necessary.

lanza

RuthnJasper wrote: »

Actually, I have been the victim of a bank error, which left me without money for food for a weekend.

I complained to the bank, initially in a 'phone call which was followed up by a strongly-worded but civil letter. I received a letter of apology, a full refund and a small but satisfactory additional amount as a gesture of goodwill. And that was the end of the matter.

Not a word of abuse, threats to whack anyone, or internet-forum taunts were necessary.

I won my charges back previously using that method. Guess what. It is a decreasingly bad method to get a result now. They have redesigned their systems so the chances have decreased from almost 100% to less than 50%. Their standard procedure now is to inflate the charges up to new heights and then offer to meet you halfway, "even though they dont have to" and in doing so appear reasonable.

Guess what. this strategy is not going to work and presumes people are stupid. We are getting rid of bank charges, plain and simple. Its going to happen one way or the other. There are moves afoot so that people can have direct debit and debit cards without banks. People will leave branches in floods. its seriously doubtful they will return no matter what carrots are offered.