Stung by halifax web saver reward scam. Advice?

pqrdef

helifox wrote: »

• Important: Please note that if you are applying for a Halifax Web Saver Reward you must click the no card option within the application.

Right. So contrary to suggestions there wasn't some major technological impediment to changing the form, because they inserted that text into the form.

So what else could they have done?

(1) Change the main header at the top to say

Application for Variable rate Web Saver
- 0.25% with ATM card
- 2.8% without ATM card

and/or

(2) Change the wording of the key question to say

Which account are you applying for?
(o) Web saver with ATM card - 0.25%
(o) Web saver without ATM card - 2.8%

or

(3) er, just put the 2.8% rate on the existing product, with or without card. I mean, it's not as if a 0.25% e-saver wasn't just a total rip-off.

helifox

Thanks for responding.
It is unfortunate that 19 people have thanked you for giving them information that is substantially wrong, though I appreciate getting the info. and a link to the archived material. My fault for not being clearer about our complaint re: the Halifax. the archive shows that their presentation of the product, although never very good, did improve. We applied the day after it was launched, when it was obviously still teething.

My apologies to all that I did not present our situation as clearly as I might have.

Here is an attempt to be clearer:

Tempted by a banner ad. whilst inside our Halifax on-line bank accounts on 8 April 2011, we clicked straight through to an application form titled Web Saver - Variable Rate and Reward. The ad had led us to believe that we would be opening a Web Saver Reward with an interest rate of 2.8%. But by clicking yes to a card option ( Which we never used) we reduced that rate to .25%. There was nothing informing us this would happen except for small print at the top of the form, advising :
Important: Please note that if you are applying for a Web Saver reward you must select the no card option.

However the ad. which had sent us to the application asserted in much larger type that we would receive 2.8%.

Although we clicked the card option the account opened was titled Reward Saver in our on-line account. There was no warning anywhere about the drop in interest, which was paid annually. We moved £50000 from our Halifax savings account then earning 2.3% into the 'Saver Reward' account for almost a year.

I am fairly sure the ad. posted by rb10 was not the ad. we saw. (I seem to remember figures holding up a banner...) And certainly the application is different. I did finally manage to get a copy of the application - titled Variable rate Web Saver application - Applicable to Existing IB registered customers - from Halifax.

I am unable to post a link - as a new user - but there is no 'large bold text' in the application – nor any mention of the consequences:
Choosing a cash card will open a Variable Rate Web Saver with a rate of 0.25% AER variable...
...as in the version you posted.
There is only only 7pt type beneath the title 'Variable rate Web Saver application', stating:
Thank you for your interest in a variable Web Saver account.
Before you continue with the application, please note that the following points apply.
Open ... with as little as £1.
Interest paid annually.
Important: Please note that if you are applying for a Halifax Web Saver Reward you must click the no card option within the application.


Thank you so much rb10, for directing me to the archive. I have tried frequently without success to get access to the ad. I saw from Halifax Customer Relations. Browsing the archive is enlightening:

All the archived versions of the application are for new or unregistered customers only.
It appears that had I not already been an on-line banking customer, I would have been provided with much more complete information, and I agree that would have been less misleading, especially if I had applied after August 6.

The April 7 version only contains the line:
Please ensure that you select the no card option within the application form.
within the body text is not separated out, or highlighted, there is no Important: and there is no mention of the drop in interest.

The Version archived on May 17th is also for customers who either are not already with the Halifax or not logged in... as the next step is either to register or log in.

By June 7, the warning has been separated out, and made more prominent – but there is still no mention of the interest rate drop.

The first mention of that is August 6, which appears to be the Version you posted. Perhaps this change took place as a result of Jo Thornhill's warning article of July 3rd:

Beware catch on Halifax online savings account - one wrong click and your rate drops 0.25%
By!JO THORNHILL
Created 3:26 PM on 3rd July 2011

(In that article Halifax admit that

By the 7th August ( as long as you approach the product from outside your internet banking, there are warnings all over the page - and,
as talexuser says
'it was pretty clear not to select the card option',
as Gaffy says
'it was quite clear to me to not select the card'. Of course the entire product was withdrawn in Sept 2011.

dunstoneh is of the opinion:

'Looking at the way it was presented, you and the big bold text saying what to do, this is clearly your mistake and the only one misleading people here is you. !!There is no scam. !There is no trick. !You made a mistake and want to blame them. '!!

Let me re-iterate: there was no big bold text when we applied, and I think the changes in the archive reveal that Halifax themselves believed it could have been clearer, and subsequently made it clearer. However, they did not contact people who had applied to ensure that they had not been misled.

Rb10 helpfully attaches an image of the Apply Now screen someone would have see after August the 7th, if they were not already inside their internet banking account. It is not what we were shown.

Vns asks whether we have calculated the lost interest – we guestimate upwards of £800.

Archi_Bald

pqrdef wrote: »

.... I mean, it's not as if a 0.25% e-saver wasn't just a total rip-off.

LOL, I think we had it all now. It started with the OP calling the
mistake (s)he made "a scam" by Halifax, now pqrdef has concluded it was a rip-off. Classic MSE forum moaning.

Why don't some people grow up, realise that banks are businesses, and understand that when they tick "I have read and accepted the T&Cs" it means they have read and accepted the T&Cs and they are then bound by them, as is the company they signed up with?

helifox

Archi_Bald wrote: »

LOL, I think we had it all now. It started with the OP calling the
mistake (s)he made "a scam" by Halifax, now pqrdef has concluded it was a rip-off. Classic MSE forum moaning.

Why don't some people grow up, realise that banks are businesses, and understand that when they tick "I have read and accepted the T&Cs" it means they have read and accepted the T&Cs and they are then bound by them, as is the company they signed up with?

What you seem to be forgetting is the large bold type banner that promoted this product to us when we were already logged in, promised us 2.8% Click here. As far as I'm aware, there were no asterisks or special terms and conditions apply attached to that. I would like to check - but Halifax first ignored my request, and then refused to give me sight of the advertisement. Browsing their archive, ( the place where rb10 got his submissions), one can see that they increased the emphasis 9 times between April 8 when we applied, and the August 7th version which rb10 presented. After the Jo Thornhill article ran in thisismoney.co.uk warning about the product, they finally made the rate drop visible. Here is an excerpt from that article:
Paul Davies at Which? Money says: ‘Halifax has made the application process more difficult than it needs to be.
‘The warning on the web page does state you should select the ‘‘no card’’ option to be eligible for 2.8 per cent, but it doesn’t tell you the consequences of not doing so. The guidance from Halifax should be clearer.’
Halifax has said it will review the application form and a spokeswoman says: ‘We accept we could make the process clearer.’

I accept Halifax are a business, but as a customer I would expect to be able to trust their product offerings not to be less clear than they could be.
Once they had made their process clearer, it would have been a simple matter for them to have informed customers who had signed up for the product previously that they had clarified things, and made sure that people were getting the saving account that they thought they were.

helifox

Anyway... I have decided to present the situation to the FCA and see what their opinion is. I have also registered my opinion of Halifax's unclear application forms, misleading advertising, and shocking customer service follow-up, to the CEO of Lloyds banking group. After all, as you say they are a business.

atypical

helifox wrote: »

Anyway... I have decided to present the situation to the FCA and see what their opinion is. I have also registered my opinion of Halifax's unclear application forms, misleading advertising, and shocking customer service follow-up, to the CEO of Lloyds banking group. After all, as you say they are a business.

You've presented your case to an independent, pro-consumer arbitrator who had access to all the facts and employs people specifically to look at cases like yours. They decided not to uphold your complaint.

The probability they are wrong is so small that even if you made the decision to take this to court and won - having made the decision based on what you know now - it would still have been the wrong one.

Archi_Bald

helifox wrote: »

....as a customer I would expect to be able to trust their product offerings not to be less clear than they could be.

You could argue that the 'clearness' you are referring to is subjective - - - - what is clear to you in written T&Cs might not be so clear to the next person, and what is unclear in written T&Cs to you might be clear to others.

helifox wrote: »

Anyway... I have decided to present the situation to the FCA and see what their opinion is.

The FCA doesn't deal with consumer complaints. The FOS does. And you have already been there.

helifox wrote: »

I have also registered my opinion of Halifax's unclear application forms, misleading advertising, and shocking customer service follow-up, to the CEO of Lloyds banking group.

Why didn't you do this before you went to the FOS?

ctdctd

To the OP - didn't you notice the wrong interest rate in online banking?

helifox

atypical wrote: »

You've presented your case to an independent, pro-consumer arbitrator who had access to all the facts and employs people specifically to look at cases like yours. They decided not to uphold your complaint.

The probability they are wrong is so small that even if you made the decision to take this to court and won - having made the decision based on what you know now - it would still have been the wrong one.

The Ombudsman did not get the original banner ad. from Halifax - despite my asking them to request them - and may well have been sent the wrong application screens. So I disagree that they had all the facts...

helifox

Archi_Bald wrote: »

You could argue that the 'clearness' you are referring to is subjective - - - - what is clear to you in written T&Cs might not be so clear to the next person, and what is unclear in written T&Cs to you might be clear to others.


The FCA doesn't deal with consumer complaints. The FOS does. And you have already been there.



Why didn't you do this before you went to the FOS?

1.No - you can't argue that clearness is subjective - when the banner offered the rate of 2.8% without any discernible terms and conditions attached beyond clicking for the application.
2.The FCA have accepted the complaint.
3. At that stage I was not aware of the interrelationship between Lloyds and Halifax, and I was unable to get through to anyone at Halifax directly.(I didn't know then that they were being shown the door...)