reclaiming charges on mortgare account

dunstonh

How can anyone say such charges are not rip - off ???
AND OTT !

Who is going to pay for the staff that handle this if you dont?

Back in my banking days, there were 4 senior staff members and 2 clerical roles dealing purely with bad debts. And that was a average size town branch.

Why should others who pay their bills on time have to subsidise you?

bettyboop080404

Oh Dunston because the banks and building societies dont make anywhere near enough to pay their staff wages do they ???? All they do by charging people these ridiculous charges is put people even more in debt that they were already in in the 1st place and then charge them even more again when they cant get ou of it - people dont get into debt on purpose you know sometimes things such as becoming unemployed or ill health lead to not being able to pay a bill, people do not just choose to not do do and think "ill leave it to others to pay my way" - what a blinkered selfish attitude to take

dunstonh

Oh Dunston because the banks and building societies dont make anywhere near enough to pay their staff wages do they ????

They are not charities.

All they do by charging people these ridiculous charges is put people even more in debt that they were already in in the 1st place

They do not force people to borrow money.

people dont get into debt on purpose you know sometimes things such as becoming unemployed or ill health lead to not being able to pay a bill,

They should have insured themselves against it then.

There are genuine cases at times but a lot of the time people are in debt and still paying for sky, booze, cigs, mcdonalds etc. However, that has nothing to do with this thread.

The assumption that it is cheap to handle bad debts is wrong when you look at all the costs involved.

SkintAgain

Dunston...... Ive read a lot of your posts - and I find myself asking the question -- Why Are You Here???
SA

bettyboop080404

:T Thanks skint again nice to know im not the only one thinking that

dunstonh

SkintAgain wrote: »

Dunston...... Ive read a lot of your posts - and I find myself asking the question -- Why Are You Here???
SA

Well, obviously you havent read a lot of my posts as you wouldnt be asking the question.

scottp_2

I agree with dunstonh. Banks are a business with shareholders, so there is a mutual need for profit. If you don't want this then go to a friendly society. The people who get into debt borrow this money to fund a certain area of their lifestyle (whether that is for a flash car, to make their house the best on the street or even more stupidly, to have the most expensive designer clothes). They take on this debt but do not budget for the increase in general outgoings to cover the borrowing, which creates a vicious but avoidable cycle.
If the problem is because of ill health then there should have been some sort of insurance in place to cover this. All lenders have a responsibility to ensure clients have something in place should this occur (a duty of care checklist) and it is only if the customer is completely against paying the premium that the insurance is not taken out. This would usually be because the client wants to spend the money saved on an extra pack of cigarettes or a few more pints per week. I see it all day every day, people on a DMP but with a payment slip for SKY HD, stinking of booze and fags, and using their card in TopShop and Dorothy Perkins. It makes me sick and they are usually subsidising this lifestyle out of my and every other working persons back pocket. A woman today came in to draw the last £3.20 of her Income Support as she was left with little money after her 2 week holiday in Spain!
Charges are there to impose a penalty to hopefully stop the customer from doing the same thing again (borrowing money that they have not asked or being permitted to borrow). There are many people who after getting a single charge will ask how the situation arose, seek advice on how to stop the problem and ask politely if we could refund the charge to help them out. Others will ignore the charges for a few months, not ask how to solve the problem and then come in screaming and shouting that they can get all the charges back etc.
I do agree that the charges are very excessive in proportion to costs involved, but they are in proportion to the amount that will hopefully stop it happening again. Now £35 is usually enough to get people to sit up and sort something out. It is only the idiots who are too busy sat in the pub to sort their finances out.

Dunston, I suppose they have not read any of your posts when you have helped people who have listened to your advice rather than throwing it back in your face. Ah well.

Tootsie_Roll

kingkano wrote: »

Thats quite a simplistic view as you just taking the salaries vs the income from letters. Your not including the other associated costs - the building you were in, electricity, printer toner and maintenance, the pc systems, telephones, water, postage for the letters even! (not that I am defending banks of course - purely for debate's sake)

I agree it was very simplistic but it isn't rocket science to see that the charge imposed is way over the actual cost. A rough fag packet calculation that we used to use for estimation purposes was to double the annual salary to allow for NI, pension, the building, software etc etc etc. Using my previous calculation the monthly charges raised for each collector was roughly equivalant to their annual salary so double that for additional expenses and there are still 10 months charges which are 'profit'. Back in 2000 though when I left we weren't charging on mortage accounts anyway.

As I have said before though I agree that the charges should stay as a penalty and I alse agree with most of scottp's comments too. As you can imagine I have seen thousands of arrears cases in my time and the majority are through complete financial ignorance and nothing to do with financial hardship at all.