A Bankers View, Open Letter To Martin Lewis And His Followers On Bank Charges.

Smasher

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

It's simply an impression I've formed from reading posts on this board (and it's predecessors).

It's possible many of them may have been made before you joined the site and therefore you may not have seen them (yet?).

I may be new to this site, but I am by no means new to reclaiming bank charges. I have been doing this for quite a long time now on other sites, I have helped literally thousands of people and I have never seen anyone say that it was a choice of a penalty charge or starvation. Maybe there could have been a few instances here, but you suggest that "there will be many hungry people".... Ridiculous!

Even if the card was declined, it would be embarrassing, but people are quite resourceful when they find themselves in such a situation..

Phaelok

'Phaelok, you may work for a bank, but it's quite obvious you've never actually had to deal with bank CS.'

Your reasons for believing so?

'I'm amused that the first thing that the bank employees seem to want to do is to resort to silly personal attacks on anyone questioning what they say. It' symptomatic really of an attitude that banks are somehow doing their customers a favour. And never once have any of you taken on the substantive points, which broadly speaking are that there is no moral or educative part of these charges, they are designed to take customers money. The Times referred to one of the systems as apparently having been designed by !!!!!! Turpin, and so it is.'

What I have said, if you care to read, is that I always try to help customers as best as I can. Its not a case of doing customers a 'favour', its rather an attempt to address the issue in question with ways to try to avoid a repeat scenario in the future. If you are given the reponsibility to set up payments on your account, then it follows that it is your responsibility to ensure YOU have enough funds in the account to cover these payments. I have already stated that I agree that the charges should be looked at more closely, but what I have also said is that customers must accept that they should look more closely at how they manage their finances.

'I'm perfectly well aware that DDs go out overnight. But just try and stop one 2 days in advance. Or even 3 days in advance. You'll be told that it's "already in the system". And there is not a thing you can do about it. Well actually that's not true: it's quite possible to be told a DD has been cancelled and then find out it hasn't and the money goes out twice.'

Well thats untrue, d/d's can be recalled the same day, in effect 'reversing' the transaction back into the a/c which would update by close of business that day. If you have been told a d/d has been cancelled, then it shouldn't be, but we need to be clear that in the example you have given, if the d/d goes out twice, presumably by the same method, that is the company, and not the bank's fault. i.e. the company could claim under a different reference number. Paypal is an example of this.

'I've been in situations where I've done a debit card transaction which has been taken off my "available balance" immediately (which is fine, obviously). Then I've won a bet, withdrawn from the bookmaker the same evening, and had both transactions posted to my account two days later, i.e. the bookmaker received the money the same day as I received his payment back. Yet I've been charged as if the money had been taken from my account the first day.'

The card payment you make on a working day does effect the 'available' balance that day also. i.e. make a card payment on Monday for £20.00 (which was your only credit in the a/c and no overdraft facility in place) and attempt to draw that out from a cash machine that day, then it would not work. The difference is that the 'actual' funds are debiting from the account a few working days after, again it depends on the company, and, of course, if you have any other transactions coming out in the meantime, then yes it does affect payment for that card transaction.

'And then you expect customers to ring you up and crave your indulgence while you deign to "help" them as a favour. Well you (as an industry) would do a hell of a lot better by not "helping" them in the first place by stealing their money, and then creating a spurious system of "services" to camouflage the larceny. All you're doing by helping them is to help them to escape from a trap you laid for them in the first place.'

The example I gave earlier for a d/d. Customers have the freedom to set up these transactions so it is their responsibility to ensure these items are paid on time. I refute the so called 'trapping' claim, customers do not help themselves. IF this happened as a 'one off' then I would happily refund any charges caused, but if I explained to them how to avoid this in future, should there be any need for this to happen again?

Why not create an opt out for people who don't want this "service" but who would rather simply have the transactions stopped?

Well it requires the customer to contact us. This can be done as often as you wish, if there will not be enough funds to cover a payment, then this can be cancelled without charge, i.e. d/d's - even on the same day.

As far as CHAPs goes, it is hugely unreliable. I know that, because I need to move large amounts of cash around quickly. I can and do deposit tens of thousands of pounds instantly anywhere in the world with bookmakers. Yet it still takes days to move money between banks. Maybe instead of sneering at your customers you might (again as an industry) address this problem?

I must admit I do not deal with CHAP payments, so I cannot directly answer that question. What I will say, from experience, is that customers, sometimes through no fault of their own, set up transactions to come out of their account before the CHAPS payment is seen through the a/c. I agree it is unreliable, and as I understand it there is a fee involved(?) for clearing the funds the same day, clearly not feasible, but is really down to the employers who pay their wages.

I do not 'sneer', I always try to help as I have always maintained. Like any organisation one will always speak to different individuals who offer them different levels of service, judging by numerous topics on here it seems like quite a lot. I know that when I do my job, which isnt my chosen career I should add!, I always try to do the best I can.

Euro64

BANKER_GIRL wrote: »

Hello Martin, my names Aly, I am 21 years old and I work for one of the banks taking part in the charges test case as a specialist telephone banking advisor, I help customers sort out their accounts and will happily refund or waiver charges if it is an error or in any case, if they are eligible, to be eligible for a refund customers must not have had a refund or waiver in the last year and they must have an acceptable risk bank.


I have worked for the bank for the last 7 months and thus have knowledge of how bank charges reclaiming has been dealt with before and during the test case.

I would like to have a frank discussion about how your site makes me feel, which is depressed and ashamed. Ashamed for the poor misguided fools your site attracts and the false, undeserved and unnecessary hope it gives them.

As you probably know, we have changed our charging strategy to make it fairer to the customers who look after their accounts and to effectively wean the customers who have a "who cares they can only charge me 90pounds a month and I’ll claim that back anyway" way of looking at things.

It may be awful, but sometimes when I get a person on the telephone who has been silly and thinks he will not be punished for it brings me great happiness to tell themm the charges he will receive. This may sound terrible to you, and maybe I am jaded. But customers take the !!!! every single day and do not care, they are jeopardising their future and, partly because of you, they do not care one bit! They quote your name.."Martin Lewis says..." and it means nothing to us. They think you are god and it is tragic shame. We will help customers who want to be helped. And only then when they intend to work with us to help them out of the hole they have got themselves into, it is a two way thing, and when it works, it is beautiful. I have had letters sent to my office from customers previously in dire straits who I have helped just by simply going through their account and figuring out what is going wrong and how to budget, as some people simply do not know how. And this is simply not the message you convey on your website. You seem to convey the message that customers are in a fight with their banks when truly all we want to do is make sure they do not continue to go overdrawn and hurt their own future. So our charges are meant to act simply as a deterrent. And for close to 80% of customers this is highly successful. I have been brought up to believe that I should be ashamed if I ever went overdrawn and got charged. And I have been overdrawn, and I have been charged, and I have paid up, because when this happened I knew it was my own fault, something that would not have happened if I had been more careful, and since then, even before working with the bank I have not gone overdrawn, simply because of the sheer shame of it. And I cannot understand or sympathise with the customers that feel they should not take responsibility for their own actions. When they come on the phone to me and ask for help, help I will gladly give, but when the customers come on screaming and yelling and demanding I give them “their” money back because Martin Lewis says it is unlawful, I find my sympathy melting away, and I close down. Telling them there is nothing to say yet that what we are doing is unlawful and that the customer simply needs to manage their money better. This is what the ignorant and often arrogant and piggish customer gets told. As this is exactly what they need to do. Not decide the world is against him and decide he is going to sue us
<O></O>
My true message is that customers need to take responsibility for their own money and not rely on what you say, You have no real contact with some of the customers you claim to wish to help, and you have no idea how you affect their treatment of bank workers. You have no idea how many times I have been sworn at, screamed at and verbally abused by customers who believe what you say. You seriously need to look at what you saying to people and the message you are giving as it is simply wrong.

We will help the customers who accept out advice and ask to speak to our Customer Support Units and do not start screaming, crying or swearing at the poor person on the end of the line, if a customer accepts this began as a result of their own actions and are willing to accept the consequences, and our advice to remedy it then they will be helped.
<O></O>
With all respect to you, you have obviously done your homework and believe what you are saying, but please thing of it from the bank workers, not the BANK, but the bank WORKERS point of view and how you’re writing has affected us. We are just normal people who try our best to look after the customers and offer many services to stop them going overdrawn and not getting into this mess. We are not in a war. We are the same people and you need to recognise that. Please do.

Thankyou Aly

In my humble opinion most 21 year olds working for banks would not have been able to compose this post

The spelling and syntax errors have obviously been thrown in for effect

lids_2001

I have spent the last year paying off all my debts. I have had £4000 returned in ulawful charges, and have three more cases pending totalling £10000!!, correct £14000 in 5 years. No wonder HSBC posted huge profits.

Anyway, i moved accounts to nationwide, i only have a cash card and cannot go OD, I have no Direct Debits, and pay all my bills on pay day via internet banking. I do not incur and charges, and as a result I now have money in my account at the end of the month.

But,....

When i was closing my HSBC accounts down, they put me OD, charged me £25, and then £5 per month in interest. why?

Well I have a managed loan (Don't ever do this) with HSBC for £29060, I paid £380 per month every month until July 2007. In 14 months I reduced the capital by £700!! So I told them I would no longer use my HSBC account, my salary would be paid elsewhere and I would be making payments to them via CCS. The account had a balance of £8. They debited £380, even though they new in advance the money wouldn't be in the account. When you have a managed loan you have no OD facility, if another company had tried to take out a Direct Debit which would have put me i the red, HSBC would bounce this payment and charge me for it. Why did these rules not apply to them!!! They are charging me interest at 18% on this amount, which I refuse to pay back. I am waiting to hear from the Chief Executive of HSBC about this and also the Financial Ombudsman. To top all this off we receive numerous phone calls from HSBC's Indian call centre staff, in fact 19 in 4 days!!! We put this type of harassment as the reason my partner had a miscarriage. It would have been cheaper, less painful to borrow the money from some back street lender, and then had my legs broken with a baseball bat!

lids_2001

Phaelok wrote: »

'Phaelok, you may work for a bank, but it's quite obvious you've never actually had to deal with bank CS.'

Your reasons for believing so?

'I'm amused that the first thing that the bank employees seem to want to do is to resort to silly personal attacks on anyone questioning what they say. It' symptomatic really of an attitude that banks are somehow doing their customers a favour. And never once have any of you taken on the substantive points, which broadly speaking are that there is no moral or educative part of these charges, they are designed to take customers money. The Times referred to one of the systems as apparently having been designed by !!!!!! Turpin, and so it is.'

What I have said, if you care to read, is that I always try to help customers as best as I can. Its not a case of doing customers a 'favour', its rather an attempt to address the issue in question with ways to try to avoid a repeat scenario in the future. If you are given the reponsibility to set up payments on your account, then it follows that it is your responsibility to ensure YOU have enough funds in the account to cover these payments. I have already stated that I agree that the charges should be looked at more closely, but what I have also said is that customers must accept that they should look more closely at how they manage their finances.

'I'm perfectly well aware that DDs go out overnight. But just try and stop one 2 days in advance. Or even 3 days in advance. You'll be told that it's "already in the system". And there is not a thing you can do about it. Well actually that's not true: it's quite possible to be told a DD has been cancelled and then find out it hasn't and the money goes out twice.'

Well thats untrue, d/d's can be recalled the same day, in effect 'reversing' the transaction back into the a/c which would update by close of business that day. If you have been told a d/d has been cancelled, then it shouldn't be, but we need to be clear that in the example you have given, if the d/d goes out twice, presumably by the same method, that is the company, and not the bank's fault. i.e. the company could claim under a different reference number. Paypal is an example of this.

'I've been in situations where I've done a debit card transaction which has been taken off my "available balance" immediately (which is fine, obviously). Then I've won a bet, withdrawn from the bookmaker the same evening, and had both transactions posted to my account two days later, i.e. the bookmaker received the money the same day as I received his payment back. Yet I've been charged as if the money had been taken from my account the first day.'

The card payment you make on a working day does effect the 'available' balance that day also. i.e. make a card payment on Monday for £20.00 (which was your only credit in the a/c and no overdraft facility in place) and attempt to draw that out from a cash machine that day, then it would not work. The difference is that the 'actual' funds are debiting from the account a few working days after, again it depends on the company, and, of course, if you have any other transactions coming out in the meantime, then yes it does affect payment for that card transaction.

'And then you expect customers to ring you up and crave your indulgence while you deign to "help" them as a favour. Well you (as an industry) would do a hell of a lot better by not "helping" them in the first place by stealing their money, and then creating a spurious system of "services" to camouflage the larceny. All you're doing by helping them is to help them to escape from a trap you laid for them in the first place.'

The example I gave earlier for a d/d. Customers have the freedom to set up these transactions so it is their responsibility to ensure these items are paid on time. I refute the so called 'trapping' claim, customers do not help themselves. IF this happened as a 'one off' then I would happily refund any charges caused, but if I explained to them how to avoid this in future, should there be any need for this to happen again?

Why not create an opt out for people who don't want this "service" but who would rather simply have the transactions stopped?

Well it requires the customer to contact us. This can be done as often as you wish, if there will not be enough funds to cover a payment, then this can be cancelled without charge, i.e. d/d's - even on the same day.

As far as CHAPs goes, it is hugely unreliable. I know that, because I need to move large amounts of cash around quickly. I can and do deposit tens of thousands of pounds instantly anywhere in the world with bookmakers. Yet it still takes days to move money between banks. Maybe instead of sneering at your customers you might (again as an industry) address this problem?

I must admit I do not deal with CHAP payments, so I cannot directly answer that question. What I will say, from experience, is that customers, sometimes through no fault of their own, set up transactions to come out of their account before the CHAPS payment is seen through the a/c. I agree it is unreliable, and as I understand it there is a fee involved(?) for clearing the funds the same day, clearly not feasible, but is really down to the employers who pay their wages.

I do not 'sneer', I always try to help as I have always maintained. Like any organisation one will always speak to different individuals who offer them different levels of service, judging by numerous topics on here it seems like quite a lot. I know that when I do my job, which isnt my chosen career I should add!, I always try to do the best I can.

I had a brilliant example for this not working for me, I regularly use Internet banking to check my accounts, and transfer money from one account to another when i notice payments are due or the funds are low. But..

HSBC do not tell you what is coming out of your account the following day, so you cannot plan for it. Direct Debits do not come out on the same day every month, so it almost impossible to ensure you have the money ready. Why would I want to leave money in a current account earning low interest, when it can be in a high interest saving account until needed!!!

One day I logged on in the morning, and noticed that I had two direct debits (£12 and £25) coming out which would put me £27 OD, I had £100 in cash with me so i went to a branch near my work place and deposited the money. Only to find out later the next day that HSBC had bounced both payments and charged me £10 and £25 in charges. this is because the payment left my account at midnight, but did not show to me until the following morning. this proves your banking procedures are flawed. When I contacted HSBC they told me I should have rung them, telling them that I had deposited £100 cash. But its on the system instantaneously, why would I. The account had sufficient funds at close of business that day, but still they said it was my fault!

theunknownstuntman

Funny how the "21 year old" has not posted since 1 reply on page 1-2??? Troll created to cause trouble. And its worked, stop feeding the troll and arguing amost ourselves people!

Smasher

The OP was forgotten long ago by those who are now debating bank charges in general, but you're absolutely right. There is no point in even responding to the OP, it's quite obvious that it was someone throwing a poisoned bait into the pond to see who would bite.

jonesMUFCforever

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

OK, let me simplify it for you. I'm referring to the first ever time you go overdrawn...not because you've incurred charges before.

By way of an example, you think you have £50 in your account. You forget you have a DD coming out today for £49.99. You go to the shops to buy food. Your card is declined because you only have £0.01 in the account. Previously you would have been able/allowed to spend, say, £10 (or some other 'shadow' amount). However, under the new system there is no such facility now available.

There are no charges to be paid...but also (if many of the posters are to be believed) there is no food on the table either.

Not so ridiculous now is it?

Then they go to the proper agency - ie Social services.
Banks are for profit. I would't let you use my money without permission so why should posters think they can get away with using the bank's money?

Smasher

ejones999 wrote: »

I would't let you use my money without permission so why should posters think they can get away with using the bank's money?

And vice versa..

rog2

ejones999 wrote: »

Banks are for profit.

There is profit and taking the p!ss - which would appear to be what many Banks are doing when you look at the level of profit that they declare.
It is small wonder that people ask how they can be allowed to charge just what they want to.