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

Voyager2002

krisskross wrote: »

Everyone is entitled to Housing Benefit and Council tax benefit if they are on a low income and are renting. If the home is mortgaged then I would expect mortgage protection insurance to have been taken out.

Honestly I am not unsympathetic but you really do seem to think it is all 'someone else's ' fault. I have lived a hand to mouth existence before there was the benefit safety net there is now. But then neither was there the opportunity to have DD's and debt etc. Paid in cash, coin meters for the gas and electricity. If we had no money then we went without until we got paid again.

There are some serious factual errors here.

Firstly, the 'safety net' has progressively developed more and more holes since I first became aware of how it worked (late 1970s). Back then, benefit claimants could receive mortgage interest payments in the same way as rent, so at least were generally not at risk of losing their homes. However, once the insurance industry developed mortgage protection insurance this important safety net was for all practical purposes removed. (You now need to be in receipt of a means-tested benefit for nine months before your mortgage interest is paid. If you have sufficient savings to cover your mortgage for that length of time you will not qualify for most means-tested benefits. Catch 22!)

As for mortgage protection insurance, it generally offers very poor value for money. And in any case, people like me, who work in a sector of the economy where fixed-term contracts are the norm, are unlikely to be able to succeed in claiming against such a policy. Are we supposed to be tenants for the rest of our lives (or at least until we have saved up enough to pay cash for a place to live)?

As for Housing Benefit, please don't make me laugh! I remember when central government (the DSS) payed a claimant's rent along with their other benefits, and this system worked reasonably smoothly. Then the Thatcher regime had the brilliant idea of devolving responsibility for rents to local government and created Housing Benefit, in a peculiarly unpleasant political game. Local authorities do not have the same access to data as do departments of central government, and so had great difficulty administering this scheme. And since many people were claiming Housing Benefit along with benefits from central government, the task of verifying their circumstances and assessing the amount they should receive was duplicated, creating lots of extra work for bureaucrats. Last time I claimed HB as a tenant (at a time when I was genuinely desperate) it took three months for them to process my claim. And would they accept any responsibility for interest and bank charges arising from this delay? No chance.

People who end up in this kind of situation are typically the victims of divorce and/or ill health, not the fault of the State or the community. Most such people have paid taxes for many years and have a reasonable expectation of assistance when they need it most. The fact that such assistance is generally lacking is indeed "someone else's fault".

Addendum: as I write this, my income from tax credits is just enough to service my mortgage: I am lucky that I have a lot of equity in my home. Child Benefit comfortably covers my Council Tax (I can't receive CTB because of the way the means test works), meaning that the four of us have to live on my JSA, of around sixty pounds per week. We are surviving on my savings, but this cannot last for ever.

krisskross

Voyager2002 wrote: »

There are some serious factual errors here.
Addendum: as I write this, my income from tax credits is just enough to service my mortgage: I am lucky that I have a lot of equity in my home. Child Benefit comfortably covers my Council Tax (I can't receive CTB because of the way the means test works), meaning that the four of us have to live on my JSA, of around sixty pounds per week. We are surviving on my savings, but this cannot last for ever.

where are the 'serious factual errors'?

I am assuming , and I am sure you will correct me if i am wrong, that you do not receive CTB because your savings are too high. Certainly it is a means tested benefit and therefore in some way you must have too much income, otherwise you would get it.

Apart from that you sound as if you are surviving on benefit income. Which in the short term is what JSA is supposed to do, help you to survive while you look for work or retrain. I wish you well and hope you soon find another job. You are using your savings for the purpose you meant them for. To help you through a sticky patch.

Charis

krisskross wrote: »

where are the 'serious factual errors'?

I am assuming , and I am sure you will correct me if i am wrong, that you do not receive CTB because your savings are too high. Certainly it is a means tested benefit and therefore in some way you must have too much income, otherwise you would get it.

Apart from that you sound as if you are surviving on benefit income. Which in the short term is what JSA is supposed to do, help you to survive while you look for work or retrain. I wish you well and hope you soon find another job. You are using your savings for the purpose you meant them for. To help you through a sticky patch.

Thank you Ebeneezer. A Merry Christmas and God Bless Us All
:beer:

PS
I noticed your signature:

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Learn from the mistakes of others - you won't live long enough to make them all yourself.

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Thank you for the good advice. I'm off to spend my savings as soon as the shops reopen.

Tim_L

We're all the prisoners of our own prejudices.

Banker Girl, your boyfriend could have Setanta for free, you could afford Sky and the Internet easily without spending any of your income on it. Actually you could knock a big lump out of your mortgage too. Join us on the Gambling board to find out how. But you would have to make a leap of imagination and learn something new.

Life's like that. It's very rarely what you think it will be when you're in your 20s, and you can learn from anyone anytime. I applaud your principles of frugality, they will stand you in good stead. But as I've said, it's wrong to use them as a platform to judge others: that's just self agrandissment really. Actually the caricature of the irresponsible spendthrift is far less widespread than TV Debt !!!!!! programmes would have us believe.

And I'm serious about the gambling.

krisskross

Charis wrote: »

Thank you Ebeneezer. A Merry Christmas and God Bless Us All
:beer:

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.

I was not being scrooge like but I do wonder about the expectation of the State funding a lifestyle other than a very basic one.

A lot of you are a generation or two behind me and have become used to having the welfare state for back-up. I am glad it is there. I would hate to see the 6 year olds being sent to the gas works with a handcart to get some coke to eke out the coal as I was, to not know what NEW clothes are, to have ONE present only at Christmas and to be extremely happy with that one gift plus an orange and a handful of nuts.My brother passed the 11+ to go to Grammar School. His place was refused as my parents could not afford the uniform. I never knew my mother with natural teeth. She had them all out when she was 21, the only treatment then for a severe gum infection.It took her 2 years to save enough money to get dentures.

I could tell you loads but I am sure you would think it was made up, it isn't. Britain has changed hugely welfare wise since 1948. My generation are frightened of debt and went without sooner than take it on.

Hopefully with all the publicity people will again start to be very wary of taking on debt for 'stuff' rather than saving until they have enough money to pay for it. Except a house of course, very few of us get away without the need for a mortgage.

Anyway a happy and hopefully prosperous New Year to you all.

angelwillow

krisskross wrote: »

I personally have known extremely hard times, so am not in an ivory tower.

Can't understand why you get no child tax credits , unless you are paying off an overpayment. I assume you get child benefit. Have you applied for help with council tax? Have you considered asking for DLA if your partner is on long term IB?

Apologies that I may have given the wrong impression,some of it was said tongue in cheek and I wasn't purely aiming that ivory tower comment at you krisskross.
I get £40 a month child tax credit,it was working family credit etc that I was referring to. And despite having applied to get benefit either myself or even via citizens advise I am apparently not legible as I earn too much!!! I am not on the 'bread-line' as they say so tough.
Believe me I have tried not to be in this situation - admittedly maybe too late as I believed my bank when they said they'd help then when I couldn't cope and they not only turned their backs but stuck on £1000's to my debt!
So much for 'helping'.
And yes I know it was my own fault...............

fiveyearplan

Angel, did you look at the site I mentioned in my earlier post? www.entitledto.co.uk?

fiveyearplan

While we are on the subject of banks and bank charges what about the mortgage exit fees? How do banks justify the THEFT of money when they take more money than the original mortgage contracts says it will cost to exit the mortgage?

Dylanwing

Bankergirl - A nice try, and I admire your posting even though I disagree. Whilst there are objectionable customers, some of these are desperate as a result of excessive Bank charges, and until you have been the victim, I don't think anyone can understand. I made a mistake, and it was like my account was being attacked by piranahs, and the Bank staff were useless, gave incorrect advice costing me more charges, and were very unsympathetic. Perhaps if Banks allowed customers with a problem to talk to more senior staff who have a bit of authority and discretion, treated people as human beings, and did not off-shore the call centres, the Banker-Customer relationship might improve, and you will have to deal with less stroppy gits.
Best of luck with your career in the Bank.

bestiavolaticus

i too work for a bank, and whilst im going to sit on the fence over whether or not i think the current system of bank charges is legal/unlawful or whatever... i would step in and say that there are a fair few people who do turn up into my branch and start a conversation with the following: "i want my bank charges back because martin lewis says it is illegal."

i will also wager, however that 100% of those people do NOT frequent this forum, or the site...
i personally try to listen to each persons individual circumstances, as there most certainly are those who feel they can blatantly ignore the T&C's they agreed to when opening an account and not have to accept the consequences, just as there are those whom it is blatantly obvious that circumstances have dictated they are in the prediciment they are at the time... needless to say i'm more inclined to listen to the latter than the former, specially as the latter are likely to say hello at the beginning of the conversation...

for those of us on the front line, we have high targets and limits as to what we can do, but we aren't always the bad guys.

i saw that the OP was at one point on this thread being dissed for her chosen job.... for some of us it's not necessarily a choice - i took the job as i needed the money to stop myself getting any further into debt after graduating from uni and being unable to find work for a while, due to a serious illness. i applied for several and took the first which was offered...

its not my first choice job, but its a permanant contract, which means i can put that knowledge into sorting myself out for the future...
so i guess all im trying to say is that some of us bank employees *do* care about our customers, and we aren't the bad guys, even if do work for companies perceived as being such.

and for the record, im 24, so 'young, and wet behind the ears' fairly new to banking, with just over a year under my belt, and more than happy to point you out to my SOA - its over on the DFW board....