Banks (a.k.a - scum)

[Hennessy]

I like RBS much better than I did HSBC, who took forever and a day to transfer money and would charge you the equivalent of £1.50 every time you used a cash machine abroad. Now imagine waiting in Auckland, NZ, for three weeks while their new accounts office continually postphones actually setting up a native account because the manager of their tiny accounts office (so much for "the world's local bank), is on maternity leave or somesuch nonsense.

Then I get back to Britain, walk into the bank to cancel my old student account (I was already looking at RBS) and thought I had, then I recieved a letter a couple of weeks later welcoming me as a new current account holder! The clerk hadn't cancelled my account at all, she had converted it to a current account, and presumably thinking I would suffer a bout of amnesia about my defection from HSBC.

So, phoned them up, ranted a bit, closed my account the next day (wouldn't let me do it over the phone), got here, walked into RBS and had a new account by lunchtime.

[Gealle]

Oh I dunno, cash savings should only account for a portion of your portfolio.

And as for credit cards, they are a revolving credit facility; it wouldn't exactly be reasonable to expect banks to charge something like +200bps to base on them.

[queen of scots]

Talking of stupid banks, we had a letter the other day which said: "I am writing to remind you that your overdraft limit of up to £0 ends on 13th December 2008". Right....we don't have an overdraft with you so that was a waste of paper then!

I got the Egg email too but knew it was going to happen so managed to divide the money between ISAs and other savings accounts with locked-in rates. Looks like rates are going to be slashed still further on Thursday so am thankful I managed to get the lock-in deals. Still pissed off about the amount of interest I'm losing though

[Power Metal Dom]

This is why I don't touch credit cards. Borrowing money is bad enough with student loans without credit cards

[ojk6]

I too got hit by Egg. Lloyds TSB are worse. They sent me a letter saying they wanted to review my £1,500 overdraft on a graduate account to more manageable levels - which they have done every year reducing by whatever I can afford each time, always exceeding the minimum rate (£500 per year). So we had the meeting and it emerges by review they mean withdraw, and I was given from November 21 to December 21 to bring my account in to credit. If I didn't they were planning to charge me £20 per day. They were really quite remorseless about it all. According to the Ombudsmen this is legal because back in 2003 I defaulted on the account by exceeding the agreed overdraft limit. It's hardly fair 'tho, given that I've reduced the overdraft gradually from 5k to 1.5k.

[Thackary]

Student Loans = Good credit
Credit Cards = Commercial credit (aka Bad Credit).

[RandomMusings]

Student Loans = Good credit
Credit Cards = Commercial credit (aka Bad Credit).

You should be a mathmatician Thackary, with equations like that!

[Robbery Victim]

RBS isn't much better. They accepted my money transfer from out of the country without telling me it would take up to six weeks to process. I had to borrow money from people to pay my rent for two months, after I was told my rent cheques had bounced because I had no money in my account. Monitoring my account was a pain in the ass, as my online account did not work at all and refused to accept my password five minutes after I had registered it and written it down. After four weeks had passed, the bank would still not tell me the status of my money transfer, even after I had obtained documentation from my bank at home saying that RBS had received the full transfer, exchanged it into pounds, and completed the transaction. The bank was simply waiting for the full six weeks to expire to actually let me have my money. Finally, after six weeks the transfer went through. During the 4 week interval between when RBS initially accepted my cheque and deposited the funds into my account, the dollar improved significantly against the pound, however I was given the exchange rate for the day that I deposited the cheque, not the day it was approved (i.e. officially transferred between banks and therefore the day you would expect the exchange to happen), or the day the funds were deposited into my account. I lost a few hundred pounds in this, and on top of it I was charged £20 for the transfer.

I understand that some of these items are RBS's general protocol. However, the entire situation was ridiculous. When handling the transfer of large sums of money, they should inform their clients that there may be a delay as long as six weeks, and that there will be a charge of £20. ESPECIALLY when that person is clearly foreign. Also, for them to take six weeks to handle a transfer is completely unnecessary. Relatively speaking (for them), the money I was transferring, most of my life savings, was a pittance. I know it was not at all necessary for them to take so long. I have transferred money online between banks in America before, and the money would have gone into the other account by the next morning. Also, instead of costing the equivalent of forty dollars, the transfer would be entirely free of charge. So RBS charged me much more for much worse service. Clearly the banks here are very, very good at cheating people out of their money.

After this had all taken place, I was chastised by a teller at the bank for having an overdraft on my savings account, even though I had never authorised any payments from that account - another teller had sent a payment through for me from the wrong account (savings instead of checking, as I specifically requested), and I had no idea that my savings account was overdrawn. Thinking about the whole situation is actually getting me pretty riled up. I should keep my money under my mattress.

[Gealle]

Student Loans = Good credit
Credit Cards = Commercial credit (aka Bad Credit).

You should be a mathmatician Thackary, with equations like that!

I would take this opportunity to point out that no credit is "bad" until it goes unserviced.
You enter into a credit agreement voluntarily; if you then find yourself unable to service it, it's your responsibility to get it sorted.

[LonelyPilgrim]

Robbery Victim - that was precisely why I always transferred my money the old fashioned way: cash in a briefcase. If RBS doesn't screw you over, the University will. NEVER give St Andrews American dollars expecting them to exchange it... they WILL gouge you on the exchange rate, and also take forever doing it. If you need to get money from the US in a hurry, I suggest a money transfer via PayPal. Much cheaper and faster.

[PG]

I really hate banks. I especially hate it when in the past I'd be over drawn by 5p and they would charge me about £30 for being overdrawn, then there would be another charge of the same amount for being overdrawn for that month and if those charges pushed me over a certain amount there would be another charge. I understand of course that people should be responsible, but I think at the same time banks are so irresponsible. I took a credit card out a few years ago, without my permission or without evening giving me notice my limit has went from £200 to £2000. Also I kept getting letters trying to sell to me loans of £10,000 +.

[ojk6]

About charges, the Financial Ombudsment have this to say:

Large numbers of consumers have complained about this type of charge - on the basis that they believe them to be unfair and/or unlawful. The Office of Fair Trading has taken a "test case" to the High Court - to get answers to important legal questions about these charges.

The law is one of the things that the Financial Ombudsman Service has to take into account, when we make decisions on individual cases. As the important High Court "test case" is intended to clarify the law, we have decided not to continue our work on complaints about these charges - until the outcome of this "test case" is known.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA), the watchdog for financial firms, has also agreed that banks can suspend their work on these complaints - while the "test case" is running. But once the legal action is finished, and the law is clarified, banks will have to apply the High Court decision to all the complaints they put on hold over this period.

I think the case is due to be concluded in January. Hopefully, it will be in favour of the consumer and large numbers will apply to the Banks to get their money back.

[bdw]

I think the case is due to be concluded in January. Hopefully, it will be in favour of the consumer and large numbers will apply to the Banks to get their money back.

If you are referring to the OFT v Abbey National PLC & Ors case, that has already been through two hearings ((1)preliminary findings of principle and application to current terms and (2) application to historic terms) in the Commercial Court.

In the first judgment, Smith J ruled that the terms that the relevant banks currently have in place to deal with unauthorised borrowing are not capable of being legally characterised as a penalty. Broadly put, a contractual provision risks characterisation as a penalty where a breach of such provision by the promisee (here, the account holder) would require the promisee to make a payment to the promisor (here, the bank) in an amount that would not be representative of a genuine pre-estimate by the parties at the time of entering into such provisions of the loss sufferable by the promisor in the event of such a breach. A penalty clause is deemed unenforceable at law and therefore any monies paid pursuant to such a clause could have been reclaimed. The judgment turned on whether, on an overdraft being exceeded, a claim under the contract for payment arose as a consequence of a breach of the contract. Smith J found that there was no breach of the current terms offered and therefore the terms could not amount to a penalty at common law.

The second judgment applied this to the historic terms offered by the banks and the judge found that payments made pursuant to most of these terms could likewise not be deemed to amount to a penalty at common law (however there are some further submissions being made in respect of the historic terms offered by Lloyds TSB and RBS before a ruling is made on these).

The OFT did obtain a finding in its favour in respect of one issue, namely that the unfairness rules of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations 1999 can be applied to assess unarranged overdraft charges in personal current accounts (similar to the challenge with respect to credit card charges). If a term is found to be unfair under the regulations, it will not be binding on the consumer. The banks are appealing the non-application to these terms of the carve-out provision in the regulations (though the judge at first instance flatly rejected the OFT argument that the terms the banks offered were not set out in plain intelligible English, which is a principal method of proving the unfairness of a provision).

All of which is to say that I would not be overly confident of a windfall any time soon, particularly as the relationship between the banks and the government has shifted a smidge over the last couple of months. The repayment of historic bank charges would only act to delay the government's recovery of its little investment in the financial sector and I suspect that the everyman taxpayer who had managed his accounts prudently would have rather less sympathy for a claimant in these proceedings now he knows that he is indirectly subsidising any pay-out.

[novium]

Robbery Victim - that was precisely why I always transferred my money the old fashioned way: cash in a briefcase. If RBS doesn't screw you over, the University will. NEVER give St Andrews American dollars expecting them to exchange it... they WILL gouge you on the exchange rate, and also take forever doing it. If you need to get money from the US in a hurry, I suggest a money transfer via PayPal. Much cheaper and faster.

Paypal...that's what I did. Tied my american and my british bank accounts to it, sent money from one to the other. Took about 5 business days to go through.