UK Banking

[Benjamin]

On line I looked up a UK bank account that we have to discover that there was a charge of £35.00 on the account. Never having been overdrawn or done anything else unusual I 'phoned their helpline.

" It's because you've been overdrawn" was the reply.

But I haven't been

" Yes you were sir, for several hours one day when we took the direct debit to pay your credit card bill. In view of the fact that you transferred sufficient funds to cover the direct debit later in the day we'll refund the charge on this occasion."

Old and increasingly senile as I may be but I've always worked on the banking day being from one minute after midnight to midnight on the same day. It now appears that the banks, or this one in particular, are operating on a minute by minute basis. Or is this just another wheeze to catch the unwary?  [6]

[Bugsy]

I watched a brilliant programme last night on the 1929 Wall St crash. It was remarkable how similar it was to current events.

The only difference I could see that at least in 1929 many of the the bankers who caused the problem did the honourable thing and either jumped out of their windows or took a gun to their heads.

Honour doesn't seem to be part of their makeup today.

[Benjamin]

[quote user="Bugbear"]

Honour doesn't seem to be part of their makeup today.

[/quote]

When I read a few days ago that the soon to be redundant chief of HBoS is to be retained on a consultancy basis at a rate of £60,000 per month by the LLoyds TSB group I finally began to understand how tough  [6]   this Government is being on these poor *ankers.

 

[Russethouse]

 I believe that an ex chairman of HBOS plus an ex Chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland have written in 'strong terms' suggesting that the Lloyd's HBOS merger is an error and it will impact on Edinburgh's reputation as the Scottish banking centre and lose jobs.

I'm my sympathy is very, very limited. We once held a business postal account with HBOS, 3 times we sent cheques for the same transaction by recorded delivery to them, we could prove they had received the cheques - 3 times in a row, they lost the cheques 'in house'

Then there was the overdraft and the computer glitch that meant they were sending me over drawn charge letters daily, when all the time we were well within our allowance - in the end it took so much of my time I invoiced them and they paid !

The last straw was when we changed to being a Limited company and they insisted that they didn't need to physically see us for ID reasons, by the time they woke up I'd changed banks[:)]

 

[Gastines]

With regard to the money pumped into the Banking system, I can't understand why SOME of the billions wasn't used to buy the remaining equity in all the houses about to be repossesed. At least the occupiers would be housed and the Government could get the rent at source ,either from salary or benefits. They would at least have a housing stock. At the moment it seems that the whole banking system is a money making exercise for a few at the expense of the tax payer. How Brown and Darling seem to take credit out of all this is amazing, having helped to cause most of them in the first place. It appears that most voters forget how much Brown took out of everyones pension pot.

I.m still trying to figure out where all the billions went before the latest billions were given as a bail out. I expect a few bank accounts in far flung corners have blossomed!!

Regards.

[Babbles]

Bugbear, that was exactly my thoughts, I'm just hoping that it won't last as long or end in a world war. The bankers are showing far to much self interest I don't know how they sleep at night with the disasters they are reeking.

[AnOther]

[quote user="Gastines"]I can't understand why SOME of the billions wasn't used to buy the remaining equity in all the houses about to be repossesed. At least the occupiers would be housed and the Government could get the rent at source ,either from salary or benefits.[/quote]A novel idea but can you imagine the nightmare of administering such a scheme. This government have a truly lamentable record in organising anything not to mention creating yet another army of faceless civil servants (all on gold plated final salary pensions of course).

Be assured that I have not forgotten Browns pension raid and consider it a significant contributory factor to the mess the country is in as IMO it did irreparable harm to the savings ethic for a great many people.

[mint]

Here's what someone has to say about this latest fire-fighting ploy by the government:

Good news for those who borrowed more than they could afford, bad news for the prudent who didn't and especially bad if they were foolish enough to save a bit.

Jim Dye, Fadmoor, North Yorkshire

[AnOther]

Well sweets, I'm reminded of the adage:

'when you're up to your a55 in alligators it's hard to remind yourself that your objective was to drain the swap' [blink]

I honestly don't know if the bail out was the best response or not but I do think that the potential consequences of doing nothing and letting the situation resolve itself, for better or worse, was simply not an option. There will always be people who are immune or even benefit from such extraordinary events but by and large very few will emerge as winners.

If the banking system had been left to implode then we could well be looking at savings and pension pots worth zilch.

A 30% drop in the value of my pension pot is hard enough to swallow but a 100% ..............well I don't even care  to think of it [:'(]

[Russethouse]

I think I have probably said before that I was told the bail out was the only option because there were not the funds to fund the guarantee scheme.

 

[AnOther]

I think you might be right RH.

I seem to recall hearing somewhere that at the time of the Northern Rock crisis the guarantee fund stood at a paltry 440m [:-))]

[Benjamin]

Here's another thing: check the interest rate you are receiving on instant access savings accounts. You'll be more than down to the woods surprised at how the greedy banks have slashed those rates.  [:'(]

[Russethouse]

 I think you'll find that 'locked in ' funds of over £50,000 attract the best rate - odd that !

What I don't understand is how the financial institutions hope to attract funds in, that they can then lend out, if they don't give a reasonable rate of interest to attract those funds to start with... too simple ?