Let the claims begin!!!
Hurruh! Banks lost the high court test case against the OFT for unfair bank charges!
I'm soo gonna start my claim tonight!
I'm soo gonna start my claim tonight!
Post edited by The Starglider on
Comments
But if you read what the judgment's actually about, it's simply that the OFT can now go away and decide what the banks should be made to do.
No actual decision will come until after that process.
Odds are that the OFT will take a look at the shit the banks are already in and be advised by the government to not screw them over even further.
Frankly, they deserve a good screwing over. They've sold mortgages to people who can't pay them back (mainly due to sales staff being on commission when they should be salaried), given out credit cards like they're going out of fashion and take up to ?38 off of you for going overdrawn by ?1.
They're now trying to kiss our arses by offering savings interest rates significantly above the base rate, which for most of us living in the real world still results in sod all benefit, a few quid a month maybe.
If there was a "no interest, but no charges" bank account I'd have jumped on it ages ago.
A fair penalty for going overdrawn should be a percentage of what you've actually gone over by, so the OFT has a chance to make things right.
Banks should also perform all online transactions instantly, in this age of computers instead of manual keying, but all they do is take it from you instantly, hold it in their own account so they make money from it and don't pay you interest, then pass it on after a few days to the other bank.
I was paying cash for something, and had already maxed out my limit on my current account card.
Back in the days before 1990's it was hard to get a loan, credit card or mortgage. But funnily enough the banks stayed in healthy profit and were not on the verge of going bust.
Greed, it will kill us all eventually weather we are driving it or not.
Now that I don't really need to borrow any, I have to beat them off with a shitty stick.
My bike is in on 0%finance, though I had the cash to buy it outright, and the finance company wrote to me yet again today, with an offer of a guaranteed loan of ?15k, all I had to do was phone them up quote a reference number on the letter, and the money would be in my bank within a week.
thx1138 Amex is a credit card, so they apply higher rates and charges to cash withdrawals. Also, no one in their right mind would use a credit card to take cash out, unless their card balance was almost nothing and they could pay it off that month. The interest rate on cash is higher and when you're paying off your credit card you pay the items with the lowest interest rates first. Cash withdrawals will usually be the last thing you pay off and tend to come with an APR of around 25%.
When I was a student I got hit by a then around ?20 charge for going less than ?1 overdrawn. My bad, I thought - I should have planned better. But what was galling is they didn't charge it immediately - they charged it about a month later - and their charge forced me overdrawn again by some trivial amount - so their charge resulted in yet another charge! Unfortunately being rather meek and timid at the time I didn't push the issues. If my current bank did this to me and didn't refund the charge that was imposed as a consequence of them charging me the first time, I'd close ALL my accounts with them, credit card, mortgage, the lot, and move it elsewhere. And see if they could be sued in the small claims court, just for good measure.
I also had a battle with GnatWest/and GnatWest's Mastercard recently. Same bank - but if you pay online it takes three days for the payment to go from NatWest to NatWest Mastercard. I asked why it takes an electronic transaction so long, and why a weekend makes it take two extra days. The only explanation they had was "well, that's just the way it is". I did note that they could charge late fees on a Sunday, though. I asked them that since Sunday is a non-processing day, how can they process fees on that day?
Do they turn their mainframe computers off on the weekend?
I suspect the real reason is that their IT systems are so awful, when you make an online payment it's not really online at all - someone reads the number of a terminal session in one window, then types it into a terminal session on another window; a manual process dressed in a web interface.
Dont be so niave, the are making interest on that money while it sits in the system. It works like a buffer giving them a constant float of for example 1000 million in delayed transactions.
The OFT have been investigating this type of thing for a few years, but so far have not got a handle on changing the system yet. Its the same with electronic funds transfers bank to bank, it can take upto 7 days.
geez, why does everyone have to nit pick, and pull apart what I post?
Not really, unless you have nits, but thats a different story
I can't see anyone doing that round here.
Barclay card has an awfull policy regarding cash withdrawls.
If you take cash out on the card they charge you 3 time interest on it.
I had this and I asked why interest was so much. They said well cash withdrawls are charged at 3 * interest. I said ok, I'd like to pay off all the cash withdrawls I had made over the last 5 years. The indian on the end of the phone said "Sorry sir it does not work like that, you must pay of your regular expenses and only then can you pay of your cash withdrawls." I said right then f*ck it!! I'll pay of the whole lot and close the account. That showed them!!
Cash withdrawls from a card!!??! I know.. I know... I was an undergrad student and at the time I had a girl friend that spent money like rocket fuel. Consiquently I got broke quicky and had to do desprerate things like that. I only managed to pay it all off last year.
Thankfully she's been traded in for a more ecconomic and all round nicer woman that is now my wife.