Banks. Why are they so utterly hopeless?

Simple is to go through the hoop many times first, then back to square one
I don't think people can do things the easy way any more

My bank is to close in a few weeks, so i've got to drive another 15 miles to another,
They say, "you can do this on line" Yes i said, now they are all going to loose they jobs

 

Me and my mate ran a business for a little while. The idea was, for reasons to do with contracts from former employments, my mate couldn't officially be part of it at first, so everything went in my name. We (or should I say I) opened a business account with a certain well known bank.

It started off ok, they only slightly mis-spelled my name despite me spelling it out for them, but I got the necessary paperwork, cards, cheque book etc.

Then a few months later when my mate was out of his other contractual ties, I went back to the bank to get it made a joint account. That's when it went pear shaped.

They said they'd have to close the current account and create a new one. Fair enough I thought. Except that they persistently failed to get my name right, going through half a dozen variations, with me spelling it out for them time and time again. I couldn't even access the account because according to them, I wasn't me. All my ID has my name on it spelled correctly, ie not matching the name that they'd persistently got wrong on my account. In the end I gave up, and just trusted my mate with the company finances. I could keep tabs anyway because although they got my name wrong, they had at least got my address right so I could receive the statements.

After some time, I decided to pull out, then my mate decided he couldn't be bothered to do it on his own, so the decision was taken to close it all down. At this point we owed the bank about £50, so off I went with all the paperwork, cheque books etc and cash to cover what we owed them. Apparently, despite all the documentation being from the bank, the bank denied that the account even existed, so there was nothing to pay. So I came home, wrote a note saying that the bank confirms that we don't hold an account with them, that I've surrendered all documentation belong to the bank, and that we owe nothing etc. I printed it out, went back to the bank, and asked them to sign and stamp it, which they did. I was worried for ages in case they suddenly woke up and asked for the £50 plus all sorts of charges, but touch wood, they never did and that was years ago now.

In another incident, in another bank, my wages once didn't turn up on time. I phone my boss who said they'd been sent by BACS as usual, so then I phoned the bank. I was flabbergasted by their response. The chap said "yes, I can see on my screen that payment was received yesterday, but it hasn't reached your account yet". How long does it take? If THEIR computer says THEY have received payment for ME, why is it not in my account? The answer is simple. All my direct debits and standing orders were about to go out, and if they just held onto it for a few hours, they'd get to charge me loads of unauthorised overdraft fees.

The thing to remember is that a bank is a PLC. It has a legal obligation to its shareholders which takes precedence over its customers. That's why they are thieving gits. I do all my banking with a building society now. A building society is not a PLC. It has a legal obligation to its members (customers) who are the shareholders in a way.

 

Ah The good ol days. You went to see the Bank Manager if he liked the look of you, a friendly face almost, your small business loan would be granted. Overdraft facility no problems. I would hate to be starting out now. Banks what a joke bonuses for what exactly.

 

You lot need to move to Handelsbanken. Absolutely superb. Old fashion style of a bank manager who knows his customers and their financial affairs and can take decisions based on that.

When the high street bank I was with started being fined hundreds of millions of pounds for malpractice (or whatever word you want to use) I vowed never to deal with them ever again. How they can be fined that much, which demonstrates the scale of their crime, but be allowed to stay in business beggars belief to me. Long before that the service had deteriorated, just as you all describe, and we just lived with it, becoming increasingly frustrated. Despite having vibrant businesses, with decades of trading, they were iffy about overdafts that were rarely used and wanted us to take out loans, that we didn't need, in place instead - just so they could fudge how their liquidity looked. They removed a "drawdown" facility, offered to their customers with Premium accounts (or some name like that) at a months notice, and offered nothing in its place (consequently, given that we had only a month's notice and no alternative - and no idea WHAT we do IF we needed it - we drew down the whole 100% and stuck it in Ernie! if all their customers had done that, in that month, I imagine they would have had a run on their bank!)

Long story short, we moved to Handelsbanken and couldn't be happier. They charge a fee for a current account, but there are no funny charges that pop up, so I reckon it costs no more than Sharkleys with their Fee-this and Hidden-Fee-That all the time.

If I am at a supermarket checkout or a cashpoint and my card doesn't work for some reason I phone my branch (not a call centre) and they sort it out there & then. All the staff in the branch know of me, although I have only ever met the manager, and then only a few times - that's how they do business. When they get to the point that they don't know all their customers they open another branch and create a new team in it.

They lend on good old fashion banking principles - financial track record and ability to service the debt - not some crass figures that a computer at head office spews out. And they never try to sell me insurance or anything else that has nothing whatsoever to do with their core business.



and this for the last FIVE years :



http://www.epsi-rating.com/images/stories/epsi_banking_uk_13-press.pdf

http://www.handelsbanken.co.uk/

 

Spell check let you down did it?

Banks in this part of the world are no better.
Not sure about the UK, but here the banks can borrow 3 bucks from the reserve bank for every buck their customers deposit with them.
They then use this borrowed money for very dodgy "investment" schemes and make yet more money out of it, all the while forgetting about us, the ones that enabled them to make all that money in the first place by depositing ours in their crummy bank.

What really gets me is their underhanded tactics.
For example I am with bank A and I make an internet transfer to someone else that uses bank B, why does the money take up to 48 hours to "clear" and get reflected in their account?
It's obvious that the funds were available when I did the transfer so where is this money lying for the 2 days ?
I thought the whole point of an internet transfer was so that it would be instant, efficient and cheap, haa they found a way to make yet more money out of it by way of interest.
The actual amount of interest for any one "delay" is peanuts but multiplied by thousands of "delays" per day, it's making them a pretty penny at the end of the month.

Pity Handelsbanken does not have any branches here, I would be there in an instant.

Rant over.

 

All banking works on the basis of people depositing X and banks being able to lend N x X (but I don't know how, or why ). That's not quite the same as the banks speculating on high risk investments / gambling. Over here government are keen (but shackled by lobbying from banks) to split Retail banking from Investment banking. If an investment bank made risky investments that went bad then the damage is confined to that investment bank, rather than to the whole of the retail, and corporate, banking sector - which was the cause of the previous fiasco I think?

Dunno about down your way, but here we have "central clearing" for the banks. The banks collect together all the money that has been paid out and submit that to central clearing (probably once a day, but it might be more often for all I know), then central clearing distributed that and aggregates all that is owed to that bank, and provides that amount too. In practice I expect any one bank has, say, £1,000,000 going out (to loads of other banks) and £999,999 coming in (from loads of other banks), so actually only £1 "moves" - and I assume that is why we have central clearing, and the fact that it physically takes 3 days to get the money from A to B.

If I move money to another account that I have, or to someone else, at the same bank it is there instantly (or at least "same day").

I can express-clear or express-transfer money, but it costs money (presumably because they have to physically do that, rather than use the central clearing - and I can understand that it would be more expensive).

So, personally, I don't think it is unreasonable ... although that's not to say it couldn't be improved!

Want to give someone some money now, that is available for them to spend instantly? Use Paypal They will charge you a fee though (unless the money is already within the Paypal system).

My understanding of the American system is that it is far worse (but my knowledge is old, so it may have improved). People endorse the back of cheques and use that / those as a means of paying other people, rather than paying a cheque into their own bank. Thus it can be months before a cheque is actually presented and the money physically moved.

 

I suspect that banks here also use a central clearing system so yes can understand a delay, but 2 to 3 days in this age of super fast computers?

Can see the reluctance of banks when it comes to separating retail and investment banking, the authorities here have also tried it in vain.
Even if they were separate entities, I reckon it would not make much difference when the proverbial hits the fan as the share holders and presumably the capital holding would be the same so if the bank takes a hit with one or more of their investments, it would still be average Joe that will have to bare the brunt of it.

Sharkleys is the majority share holder in one of the biggest banks here and are considered one of the "better" banks.
There are also a few American banks, but wouldn't touch them with a barge pole.

 

Here it goes "up" to central clearing at the end of day 1, is processed by central clearing on Day 2, and is back in the bank on Day 3.

I can understand that this is done as a batch transaction job, rather than as individual transactions as they occur. Its a yesteryear method, devised when data was stored on tapes, it was necessary to read an accounts' tape end-to-end, merge it with a transactions tape, pre-sorted into the accounts' order, and write the resulting output to a new, output, tape.

It probably still makes sense to do it that way - Clearing Blank provides a list of all transactions to Bank-A, at the end of the day, and Bank-A processes them, end to end, as a batch job. I don't think the speed of the computers comes into it (provided they are fast enough to do it all in a day!), its still a batch job done once a day.

Yes, here too. Sharkleys avoided a bail-out from government in the Banking Crash (borrowing money from Arab countries / individuals instead I think), so that probably says that they were more sound, or canny!, than the others but their service had become dire and did, and has since, stifled business by not lending to them even in the safest of cases. If I need some extra cash for a few months (given that I have a good track record with my bank) I expect to be able to pick up the phone to the bank and ask them to increase my facility by X. I always could, I can now, but for the last 5 years with Sharkleys it was either only possible after spending hours talking to call centres and filling in forms, and politely (or otherwise) telling them for the umpteenth time that I already had insurance and didn't need any more ... the time we spent on the phone trying to sort things out, with people show accents we couldn't understand, and who had no remit to take any decisions other than the Stock answers and processes in their computer systems, cost us a fortune.

I think it will turn turtle, people who go back to wanting service rather than "Cheapest price but shafted at every turn", and then suppliers will start to provide that.

Vote with your feet folks