Replacement Blow-Away Cover, or a Greenhouse?

How much do you want to borrow? You are clearly "good" for the money, if you can't borrow it via regular sources(**) makes sense I make the "turn" lending you the money at whatever rate is currently reasonable.

(**) I'm fed up with hearing that banks have been told to lend to people, because they aren't (well, mine will lend to me, but that's only because I moved to them from the bank that my family has been with for 3 generations - because they were no longer lending me money, and I couldn't have a conversation with them without them trying to sell me insurance that I didn't need and has nothing to do with banking)

 

Quite. You've been a loyal, reliable, customer, so sod you.

Quite x 2

Been there, done that, but thankfully they didn't force a T-shirt upon me ...

Was with Barclays for 3 generations. They have had all the family accounts and all the family businesses over those years. I've been associated with a number of people, in business, over the years; my Father before me; dunno about Grand Father as he was gone before I arrived, but probably more of the the same. With a couple of exceptions all the businesses I have been associated with have all been with Barclays too. Never missed a payment, given them loads of business. You get the picture.

A couple of years ago Barclays forced all of the companies I was associate with to change their overdrafts to loans, and any that had overdraft facilities that were not actively used they withdrew the facility, or castrated it to the point of being useless.

My wife and I also had "Premier Banking" with them - glorified name for not very much, but it did have a few things that were attractive to us. One of those was that we each had a £30K draw-down facility (called a Select Loan). I could make a single phone call and have money drawn down against the £30K limit and instantly placed in my current account. That was on anything up to a 5 year payback with no early redemption penalty. We used it whenever we had a trough in our funds. No idea what the maximum we ever drew down was, probably £5k - we often used it instead of withdrawing money from savings to just "tide over" instead - as there are always penalties taking money out of savings, and putting it back a bit later.

So ... during the course of the year we would draw down a thou or two and then a couple of months later pay it back when we had the expected "spike" in funds (neither of us are paid a regular monthly salary ...) and then a few months later do the same again ...

Barclays then withdrew that service too, with only a month's notice, and no offer of a personal overdraft or anything else in its place. The ensuing conversation my Wife had with them went something like this:

"I gather you are withdrawing our Select Loan facility with one months notice"
"Yes Madam"
"Why is that?"
"If everyone drew down we would be over some liquidity threshold"
"Do a lot of people who have this facility never use it?"
"Yes Madam "
"Wouldn't it be a good idea to remove it from those people? then the customers who do use it wouldn't put you over your liqudity limit?"
"Yes Madam , that probably would be a good idea"
"Can we still draw down in the next month?"
"Yes Madam "
"And pay back over the max. 5 year period if we choose to?"
"Yes Madam "
"What happens if everyone does that?"
"Not sure Madam ..."
"Well, you are not offering me any alternative method of borrowing money short term, and I have no idea when you will, or when I might need some come-in-handy cash, so I'd like to draw down the whole £60K please"

after a short intake of breath he replied something to the effect of "The money is in your account now Madam"



I stuck it all on Earnie which paid out at about the same as the interest was costing me (and with interest at historic lows the interest amounts were not Silly Money in any case).

I then moved to a Much Better Bank (it operates in the old fashioned way: I call my bank manager, explain what I am needing to do, he says Yes or No. No anonymous Call Centre, no one trying to flog me Insurance every time I call them)

Bad mistake Mr Barclays! you have since had to let their Chief Executive go, been fined £100M's for fraudulently rigging LIBOR, and no doubt there will be much more where that came from.

Meantime they are trying to fleece people at 30%APR on their credit cards ...

I think its a crying shame that the outcome of the recent banking fiasco (which was mooted at the time, but no doubt the Big Banks lobbied for it not to happen) was to create a Co-operative Bank that would just do Loans and Deposits. I would definitely have put my money in one of those ...

 

That's £79.99 + £9.99 P&P = £89.98 buying from that link.

The same company is selling exactly the same polytunnel on ebay for £69.99 + £9.99 = £79.98, £10 cheaper. Feelgood & Grow-Ur-Own are the same company - I have bought from both of them depending which one is cheapest.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3m-x-2m-P...den_Structures_Fencing_CV&hash=item27c74fd2af

Time to set up ebay & Paypal accounts?

 

Yeah, its "usury", no other word for it, and it should imply the point at which greed, incompetence, or I suspect both in the current scenario, leads to the crumbling of the edifice.

 

No need for Paypal I think? I think you can just flash a credit card at Paypal instead of having to open an account?

Having said that, maybe the company will honour the lower price from just a phone call? - eBay and Paypal are both going to take a cut of the, lower, price - so it would be cheaper transaction-cost for them to deal with the customer direct.

 

Homebrew is the answer - it saves you a fortune!

P.S. We have lost nearly £2,000 p.a. interest on our savings due to these stupid wonderful record low interest rates - it works both ways.

 

I will NEVER forgive Margaret Thatcher who I believe placed the first manky apples in the barrel. No property was ever worth over 3 times its selling price in such a short period of time. It encouraged greed and we are still all paying the price for it even now,
There, you've got me all grumpy too FC.
But you need a drink more than I do,
cheers
Jenny
(poor old pensioner like Scrungee)

 

We have shopping-cart clients who sell the same stuff under different banners at completely different prices. The sites are made to look smarter / low-brow to attract different types of clientelle. (These are litterally "all under one roof" outfits, orders from both brands are handled side-by-side)

I can see the sense in having different prices on Amazon / MySite / eBay according to what the cost of selling is, but I would have thought that eBay was their most EXPENSIVE route to market, notwithstanding that eBay brings in a lot of punters - their commissions, unless you sell huge numbers, are far from cheap.

The company's own website will be the most expensive - in the sense that the cost of building the site will have been significant - but ... its built now, and the commision on each sale is probably the cheapest (unless they have a swinging credit card cost). So I would have expected them to have the cheapest price on their website so that anyone who was capable of finding it made their purchase there, and thus those customers would cost them the smallest transaction cost.

Either way I would have thought a phone call "You are clearly selling at these prices on these sites, can I buy at the cheapest price over the phone to minimise your transaction cost" would do. (a telesale is not their cheapest route though, you doing all the form-filling online is their cheapest route, so they might hold that against you!)

 

Did Maggie drive the price of houses up? I remember there was the time when MIRAS was abolished and everyone jumped on the bandwagon in the run up to that, but then house prices flat-lines after that.

Then there was inflation in the 70's - that took care of my Father's mortgage for him ...

Perhaps some other event(s) I've forgotten ? Flogging off council houses perhaps? I don't think that drove the price of housing up did it?

I think its mostly the fact that we have less housing stock than we have people that want to buy (or aspire to buy) a house?

 

Plenty of folks (like Fc I expect|) would love to own their own bricks and mortar Kristen. But the req. deposit ain't realistic. I think more people would like to buy than there are houses for sale. Too expensive,
Jenny

 

Indeed, and I do agree. Not sure its Maggie's fault though, is it? :D

The young folk that I know that have taken the plunge with these half-owned half-rented "affordable" housing seem to be doing OK - 5 or more years in they are making a good dent in moving the 50% marker in their favour.

I think the other factor that will make a change is that parents who bought (i.e. who's parents only ever rented) will shuffle off and leave enough money for their children, or maybe grandchildren, to get on the housing ladder.

 

It's £89.99 + £9.99 P&P at Amazon = £99.98, so £20 more than the exactly the same product bought off ebay.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Polytunnel-..._1_3?s=outdoors&ie=UTF8&qid=1345659271&sr=1-3

P.S. I too blame Margaret Thatcher. We own our house outright and wouldn't care if prices fell 50% or even more, making housing more affordable to others.