Mortgage Fun With Nationwide ...
Here's a guy who has found out a house is for sale, bargain price, he wants to buy it, runs down to his local bank which happens to be Nationwide, let's move quickly here!
Asks to see a mortgage advisor.
Is told the next appointment is to be had in 26 days.
26 DAYS????
He was so furious, he wrote a letter of complaint.
And got the following answer:
"Dear Sir,
thank you for your letter of complaint.
It will be dealt with within the next 28 days."
Hahahaaa ....!!!
Thanks, Nationwide, that's a full five star bank fun.
Virgin Credit Card Looking After Their Customers ... Not ...
This is a person who has about £3,750 on their credit card. They're happily paying more than the minimum payment every month and reducing it down, safe in the knowledge that their spending limit is 7,500.
Until they get a letter which states:
"We have reduced your limit from £7,500 to £3,500. Therefore you are now 250 over your agreed spending limit. Which will incur the following batch of charges ..."
Ok ... that's nice of you, guys ... I mean, you could have reduced to £4,000 but oh, then you wouldn't have gotten your charges on top ... gotta make the money, right ...?
And of course, it states in the Terms & Conditions that they can change anything anytime they want ... so it's all legal then ...
!"£$!!
Halifax The Loan Sharks - Get An Xtra Broken Leg ... with your Hali-fayax ...
This is brilliant.
Recently, Halifax has decided to charge people who have an arranged overdraft (!) £1 per day for as long as the account is overdrawn.
So there is this person who miscalculated a bit and their account was overdrawn by 0.13p.
For this sum they were charged £1 a day for every day, which in this case was 23 days.
No capital had been repaid, mind.
Let's see if I can work out the percentage here ... no I can't. Must be around 700% interest. Makes Barclaycard look a bargain at 23.99% APR ... and the local loan shark who only takes 100% interest looks friendly, reasonable, human in comparison.
Capitol 1 - Fluid In Time, Liquid In Motion ...
So here's some poor bugger who's decided to pay off their credit cards with a standing order from their bank account.
Damn! says the Capitol 1 "we haven't bled them dry properly yet" department, "What can we do?"
"I know! We change the date of the billing cycle!!!"
And thus, it was. Now the billing cycle was put forward by three days. This led to the second payment, which was to be for the following month, also falling into the first month - aka, two payments in month 1, and NO PAYMENTS in months 2!
Naughty, naughty customer!
So we get to fine them lots and lots - and of course, withdraw the zero percent interest offer which would have been on for another painful 5 months. Yay! Victory over the customer achieved once more!!!
And the moral of these bank fun tales?
The field in the UK is WIDE WIDE WIDE WIDE WIDE open for an intelligent entrepreneur to set up a new bank. One that is fair. One that is reasonable. One that seeks to provide decent customer service.
I PRAY for the day the bank messiah will appear and she will sweep away all of this, ruin them all, make them pay!
PS: The base rate of interest is so low it's nearly 0. Average CC interest rates are still at 25%. We don't need legislation, just one bank who is clever enough to read the meter of the time and charge a reasonable say 12%. It would make a fortune and bring about the change we so desperately need. On every level of financial services, from the ground up.
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