BEWARE! THE BANKS ARE OUT TO GET YOU!

[Stanley]

See THIS for the latest BBC report on the Chinese melt down. Very dangerous and markets world wide are trying to make sense of it.

[Tizer]

They're at it again, HSBC this time...
`Hundreds of thousands go unpaid after HSBC IT glitch' LINK
Nationalise the lot of them, the bosses don't deserve to be running important businesses like banks!

[Stanley]

Exactly what I thought when I saw the news. Almost certainly due to faults in their administration and funding of IT to make even more profit. If challenged they will say something like "these things are unavoidable". If big automated money saving (profit making) systems like these are inherently unstable, why are they allowed in such an important function? Problem about public ownership is would they run things any differently? I'm afraid the modern world lives on a knife edge and one small mistake by one person can crash a whole system. Think of the 'flash' trading systems......

[Stanley]

See THIS for a BBC report on contactless cards. I have to say that despite the limit on each transaction they frighten me to death!

[plaques]

BBC report on contactless cards.

No problem. Drill a hole through the shiny square and put it on your key chain. This way it will be perfectly safe from any kind of theft.

[Tizer]

But if you do put it on the key chain in your pocket be careful of standing too close to the RF receiver in shops or you might be paying for other people's purchases too!

The limit has only gone up to £30 but that's for one payment. I wonder how many payments a thief could make on a card?

[PanBiker]

When I had my wallet stolen on Nice railway station I discovered the loss withing a couple of minutes but could not cancel my cards until about 30 minutes later. I could not get a signal on my mobile on the moving train and had to wait until we changed at Ventimiglia . In the time that the professional gang had my cards they spent over £2000.00 on two cards over 11 transactions, all were made within the first 15 minutes of having my wallet.

[Stanley]

It seems to me that these wireless cards are fraught with problems! I sympathise with you Ian, I would have been distraught! Did you have to pay or were you indemnified by the card issuer?

[Tripps]

My card was intercepted in the post, and a sum of just slightly less than £40, was spent at every branch of Tesco between Milton Keynes and Brighton over a weekend. That was in the days when you signed a chit rather than having a PIN. Of course the thief was able to sign the blank card - so it matched when he used the card. I was phoned at work by the bank, called in, and reimbursed everything that was stolen. The total was about £3400.

They wouldn't tell me what had happened, but there was a case at a major sorting office a few months later which I would guess was associated.

[Tizer]

Looks like we all have trouble with cards at some point. Mrs Tiz recently had about £40 spent on the Web by someone using her Sainsbury's credit card details. She's never shared the PIN with anyone and only uses the card for shopping in Sainsbury's and a few other regular and reliable things such as paying for a couple of magazine subscriptions online. It was refunded and a new card issued but there must have been fraudulent activity somewhere.

[PanBiker]

My wallet had 250 euros in as well, card companies covered all the card losses, cash was covered by our holiday insurance apart from £50 excess. Rest of the hassle from losing your wallet you have to live with.

[Stanley]

Frightening stuff isn't it. As Tiz has pointed out before, though always denied by the banks, there is little doubt that insider fraud in the banks exists and there is no defence against this. I wonder what happens if they identify a crook in the organisation? Surely if they prosecute they expose the internal fraud which is the last thing they want.

[Stanley]

Contact-less cards. I heard a discussion about these yesterday on R4 and it was mentioned that some people didn't bother to take the card out to pay but just waved their wallet over the screen, especially on buses. Some have found that the technology has picked up other cards in the wallet and have had multiple charges! Not for me..... Frightening stuff and all for a bit of technological magic.

[plaques]

Avoiding the effects of the new cards is not going to be easy. I have always kept my cards and my bus pass in the same small wallet. I'm now finding that the cards appear to be interfering with the bus reader and having to to load it separately to make it work. How the readers differentiate whether you want to use a debit as against a credit card for commercial transactions if they are in the same wallet I don't know. See THIS for the creeping use of RIFID technology.

[Tizer]

How the banks protect themselves from revealing insider fraud. If you complain and suggest a problem is due to insider fraud they tell you they'll only deal with the issue if it comes to them through the police. If you go to the police they tell you it's nowt to do with them, go to your bank. Catch 22.

Phone scams. Did you hear the radio report on the lady whose son fixed up her phone to record both sides of all conversations because she was getting scam calls. The radio programme played one of the recordings, a conversation where the caller claimed very convincingly to be from Santander bank about her account. They told her to check for herself that they were genuine by comparing their phone number displayed on her phone with the Santander number on her card. She did and it was the same. Apparently they are now able to hack the phone display to show whatever number they wish.

[Stanley]

I listened to that with interest and if my memory serves me correctly, even though she presented all that evidence to the bank they failed to reimburse her on the grounds that the recordings proved that she had participated in the event!
P. I agree with you, the possibilities of fraud seem to be enhanced by the advance of technology. I had a fear that my present phone problem might be caused by someone taking over my connection and using it to make multiple calls for which I would be billed. Feeling slightly paranoid I talked to my provider, they checked the account and found no unusual activity. The agent at Talktalk I spoke to was very good and told me that I wasn't being paranoid, this is a real danger and can happen and he sympathised with me. Touch wood, I am OK!
I have been reminded lately of a man I knew who was active in the black market during the war and kept his profits in biscuit tins under his bed. Unfortunately, as far as I can see, this is still the only way you can avoid being vulnerable to the sorts of problems we see today with accounts. There is a good incentive to do this these days with accounts that pay no interest, they lose money at exactly the same rate as that in the biscuit tins!

[Stanley]

Have a look at THIS link to the Private Eye site and click on the interactive map of land holdings held by off shore companies in the UK. Amazing how much is held by anonymous companies, PE suggests that some of this is to avoid tax or salt away the proceeds of crime. Surely not.....!

[Stanley]

What a fortunate coincidence, just as Ossie announces further bank share selling a cut off date is set for claiming on PPI claims. Thus reassuring potential investors that the end is in sight. Is this the end of banker-bashing? Are the government feeling confident enough to row back on regulation? Could this possibly mean that allied with rising levels of debt we are on course for another credit crunch. Surely not.....

[Tizer]

When my Mum died back in 2006 we immediately checked with the local branch of Lloyds Bank to ensure they didn't freeze the joint account which she and my Dad had with them. They promised us they never did that when someone died. Lo and behold, the account was frozen, he couldn't use his cheques or credit card and his company pension was returned to the pension trustees. Would you believe it, the same thing has now happened with Mrs Tiz's Mum & Dad's account at Lloyds after Mum died recently - the account is in limbo and Dad's direct debit for his nursing home fees haven't been paid. Last week the bank promised it would be sorted and the fees paid by now but they haven't been and Mrs Tiz is having to chase them again. It's hard to understand how a big business like Lloyds Bank can be so incompetent. And the government expects the public to want to buy shares in Lloyds!

[Stanley]

I believe that the main cause of this is that the 'Bank Manager' is no longer a manager but a Chief Clerk and has no autonomous powers. In olden days the manager could make decisions at local level on all matters of business and was always backed by HQ. Today, under modern management any unusual circumstance has to be decided at a far higher level, always remote and during the hiatus simple rules are applied that cover the bank's arse, like freezing an account. Banks grew and existed by serving the customer's needs, this is no longer the objective. The aim is to do everything possible to trade profitably and the customer is now the least important consideration.
We may have been incredibly old fashioned with hand written ledgers and humans striking a balance each day but it worked in the customer's interest. Treating the customer well today is limited to making them offers 'they can't refuse' on everything from insurance to complicated overdraft arrangements. All of which carry the ubiquitous bank charges. I know, I'm a dinosaur but in those days I could go and knock on Mr Batkin's door at the local branch. How many people even know the name of their 'manager'?

[PanBiker]

Twenty odd years ago when I started my own business and went self employed, my local branch manager opened me a business account with the £45 I had to my name at the time. He gave me an account and a cheque book, 4 weeks later when I had £400 he refuse me an overdraft but granted it two weeks after that when I had turned it into a thousand. We went on like that with short term agreements, I would pitch and he would look at my track record and If my plan was good enough he would come up with the cash. So much so that a few years later when I fell short by £3K on the funds needed for a £28K job he lent me the money on a handshake, (he did tell me not to get knocked down). During my initial meeting with him to open the account, I told him we could do business but he would never have access to my house, I would keep my end of the bargain and he his with anything we agreed upon, mutual trust for the benefit of both. Can't do that now sadly.

On a different matter, can anyone tell me why you cant pay a utility bill at the bank with a guaranteed Building Society cheque?

[Whyperion]

Fraud concerns I think. U have to pay the cheque to you, then pay out to pay the bill.

[Stanley]

I agree Ian, I have nothing but good memories of my dealings with my bank manager. I remember going in to congratulate the first lady bank manager at Barclay's when Mr Batkin retired. She told me not to hold my breath, she was a figurehead and had no powers. She was refreshingly clear about what was going on and proved to be right.

[Tizer]

Lloyds still hasn't paid the direct debit for October's nursing home fees and now says it can't do it, no more will be paid until the November payment so we'll have to make the October payment by cheque from the account instead. I thought one of the reasons for using a bank was that it could reliably make payments for you so that you didn't miss any or make them too late. Silly me.

[chinatyke]

Three cheers for HSBC. I regularly transfer money electronically (on line) from my UK account to my Bank Of China account here. Some time ago they reduced the fees from £17 to £4. This month the charge is shown as zero, well done HSBC. I think it has always been zero to transfer to another HSBC account abroad but not to a different bank. Four quid more in my pocket = 8 beu.

Note: beu = beer equivalent units, the price of a pint of beer locally.