BEWARE! THE BANKS ARE OUT TO GET YOU!

[Tizer]

Is it my imagination or are we seeing a re-run of Blair and Iraq in the pressures to arm the rebels in Syria? Noticeable that Cameron has said that Parliament 'dhould heve its say' but of course this means nothing because like Blair he can override them by using the Royal Prerogative. Worrying stuff.

Meant for the Politics topic perhaps?

[Tardis]

The Co-op bank de-mutualises to maintain it's credit worthiness by effectively defaulting on the lower bonds in it's structure of debt, replacing with openly traded shares for the London Stock Market.

Many of these investors will be pensioners

The repercussions through the rest of the industry could result in higher interest rates having to be paid as investors seek 'safer' places to put their nest eggs.

The Chief Exec hasn't really explained how the bank can still be wholly owned by the co-op (a mutual), yet still be subject to the rules of shareholders. Plus, effectively all those people who expected dividends from the co-op, might now lose them to 'the city'.

[Stanley]

Tiz, you're probably right. Bad eyesight..... Never mind, it's still a valid comment.

[Tizer]

I wonder what `the City' will make of the Co-op's environmental campaigning and its funding of the Labour Party?

Listened to ex-BoE Governor Mervyn King on Desert Island Discs. He's strict about setting aside time every morning for thinking. I agree with his comment that we (or rather the news media) shouldn't be asking politicians to make decisions on big issues every 20 minutes but should give them time to think about the issues.

[Tardis]

I'm not sure about the ethical stance of the Co-op and the approach of the city. This will all have to be explained by the organisation, because most of it's lending is still funded by those bond holders.

The City has never worried about political parties accounts, as far as I'm aware. The £3million overdraft must be sucking funds from them though.

[Tardis]

the bits in the Banking Commission report that caught my eye:

There was an ‘accountability firewall’, the report says, between those in supervisory or leadership roles and those on the frontline guilty of misconduct.

The public as taxpayers have bailed out the banks. The public have the sense that advantage has been taken of them, that bankers have received huge rewards, that some of those rewards have not been properly earned, and in some cases have been obtained through dishonesty, and that these huge rewards are excessive, bearing little or no relationship to the value of the work done.

The underlying causes of poor banking standards do not lie only in the banks themselves. The financial crisis, individual bank failures and the recent string of conduct failings have all been characterised by poor regulation in the UK and in many other countries

[Tardis]

Interesting that on #WATO the FSA was described as having tools it never used, and being incompetant.

So will Lord Adair Turner be returning his investiture?

[Stanley]

I'll believe the rhetoric about accountability and 'naming and shaming' when I see bankers and NHS executives being led out of the building in handcuffs. Till then, don't hold your breath!

[Tardis]

Very difficult to see that happening when it also involves the political elite

[Tardis]

Very difficult to see that happening when it also involves the political elite

Anyone watch BBC's Question Time where Bojo suggested Gordon Brown should be jailed, and the cheer from the audience?

[Tardis]

Anyone watching the current political storm in Ireland about their banking system?

Most of RBS and HBoS losses are wrapped up in property deals in that country. Could be some interesting fall out

[Stanley]

Mark Carney takes over at the BofE today. I wish him luck.... (LINK)

[Tardis]

Mark Carney takes over at the BofE today. I wish him luck.... (LINK)

Very auspicious, especially as it is Canada Day! (Happy Birthday Canada)

[Tizer]

As Victor Meldrew would say, "I just don't believe it!". We told my dad's bank, Lloyds TSB, 3 months ago of his change of address (by letter) when he moved to the Extra Care House yet they are still sending his mail, including his statements, to the old address. Mrs Tiz is on the phone now to the bank's head office and having to berate them because they're insisting he must phone and tell them of the change himself (even though we've said he can't hear on the phone). They won't accept Mrs Tiz telling them even though the local bank branch has previously agreed she could represent him and deal with his account. All this obstruction from companies is driving us round the bend! On top of all this, Lloyds TSB is splitting into separate businesses, Lloyds and TSB, and that's going to cause him problems. He was a TSB customer in Blackburn and since he came to Somerset in 1996 he's used the local Lloyds TSB branch but now they're going to dump him back into TSB and say he'll have to deal with Blackburn (200 miles away!) rather than the local branch when we have any concerns, enquiries etc. We're going to move his account to the Nationwide instead. Excuse my French, but stuff Lloyds TSB!

[PanBiker]

No consolation to you Tiz but I dumped TSB donkeys years ago when they insisted on levying charges for 3 consecutive months for one minor mistake (overdrawn by £7.50 with no overdraft facility). Obviously that elevated me to public enemy number one and they would not budge on the charges. I took up a similar stance in the branch and would not move from the counter until the manager came out to see me. It was Friday and the bank was packed. They tried to usher me into his room but I refused and stood my ground. When he eventually arrived at the counter I asked him to remove the extra charges for what amounted to a minor mistake. He refused but would not justify how the bank arrived at £60.00 in charges for a minor discretion. I closed 6 accounts on the spot, asked for all the money in cash( which caused a bit more flapping) and walked across the road to the Yorkshire Bank and opened 6 new ones. I remember that there was a bloke behind me at the TSB waiting to pay in and I heard him say "you tell i'm lad" as he instigated a small ripple of applause from the other customers watching me take the manager to task. That was 35 years ago. I always tend to use their "hole in the wall" though it's faster than my banks!

[Tizer]

Well done Ian, Mrs Tiz has already penned a letter to the Lloyds TSB head office and I'm going to write to The Times about them and also EDF who've given us similar trouble. The Times is running a campaign against organisations that don't make allowance for the problems of elderly and disabled folk.

[Tizer]

Here's the letter sent to the national newspaper, The Times, today by email:
"Dear Sirs,
"You are to be commended on your campaign to expose the poor treatment of the elderly and infirm by large businesses and other organisations in the UK. My 94-year-old father is not yet ready for my wife and I to activate Power of Attorney (PoA) but he has memory and mobility problems and difficulty communicating which means it is safer for us to handle most of his affairs. This grey area before activating PoA is not understood by the large organisations and they've caused serious problems during my father's move to an Extra Care Home.

"For example, Lloyds TSB failed to act on a change of address letter signed by my father and now won't accept our complaint and request for them to instigate the change. They say that he must tell them, as we don't have PoA. EDF Energy are as bad. We read the meter at my dad's former house on the day of sale completion and phoned EDF to give them the reading and report the change of ownership, but they refused to accept it from us. We explained that he's moved to a care home and can't communicate with them, that we own the house, that we pay the bills, that all EDF correspondence has been between them and us for years now...but they still wouldn't budge. We pointed out it had to be done that day so that the new owner could take over the account but the response was: "Sorry, it's the Data Protection Act, it's more than my job's worth if I were to accept what you say over the phone.

"The British public desperately needs an investigation into why these large organisations find it so difficult to adapt and to prevent such problems. It's time to break up the oligopolies, establish competition and give the consumer a real choice."

[Wendyf]

My brother had the same problem on the phone to Santander a while ago, trying to move money for Mum to a new account within the same bank. Mum was with him and spoke to the person on the other end of the line, but they asked her for an account number and as she can't see well enough to read she couldn't do it. He had to take her into the bank to do it in person.

[Stanley]

My commiserations to all of you.... My only defence against the dark arts of the oligopolies is to keep my dealings with them as simple and regular as possible so I don't attract attention. You can't do this and have to suffer their gross incompetence for that's what it is. I feel a NOP coming on!

[Tizer]

Yes, time for a NOP! And here's another example of bank incompetence. The bank responsible for my credit card has increased the authorisation limit over the years (without asking me) until it has reached a ridiculous level many times higher than I would ever spend on it. This increases the security risk by allowing a card thief to spend a large amount of money on the card. Although they don't like it, I asked the bank in writing to reduce the limit to a figure which is a small fraction of the present level. After a while they responded with a letter asking for confirmation and wanting evidence in the form of details of two recent transactions, plus date of birth plus expiry date of the card. I can appreciate the need to check but what strikes me as incompetence is the fact that the envelope in which they want me to return the card has `Card Delivery Services' written prominently on the front as part of the address - they might as well write "Contains personal details and very useful to a thief" on the envelope! Why haven't they got the sense to use a nondescript address, perhaps a simple PO Box number that doesn't even have the bank's name in the address? I guess that requires too much thought on their part!

[Tardis]

A small word of thanks to the TSB in town, who intervened on my behalf with a computer that said 'no'

Even they thought that it was strange

[Stanley]

They've done the same to me Tiz.... As for the address.... Incompetence! I rest my case.

[Tizer]

A small word of thanks to the TSB in town, who intervened on my behalf with a computer that said 'no'

Our local Nationwide has been very good to us during the 15 years we've been with them, business as well as private - I even wrote to the money section of a national newspaper to say how good they were. Somebody at head office must read the paper and the branch staff got a pat on the back from them. Now we are having problems with my dad's Lloyds TB account Mrs Tiz asked Nationwide about transferring him and whether she could be named on his account too. They said it was no problem, he'll need to come in the first time and sign something but that's all. Why do most companies make everything so difficult when a few just operate like a well-oiled machine!

[Tardis]

Power of attourney, rather than names on an account might be better. I'm not sure about the Law, but when someone dies I know that the bank closes access to the dead person's accounts. It caused a few problems with my Mother-in-Law

[Wendyf]

A POA stops when someone dies, so having one doesn't help in that situation.