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Coffee House => Coffee House Boards => CH / General => Topic started by: NoFastMem on February 04, 2007, 05:53:15 PM
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...I probably wouldn't even bother to cancel it, since chances of them being able to actually use it somewhere are pretty much nil. :evil:
Just been trying to buy tickets to London for next week and was just about to pay when I got declined. According to GNER, they're "bound by a rail industry trade agreement" not to accept Electron cards.
WTF. :-( I'll have to ask someone at work who isn't a second class citizen to buy them for me.
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What is Electron?
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X-ray wrote:
What is Electron?
It´s a ¨debit¨ card that they give to people who have a poor credit rating.
Most places take it now, but a lot don´t as the transaction isn´t guaranteed by the bank.
If one was to buy a ticket on a train with a normal debit card and the account attatched to the card had insufficent funds to pay for it, then the bank would still pay the transaction and the account would go overdrawn, even if the account has no overdraft facility.
In the same situation with an electron card, the bank would refuse to pay the transaction to the seller.
IIRC
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Is this the same GNER that have trains Ive seen in Manchester that look bad compared to those in Bangladesh?
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CannonFodder wrote:
X-ray wrote:
What is Electron?
It´s a ¨debit¨ card that they give to people who have a poor credit rating.
Most places take it now, but a lot don´t as the transaction isn´t guaranteed by the bank.
If one was to buy a ticket on a train with a normal debit card and the account attatched to the card had insufficent funds to pay for it, then the bank would still pay the transaction and the account would go overdrawn, even if the account has no overdraft facility.
In the same situation with an electron card, the bank would refuse to pay the transaction to the seller.
IIRC
Right, except that the Electron will decline on the spot if you don't have the required funds. If you do, they become immediately unavailable upon the transaction and disappear from your account balance within a couple of days.
In other words the perceived risk isn't there in practice. I'm switching banks anyway since the Halifax is a bloody joke, hopefully I'll be able to get a Maestro card or something remotely useful.
"Hopefully," he said, as though in any sane world one's credit rating should have such a bearing on eligibility for a debit card. The banks never seem to worry about my ability to pay the bills when they're charging me for not having any money.
Sigh.
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Oh I see.
Well, speaking of credit and cards and things, lemme tell you all a story.
Draw up close, kids and listen to Uncle X-ray...
When I was working on minimum wage back in 1990 in Dorset (£2.25 per hour IIRC) I was paid weekly in cash. I never had a bank account because my whole aim in life was simply to save enough money to buy an A500 (which I eventually did). It was a silly thing, not to open an account. Because:
Fast forward to 1995. I had studied radiography in South Africa and came back to the UK to seek my fortune. But...nobody wanted to know me (none of the banks that is). Even though I had about £4000 that I could deposit straight away, I couldn't open the account because I didn't have an address and utility bills to prove that I wasn't Al Capone's great grandson. Fortunately the landlady had a contact at RBS and when I went to see him, he opened a very basic current account for me. That's all I could get.
When I left the UK at the end of 1996 I had the good sense not to close that account. I kept it open and came back to seek my fortune (thus far not found) in the year 2000. I didn't have much money when I arrived (less than £1000) but I had organised a job pretty sharpish before I got on the plane ;)
So after a few months working I was able to go in and ask for a savings account with better interest. They saw I had been a customer of theirs for some time and gave me another card.
But what I really wanted was a credit card. I asked RBS for a credit card and they said I need to provide a bank statement and a utility bill. I said cool, here are all my RBS statements going back quite a while and here is a direct debit notice from one of my board registrations.
You know what they said? They said I can't provide a statement from the same bank at which I am applying for the credit card!
I said wtf man, you know me. Are you trying to say I have this current account under dubious circumstances?
They weren't interested. They said I can't do that, I must produce another bank's statement. When I asked them if the credit card division was the same as the savings account division, they said no, they are separate entities. I said what's the problem then? They couldn't explain, all they said was no. You know the attitude "The computer says no"
Fine.
I applied for a Capital One card and they gave me the lowest of the low with a credit limit of about £200. Well it was better than nothing and I made sure I used that, but also paid the account off in full before they could charge me interest. Steadily the credit limit was increased and they gave me a better deal.
Now this is where it gets interesting. After the very first payment I made via RBS cheque to Capital One, I got a letter from RBS offering me a credit card.
Wtf, eh?
You know what I think...they keep track of who your payees are and use that for cold calling. Ever since I have had that Capital One card, I have had RBS trying to crawl up my arse with all sorts of tempting offers. I have had them phoning me, writing to me, sending offers in the mail, you name it.
And I have said no each time. Why? Because when I needed their credit card they wouldn't give it to me. And I had not established any kind of extra trustworthiness in the interim. So they can stick their credit card.
And that's my story for you. It has taken a while, but I have now built up a decent credit history. Of course I had good credit history in South Africa but that doesn't count. I don't own any property and I don't have a lot of money but my credit limit is ten times better now.
The secret is: paying on time and paying it all if possible. To be honest I don't use the credit card in a way that the bank can milk me. It is a convenient way to pay for online purchases and that is why I like it.
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mel_zoom wrote:
Is this the same GNER that have trains Ive seen in Manchester that look bad compared to those in Bangladesh?
I didn't think they operated trains in Manchester, but maybe they sold off some old ones, which would account for the disrepair. :-)
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Right, except that the Electron will decline on the spot if you don't have the required funds.
Not when you use it on the train with the hip swipe machine.
If they allowed them on the station machines they would have to allow them on the hip machines too.
Technical reasons are usually given as the reason.
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NoFastMem:
These were easily the dirtiest and smelliest trains Ive seen in a first world country. I am surprised they feel they are in a position to turn down a paying customer!
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mel_zoom wrote:
I am surprised they feel they are in a position to turn down a paying customer!
Funny you should say that, as their parent company is on the verge of bankruptcy...
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CannonFodder wrote:
If they allowed them on the station machines they would have to allow them on the hip machines too.
Hmm, for the benefit of what? Consistency? Because that goes out the window once you accept one Visa card and not another.
I dunno, it just does my head in that I can't pay with a perfectly good card for the sake of a few simpletons who might not get their heads around the need for the charge to process before goods or services are provided.
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NoFastMem wrote:
CannonFodder wrote:
If they allowed them on the station machines they would have to allow them on the hip machines too.
Hmm, for the benefit of what? Consistency? Because that goes out the window once you accept one Visa card and not another.
I dunno, it just does my head in that I can't pay with a perfectly good card for the sake of a few simpletons who might not get their heads around the need for the charge to process before goods or services are provided.
The banks don´t give a sh!t about your custom, or your conveniance. That´s why they gave you an Electron Card. Otherwsie you´d have a VISA Debit or a Switch(Maestro) Card.
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Paying money to use the train system in this country is a waste of time, coutless times ive not had my ticket checked on trips to London and back and to be honest as I usually end up standing through my entire journey on a crappy, smelly, overcrowded poor excuse for a train whay should I pay anyway?
And they want people to give up their cars!! HA!
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NoFastMem:
"Funny you should say that, as their parent company is on the verge of bankruptcy."
Looking at their trains Im not surpised!
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Definition of electron: 'Has a charge but carries no weight'
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That's a great 'train' of thought old bean :lol:
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Cheers me ol' pal.
Up for a :pint: sometime? I'm somewhat 'flexible' but it's got to be somewhere in easy 'access'. I'd have to get the (American) Express down to your manor sometime.
Excuse the many puns...
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Fun update, I had a collection agency call me yesterday regarding water rates for my old house in Colne. I let them know when I moved (which they demonstrated with knowledge of where I moved to on the phone) but they didn't bother to close the account 'til someone else moved in.
And I wonder why I have such a poor credit rating. W**kers. :-(
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PMC wrote:
Definition of electron: 'Has a charge but carries no weight'
:-D
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@ PMC
You're on, pal. I just gotta get February out the way, then we meet in early March if that's okay with you.
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NoFastMem wrote:
as though in any sane world one's credit rating should have such a bearing on eligibility for a debit card
A couple of years ago, when I had not accrued much of a credit history, I applied for a current account with a debit card (no credit facility at all), and was declined the account on the basis of my credit score. I questioned this and informed the lady on the phone that I was not asking for credit; I did not want to borrow any money from them. In fact, I wanted to give them money by paying my wages in to their bank each month! The phone-jockey did't have a reasonable answer for that so I told her to stick it up her arse.
--
moto
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I swear these banks must think we are all thick or something.
I got a call last year about an exciting new upgrade to my account. They wanted me to a check out the literature and asked if they could send it. They gave me a very abstract idea of what the benefits would be.
So I said yes, bring it on.
Okay.
So the literature arrived in the mail. I checked it out. They wanted to charge me £120 a year to upgrade my account so that I could take advantage of travel discounts, discounts when eating out, travel insurance discounts etc
So I added it up. If I made use of ALL the discounts I would be ahead by about £20 at the end of the year (in other words I would have paid £120 and received £140 worth of services).
But here is the catch: I am never going to use all those benefits, because it would mean I would have to travel like crazy. I doubt anybody would use those them all. When I looked through the list, only dining out would have any benefit to me. And even then the benefit I would get would amount to about £40 in discounts.
And then I would have to pay £80 for that facility.
I brought that up with the customer services advisor but of course they didn't have an answer for me.
The least they could do is nibble my ear when making me such an offer. Because I like a bit of passion when I'm being screwed over.
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I swear these banks must think we are all thick or something.
Nail. Head. Hammer. Hit.
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The bank you describe sounds very much like the gaggle of screaming chimps that is The Cooperative Bank. They offered me a loan recently for £4,000 GBP and after 5yrs I would have paid £9,997 GBP. That's 21% APR and PPI (Payment Protection Insurance) included for my good custom.
The {bleep}s refused me a credit card or a larger overdraft citing a poor credit rating and then out of the blue they offer me 4k?
Hah.
I remember the Electron card all too well. It's a slur on the VISA logo if you ask me.
Regarding loans though, you are entitled by law to cancel within a fortnight of receiving the sum, 30 days for the payment protection policy. Don't be afraid to cancel and find a better APR % and try not to use a credit card over something like a Visa Delta Debit card.
Another bit of advice would be to cancel Direct Debits. They are basically leeches sucking away at your bank account and will continue to do so even when the host is exhausted. I remember trying to cancel one a while back and didn't notify both the bank AND the payee. They charged me £32 GBP for failing to comply with the DD rules. That was Abbey National, the barstards!
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Hyperspeed wrote:
Another bit of advice would be to cancel Direct Debits. They are basically leeches sucking away at your bank account and will continue to do so even when the host is exhausted. I remember trying to cancel one a while back and didn't notify both the bank AND the payee. They charged me £32 GBP for failing to comply with the DD rules. That was Abbey National, the barstards!
Couldn't agree more about Direct Debit... Every time I pay BT they try to get me to sign up and save £x amount on my bill. It's just not worth running the risk of having the bank charge £30 for a failed transaction, charge again when I don't have that money, then take it anyway and slap an unauthorised overdraft charge on too. I must have lost hundreds of pounds on bad direct debits.
London was fantastic though. :-D
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Holy Sh!t! I thought we, stateside, had it bad.
I have what's known as a "secured" visa. I had to *PAY* them 250$ dollars to get a credit card with a limit of 200$ (It's now, after 4 years around 800). I'll never get that 250$ back, even if (when) I close the card. To make matters worse, I pay 7 quid a month, just to *HAVE* the card, I'm charged 21% interest (even after 4 years of *NO* late payments)and I have to pay a yearly fee of 75$, as a "maintenance fee".
All of this, just so I can "rebuild" my credit, but my credit is {bleep}, 'cos here, if you break a lease in an apartment, it's bad credit, even if you live in a shoddy apartment, which for all intents and purposes, is uninhabitable, due to a faulty stove. They let me move in, with the broken stove, said they'd fix it, but as soon as I signed the lease, they stopped answering my repair calls and ignored me, when I went into the office, to complain about it not working. The one time I tried to use it, the wiring caught on fire.
The funny things is, it's my "fault". When I complained to the State's Apartment Association, they said that even with witnesses and photgraphic evidence, I should have gotten a written work order and since I didn't have one, I owe them 7K, for a loss they received, even though they leased the apartment out one month *AFTER* I left.
I cannot stand Capitalism. :madashell:
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Eeeugh. I sorta wish I had the opportunity to get a secured card though. I'm not sure anyone offers them over here. I'm in the position now where I can't borrow at all to even attempt to improve my rating.
The funny thing is that I've always been sorta against borrowing in general but lately I'm in the situation where, with a decent and secure job, it'd make perfect sense to fix a couple of real short-term needs with a loan.
NatWest refused to open a current account for me last week. I have no doubt whatsoever that the Halifax has been reporting my bad history to the agencies... And it works out very well for them, as I literally cannot change banks.
I'm not sure you can even call it capitalism when I can't exercise the right to go elsewhere.
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NatWest were exposed a few years back for telling their employees not to open Current Accounts for taxi drivers, hair dressers etc.
Some guys from NatWest were alledgedly involved in the Enron scandal too... tut tut!
There was a TV show on in the UK here also (Tonight with Trevor McDonald) about how there was a rebellion against extortionate late-payment fees. Apparently banks have to prove in the UK if their late payment penalty fine is proportionate to the administration costs involved in writing to you. When they charge upwards of £30 GBP ($60 USD?) then you can take them to the Small Claims Court (where the maximum legal costs you can be hit by are £75 GBP unlike the big courts).
It is vital though to keep an eye on your online banking as lately I have had coordination discrepancies between cheques cashing, Debit Cards being charged and them actually appearing on the ATM cashpoints. Sometimes their computers are slow and don't network properly and then you get charged when you go unwittingly overdrawn!
:-(
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Hyperspeed wrote:
NatWest were exposed a few years back for telling their employees not to open Current Accounts for taxi drivers, hair dressers etc.
I thought that was the Halifax. At least I know that Halifax has been criticised for the same thing. It was around the time they imposed a limit on the number of bags of cash you can deposit on any one day.
That's right! Coins don't count as legal tender at the bank!
There was a TV show on in the UK here also (Tonight with Trevor McDonald) about how there was a rebellion against extortionate late-payment fees. Apparently banks have to prove in the UK if their late payment penalty fine is proportionate to the administration costs involved in writing to you. When they charge upwards of £30 GBP ($60 USD?) then you can take them to the Small Claims Court (where the maximum legal costs you can be hit by are £75 GBP unlike the big courts).
Yeah, I've been meaning to go over my old statements since I heard about that. I reckon they've had a few hundred quid off me, easily.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6170209.stm
Re: NatWest... Well, it's a crap shoot. I don't expect them to be any better than any other bank. My hope was that they might have less of my history on file, and at the very least just to not have to see Halifax at the top of my statements every month knowing how often they've f**ked me.
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Wow. You guys have it hard. In Canada it's totally different. They basically beg you to take a card. Even if you say you have bad credit history...They'll give you one, or ten if you ask, re-paint your house and send a kid to mow the lawn every sunday. No seriously.. not if you have bad credits, but if you have no history...they're on you like flies on {bleep} the minute you get out of highschool.
Banks don't perform credit history check to open an account as credit and banking are two seperate things. And all accounts come with a debit card. You simply cannot open an account without getting the debit card. I went to the bank the other day.. I mean, at the counter. I rarely do that cause they charge you fees for using this service but this one time I had to talk to someone. So I take my little bank-statement-book-thing with me... wait an hour in line because only one of the 15, count'em FIFTEEN counters is opened. I get to the counter, give the fatso my booklet and go on about what I need. Then she goes
-"Ok I will need your debit card".
-"errr.. why?"
-"well, to process this transaction sir"
-"I have my booklet here..."
-"It won't do"
-"I left the card at home"
-"You will need to get it then"
-"You'll be close by the time I come back" (banks are open from 12:00 to 12:05 here in Canada)
and this went on for a couple minutes.. They would not give me service *at the counter* *with my booklet* because I did not have the card.
As for credit cards.... I picked up one once I had a stable job. I asked for 500$, they wouldn't give me a card under 1000$. I said look, I *WANT* a 500$ limit. Well sure enough, I got out of there with a 1000$ card because they wouldn't let me have only 500$. Then a mere month or two later I receive an half-assed letter "Because of your outstanding credit history...." (at that point I stopped reading and laughed for about a week, the resumed readin) "...we have upgraded your credit limit to 2500$. So I call them right up.. yo wtf? stop that! They wouldn't. Seriously.. THEY WOULD NOT. Six months later, they pulled that off again and upgraded it to 5000$.
Then I lost my job and go through *very* hard times financially, had to use up a lot of credit. Which admitedly is not the right thing to do.. but when you're choices are to either use the card, or die of hunger.....
At the first payment where I could not meet at least the minimum requirement, they blocked the account. I call them, I explain the situation in all honesty, explaining that I have all the good intentions in the world to repay this once I get my mojo working again. The #$^#$@$^ morons closed off the account right away and gave the file over to a collection agency.
Now I can't get any credit anywhere. I've disappeared from their radar when I moved. I *want* to pay it back but after asking many questions to knowledgeable people, I will still not be able to get another credit card even if I pay them back. PLus, I'll need to pay it all in a single shot.
So that's Canada for you... They practically shove the damn card down your throat whether you want it or not, and at the first problem, your credit is dead pretty much forever.
Argh just writing things make my blood boil.
On a related note. I had the rent money +5$ in my account. I send my cheque to the landlord for the rent. In the meantime, the bank charges me 7.50$ in administration fees. So the cheque bounced and they charge me 35$ for the bounce. Plus, I had to pay my landlord's bounce fees also (standard clause on leases here). And, since this whole thing took a few days to sort out, I had to sent the cheque by express mail for another 15$. So instead of paying 595$ for the rent that month, I ended up paying 680$ because *get this*... They had to charge me 7.50 administration fees FOR HAVING USED THEIR FU*@#&*@ COUNTER SERVICE (the fatso episode.. I did come back the next day) instead of the ATM, which in any case COULD NOT perform the things I needed done.
I hate banks and money.
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They're starting to crack down on them in the UK. The DTI does seem a little bit woos though when it comes to banking.
If you ask me the banks are very much intertwined with the establishment. Britain's largest bank is HSBC (formerly Midland Bank). HSBC is the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation and no doubt their roots lay in the opium smuggling trade with Britain in Hong Kong back some time in the 1800s.
Barclays Bank, another biggy in the UK was funding the Suez Canal and the Channel Tunnel.
When you think about it, these masters of mathematics are our real rulers. They can take money from us for cryptic and obscure reasons and we are both complacent and legally ignorant enough to shy away from challenging them.
The insurance industry is an even bigger con (gradually banks are introducing a lot of insurance into their products such as the notorious Payment Protection Insurance). The insurance industry is basically a giant protection racket that protects large businesses and government institutions and we end up paying. The World Trade Centre was paid for by Lloyds of London (something like £4 billion).
What I'd really like to know is who owns and runs the VISA, Mastercard and PayPal systems... they are an integral part of most of the world's transactions and, like the internet and the UN, could be controlled soleley by the United States.
On a side note, I wonder if the £600 million over-budget on the new London Wembley Stadium could be being syphoned off to pay for another phoney war... not to mention the £7 billion over-budget on the 2012 Olympics...
Tut Tut Tut...
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X-Ray,
RBS obviously suck ass, cos (deep breath):
I've had an account with lloyds for 7 years, intermitently on the dole for some of that time, after a short peroid of JSplus last year I got a job, applied for a Credit Card from llyods, got turned down, then in 2 months (still with job- part time low wage)I opened a Internet Paypal thingy, went into the bank to sign up for internet banking, and to check the paypal intro payment thing, and they practically tried to shove a credit card down my throat! Which was nice.
So:
Be with a bank for a while
Express interest in Credit card
Have regular income for a while
and you're home free!
And once you have one Credit card with a good record (I tend to pay as I go, then I don't get carried away!)you can apply for a better one somewhere else.