If someone stole my Visa Electron...

[NoFastMem]

...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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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.

[NoFastMem]

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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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.

[NoFastMem]

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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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

[NoFastMem]

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.

[NoFastMem]

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.