If someone stole my Visa Electron...

[PMC]

Definition of electron: 'Has a charge but carries no weight'

[X-ray]

That's a great 'train' of thought old bean  :lol:

[PMC]

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...

[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.  :-(

[NoFastMem]

PMC wrote:
Definition of electron: 'Has a charge but carries no weight'

:-D

[X-ray]

@ 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.

[motorollin]

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

[X-ray]

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.

[Karlos]

I swear these banks must think we are all thick or something.

Nail. Head. Hammer. Hit.

[Hyperspeed]

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!

[NoFastMem]

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

[Methuselas]

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:

[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.

[Hyperspeed]

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!

:-(

[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.

[James]

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.