The Bank's wound me up again- the negative thread

[Nattie]

Ok, I hate queues and going into any organisation with one annoys me, I hate being put on hold or unable to get through to someone who can give the answer to my simple question.
So this is for bad service from a bank, financial institution

Over to you guys

[iancognito]

Re: The Bank's wound me up again- the negative thread

The Post Office in City Centre Manchester, lunchtime, how difficult is it to sort out the lunch rota or part time staff to cover busy periods? My record is 1 hour 15 mins to post a special delivery letter.

British Gas and BT have to be the worst on the phone

Banks? do they still have staff? the one here is just full of machines which are far more pleasant to deal with!!!!

[stevokenevo]

Re: The Bank's wound me up again- the negative thread

i had a couple of direct debits coming out the day before payday, only noticed by internet banking on the morning of the incident, i lifted cash from savings and deposited it at 915am. counter staff politely asked if the cash was to cover the direct debits, i sayed yes. She then explained she would ensure the cash served its purpose. Very helpful i thought, that has saved me bouncing the direct debit and incurring charges.

Nope, next bank statement i find out the have charged me £60 by way of a 'referal charge', all for the price of the girl asj#king the question, and pushing a button on her computer. robbing RBS *******s!

[Nattie]

Re: The Bank's wound me up again- the negative thread

The cashier above did not know her charges stuff and did not check for charges due to go out. If she said no charges were going out then she has made an error and you should be refunded for it. This is the problem with the systems themselves when referral charges are not instant and you cannot tell if they are going out unless you know the charges back to front and inside out. Poor training and poor customer service.

[Wasabicado]

Re: The Bank's wound me up again- the negative thread

This will be my first major post on this site and it involves the actions of HBOS, what they did to my wife & I and how I found support and the conviction to bite them right back. I t has always been my belief that bank employees are devious but I also found out the extent that they will go to lie and distort the truth. As such, I would never, ever trust one again. Never.

Around 6 years ago, a flood of letters poured through our door one day. They all came from companies and organisations informing us of direct debit approaches that had been returned. Some of these letters were from HBOS itself with regard to the mortgage and 3 HBOS loans. Now there were two salaries going into the current account and we couldn't figure out what was going on. When I eventually got past the phone-menu merry-go-round and spoke to a call-center employee, they couldn't explain it. Finally, I manged to get through to my own branch and I was told that "all activity on your account has been suspended due to misuse of a debit card".

Furious, I went up to see them, waiting over an hour to be seen by the nippy manageress. There I was informed that I had been using a debit card without enough funds in the bank. I admitted that I occasionally did this on the evening before pay day and had been doing for years and that if I acquired a charge I wore it without qualm. I was then quoted T&Cs, etc, and I asked why I hadn't been written to or 'phoned at home and here came the first two lies from HBOS: they had written to me several times about it and also called the home several times and when no response was received they shut the account down.

By the time I got the whole mess sorted out my wife an I were hit with the double-whammy of having to pay every direct debit twice in one month, due to them getting bounced previously. And don't forget, HBOS charged us £35 for bouncing each one, too! The cahrges came to huindreds of pounds! This put is way over our overdraft and then the screws started to turn. Suddenly, there were letters demanding repayment of the overdraft and the possibilty of the DDs and SOs being bounced yet again due to a 'promise' I had made to repay overdraft. No such promise was ever made to anyone in HBOS!!

Then, holds started getting slapped on HBOS credit cards due to 'inablility to contact holder', more lies and fabrication. Then, one day when I was in town, I decided to take some money out of the emergency savings account we had. I hit the ATM for £20 and it spat the card back with those dreaded words 'Please consult your branch'. I went in to the branch I was outside and found out that the account had been emptied yet the assistant could not tell me why. Several days worth of enquiries couldn't yield an answer, either. But then I noticed that the overdraft ceiling had come down by exactly the balance that had been in the savings account bar £1. HBOS had cleared it out with informing either before doing it or after.

By that tiem I knew what these people were up to. They had set out to cause my wife & I serious financial hardship. However, they were also very stupid in giving the game away. It was clear that they were attempting to wipe out the overdarft and were going to do so as soon as the salaries hit the account. So, off I went to Nationwide and converted an old savings account into a current account and parachuted all SOs and DDs into that account well before payday and then sat back to await the fireworks. A few days after payday, sure enougn the HBOS letters started pouring through the door and the phone rang constantly at night.

Not long after all that I lost my mum and what with HBOS making our lives hell over the by now spiraling debts we decided to call a halt to these massive outgoings and put ourselevs into a DMP. Things only got worse by doing that as HBOS were never off the phone at night, preying on our nerves at a most grievous time for me. Then I discovered that site and began to learn how do deal with those liars who made my life hell for a few years. I finally paid off the overdarft, closed the account and then went for them on the cards.

My motto for all of this is: If you kick a dog long and hard enough, one day it will bite you back!

[pompeyfaith]

Re: The Bank's wound me up again- the negative thread

i think a lot of the problems on this thread go back to when the high st bank manager disapeared and accounts where mainly dealt with at a central location HOPEFULLY when the retail and investment sides are split this will improve

[Celestine]

Re: The Bank's wound me up again- the negative thread

Wow, what a journey Wasi. Well done you for being so tenacious in sorting it all out

My motto for all of this is: If you kick a dog long and hard enough, one day it will bite you back!

I like that quote!! :beagle:

[Wasabicado]

Re: The Bank's wound me up again- the negative thread

Thanks, Celestine. Trust me, that's the abridged version I posted; in reality it was more of a horror story.

During all of it I began to see how the aggresive behaviour of banking staff could wear a person down. I'm sure you heard about the sad stories of men and women who took their own lives due to debt and pressure from their bank. I came across a few folk who seemed headed that way and I assisted them to the best of my abilities.

If you look at my story again you will see that, somewhere within HBOS, a person or a group of persons made a decision to hurt two of their long-term customers by cancelling all transactions on the account and putting it under lock-down and lied in the process regarding informing us prior to doing so. I'll never get over that, how an organisation that has YOU as a customer is capable of even thinking of doing that to you, let alone having the callous nerve to put it into operation. But they did, knowing full well that, aside from the flap of getting the account up again, the double-whammy payments and the £300+ charges we accrued would send us spirling over our overdraft limit. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence can see that that was what HBOS intended!

But, as we all saw, what goes around came around and they collapsed and fell. And it sickened me to see RBS getting bailed out by the government; they should have gone to the wall as a lesson to their partners in crime. I saw them then as nothing more than over-paid liars who have access to cheap mortgage rates and fat bonuses. And if I found myself at a dinner table with just one of them, I'd make my excuses and leave. I'll still have my self-respect, unlike these people.

You may all see this as a bitter, anti-banker rant and you'd be right. But if you've gone through a modicum of stress and grief that they put my wife & I through, then you will justify this rant and reinforce it.

I'll end on a slightly lighter note, that of a restauratuer up my way who has had enough of them, too!

http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/we...ite.6436823.jp