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TSB Bank
…......
Its other face. !
If anyone can suggest how, if at all, I could have handled the following any differently I would sincerely like to hear from them.
With regards to the two amounts offered in compensation, but never received, should I for instance ask them for it now or is it too late. The thing is that I am now feeling a lot more able to deal with the situation than I was at the time that the following events took place.
The only thing I can really say about the story that follows is that every word is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I apologise for the long winded, detailed explanations in the following, but I feel that if I try to skip over some of the detail ('to cut a long story short..!!) that the reader might not fully appreciate how successive events panned out.
Unless you actually experience anything like the following saga, it's very difficult to know how you would have dealt with the situation.
At the time, I was fairly vulnerable, I had just suffered from a horrendous car accident, I was a full time driving instructor and whilst waiting for a pupil for her lesson, I was sitting in my car, engine off, seat belt off and was just about to get out of the car when a guy in a stolen Ford Mondeo came round a bend at some speed, he lost control and ploughed into the front of my parked car pushing the car some twenty feet down the road, because I did not have my seat belt on, I went through the windscreen causing severe injuries to my back.
I suffered bouts of total body paralysis some time later and was forced to give up working. Compensation....Almost ZERO.
But that is not part of the following story, I have only included the above to give you some inkling as to my vulnerability and inability to deal effectively with all that happened next at the hands of the TSB Bank.
I still have all the of documentation, letters from the banks ('CUSTOMER CARE..?? Dept) to confirm everything I am saying.
It was a few weeks after my accident that I felt OK enough to get to my Bank and try to sort things out.
My car had been completely written off, but being self employed and not able to get any form of sick pay, I needed to try and get back to doing even a few hours work a week.
I saw the manager a MR, A D ?. He knew me well enough having been a customer for many years at his branch. I explained the situation about the accident and suggested that until the insurance company paid out for the car that he could take the future payments for the bank loan from the insurance that I had been paying for the past three years.
Without any reference to his records, he quite simply said that as a self employed person I was not able to claim from the banks PPI. He knew that I was self employed.
When I asked him why he had sold it to me as he knew that I was self employed, he just said that it was 'Part of the deal and a bank policy that all personal loans are covered by the extra policy'. The fact that it was of no use didn't seem to have occurred to him.
I had been paying nearly £45 a month for nearly three years for something that I didn't want and could never use, just because it was 'BANK POLICY'.
Resigned to not really wanting to deal with banks policies, fair, unfair or whatever, I asked if I could have another bank loan to cover the purchase of a new car so that I could get back to work ASAP.
No problem said MR, A D ?, the only problem is that you should really pay off the old one before I can authorise a new loan.
But, I can't do that if I am not working. MR, A D ?, then suggested that if the insurance company would agree to send the settlement cheque direct to him at the bank, he would ensure that it cleared the old account with the rest helping to lower the amount I needed to borrow for the new car.
OK, sounds good to me and he was trying to be as helpful as he could.
I rang the insurance company from MR, A D ? office, MR, A D ?, actually spoke with them, they agreed to send him a fax straight away confirming all that was agreed on the phone. Which they did within five minutes whilst I was still with him.
So far, so good. Armed with my new agreed bank loan, I went to a few garages, found a car and paid cash for it that day.
MR, A D ?, rang me a few days later to confirm that the insurance company had sent the cheque and that he was now sorting out the final bits and pieces.
AND THIS IS REALLY WHERE THIS STORY BEGINS.........
MR, A D ?, PAID THE INSURANCE CHEQUE INTO THE WRONG ACCOUNT.
For the next 9 months or so, I was actually paying off, not one, but two bank loans, both incurring PPI.
My fault in part, because I was having to deal with a lot of pain and discomfort and did not at any time check my statements.
As soon as I did notice the problem, I made an appointment to see him to sort out the problem.
Instead of him just holding his hands up and saying. Whooooooops!, sorry, I made a mistake, he tried to blame it on me by saying that I had insisted on the money being paid into the other account.
MR, A D ?, in minutes could have rectified the error, but instead he decided to go straight into defensive mode. Primarily to cover himself.
What happened next would make a James Bond film look like a Disney cartoon.
Strange things started happening to my accounts, I would pay my takings in to cover my standing orders. The money would disappear, the standing orders would not get paid, I would get nasty letters from creditors, then a week later all my money would magically reappear and my account would be in credit again.
This happened time and time again over a year or more, I tried to change banks, but with my credit score now so far down the minus scale, no one would touch me.
Letters that I sent to the Banks 'CUSTOMER CARE DEPARTMENT' were always acknowledged, but were always very rude and sometimes bordering on slanderous.
One letter suggested that 'The bang on my head from the accident might have made me confused'.
Both my wife and myself were by now becoming very, very depressed.
Now the real dirty tricks started.
I tried to make appointments to try and sort out this problem.
I was always refused.
Whenever I rang anyone they would politely ask me to hang up and say that they would ring me back in a few minutes on my mobile. (mobiles then had no recording devices..!!)
On two occasions I insisted on a meeting, I was told that everyone was too busy, but that I could meet with a 'Mr Clark' (not his real name) on the corner of ????? Street, at ?O'clock.
Both times I was checked over for any sort of recording device and hidden microphones, I had to show him my mobile and show that it was switched off, both times the meeting lasted just minutes, both times I was warned about creating a fuss.
During the period that my money kept going astray and then coming back again. I had a strange phone call from a guy who said that he was a manager of a branch somewhere. He told me that my money would appear in his banks accounts and that he was instructed to return it usually about a week later.
He was aware of what was happening and said that if I just gave up trying to sort out the problem and accepted what had happened then all this stupidity would stop.
I never found out who he was or where he came from.
Eventually, after about eighteen months to two years I wrote and said that I really could not take any more from them and wanted to give up. I said that I would walk away providing that they agreed to remove any records from their database about me.
In effect, I had never existed as far as the TSB were concerned.
They replied almost straight away with a very, very carefully crafted letter agreeing to my suggestion and offering me by way of compensation a sum of £200. WHICH I NEVER RECEIVED.
And that should have been the end of the saga.
But, the TSB were not allowing me to get away so easily.
About three years later, I started looking for a mortgage. Every evening I would phone a couple of providers, go through the usual question and answers and then suddenly, they would all very politely say that 'I'M SORRY, BUT WE CAN'T REALLY HELP YOU AT THIS TIME'
It was only after about four nights of polite refusals that I plucked up the courage to ask WHY.
''Well sir, I am not really allowed to discuss this with you, but maybe I could suggest that you apply for your credit report, that might help you''.
So I sent off my £1. And a few days later the biggest shock of my life came through the post. (I still have the original copy)
The TSB had recently placed a note on the Experian site saying that I had absconded owing £750 and that they had no way of contacting me.
I was still at the same address, I still had the same phone numbers, nothing had changed.
They had waited for nearly three years to get their own back on me for trying to stand up for myself. Someone in their office had bided their time for three years.
I was shaking so much when I rang and spoke to a snotty nosed girl about it whose first comment was ''Well if you paid your debts then these things wouldn't happen''.
As calmly as I could manage I asked to be put through to someone with at least half a brain. A few minutes later a very apologetic sounding lady came to the phone and without going into any sort of detail, or asking any questions just apologised and said that within the next ten minutes the entry would be removed. Which it was.
They followed this up with a letter the following day admitting to their mistake and offered me £250, as compensation. I NEVER DID GET THIS CHEQUE EITHER.
This week, nearly twenty years after the event, I have finally plucked up the courage to apply for a PPI refund.
But, what I would really like more than any money even. Would be for someone from the TSB to meet me and sincerely apologise for the nightmare two years that they put my family and myself through.
I genuinely believe that if had not been for the huge stress that they caused, I would have eventually recovered a lot more than I have done and a lot sooner.
And that's it.
Of course I fully understand that a few words cannot fully convey the real pain and suffering that the TSB put me through, trying to deal with fresh air, you can feel it, but you cannot see it, you can't reason with it, not stop its relentless onslaught, the days that I was unable to work because I was crying and shaking too much to be able to drive because another cheque or standing order had not been paid due to 'Insufficient funds'
During this period, I think it was ITV did one of their undercover reporting stories.
They reported on a guy from Wales who ran a motorcycle business. They did manage to wire him up as he met with this mysterious Mr Clark on street corners and record everything that was said.
Sadly, this guy had had enough and committed suicide whilst the programme was being researched, he had been made bankrupt, lost everything, but whilst the programme was being aired it was almost as though it was all about me and everything that was happening to me, almost word for word, letter for letter.
And, it all started with the same or very similar small error on the banks behalf. The bank....TSB
YOU REALLY COULDN'T MAKE IT UP...!!!
PS, Please feel free to make any comments about the above, or say if you or someone you know has had the same or similar experience.
…......
Its other face. !
If anyone can suggest how, if at all, I could have handled the following any differently I would sincerely like to hear from them.
With regards to the two amounts offered in compensation, but never received, should I for instance ask them for it now or is it too late. The thing is that I am now feeling a lot more able to deal with the situation than I was at the time that the following events took place.
The only thing I can really say about the story that follows is that every word is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I apologise for the long winded, detailed explanations in the following, but I feel that if I try to skip over some of the detail ('to cut a long story short..!!) that the reader might not fully appreciate how successive events panned out.
Unless you actually experience anything like the following saga, it's very difficult to know how you would have dealt with the situation.
At the time, I was fairly vulnerable, I had just suffered from a horrendous car accident, I was a full time driving instructor and whilst waiting for a pupil for her lesson, I was sitting in my car, engine off, seat belt off and was just about to get out of the car when a guy in a stolen Ford Mondeo came round a bend at some speed, he lost control and ploughed into the front of my parked car pushing the car some twenty feet down the road, because I did not have my seat belt on, I went through the windscreen causing severe injuries to my back.
I suffered bouts of total body paralysis some time later and was forced to give up working. Compensation....Almost ZERO.
But that is not part of the following story, I have only included the above to give you some inkling as to my vulnerability and inability to deal effectively with all that happened next at the hands of the TSB Bank.
I still have all the of documentation, letters from the banks ('CUSTOMER CARE..?? Dept) to confirm everything I am saying.
It was a few weeks after my accident that I felt OK enough to get to my Bank and try to sort things out.
My car had been completely written off, but being self employed and not able to get any form of sick pay, I needed to try and get back to doing even a few hours work a week.
I saw the manager a MR, A D ?. He knew me well enough having been a customer for many years at his branch. I explained the situation about the accident and suggested that until the insurance company paid out for the car that he could take the future payments for the bank loan from the insurance that I had been paying for the past three years.
Without any reference to his records, he quite simply said that as a self employed person I was not able to claim from the banks PPI. He knew that I was self employed.
When I asked him why he had sold it to me as he knew that I was self employed, he just said that it was 'Part of the deal and a bank policy that all personal loans are covered by the extra policy'. The fact that it was of no use didn't seem to have occurred to him.
I had been paying nearly £45 a month for nearly three years for something that I didn't want and could never use, just because it was 'BANK POLICY'.
Resigned to not really wanting to deal with banks policies, fair, unfair or whatever, I asked if I could have another bank loan to cover the purchase of a new car so that I could get back to work ASAP.
No problem said MR, A D ?, the only problem is that you should really pay off the old one before I can authorise a new loan.
But, I can't do that if I am not working. MR, A D ?, then suggested that if the insurance company would agree to send the settlement cheque direct to him at the bank, he would ensure that it cleared the old account with the rest helping to lower the amount I needed to borrow for the new car.
OK, sounds good to me and he was trying to be as helpful as he could.
I rang the insurance company from MR, A D ? office, MR, A D ?, actually spoke with them, they agreed to send him a fax straight away confirming all that was agreed on the phone. Which they did within five minutes whilst I was still with him.
So far, so good. Armed with my new agreed bank loan, I went to a few garages, found a car and paid cash for it that day.
MR, A D ?, rang me a few days later to confirm that the insurance company had sent the cheque and that he was now sorting out the final bits and pieces.
AND THIS IS REALLY WHERE THIS STORY BEGINS.........
MR, A D ?, PAID THE INSURANCE CHEQUE INTO THE WRONG ACCOUNT.
For the next 9 months or so, I was actually paying off, not one, but two bank loans, both incurring PPI.
My fault in part, because I was having to deal with a lot of pain and discomfort and did not at any time check my statements.
As soon as I did notice the problem, I made an appointment to see him to sort out the problem.
Instead of him just holding his hands up and saying. Whooooooops!, sorry, I made a mistake, he tried to blame it on me by saying that I had insisted on the money being paid into the other account.
MR, A D ?, in minutes could have rectified the error, but instead he decided to go straight into defensive mode. Primarily to cover himself.
What happened next would make a James Bond film look like a Disney cartoon.
Strange things started happening to my accounts, I would pay my takings in to cover my standing orders. The money would disappear, the standing orders would not get paid, I would get nasty letters from creditors, then a week later all my money would magically reappear and my account would be in credit again.
This happened time and time again over a year or more, I tried to change banks, but with my credit score now so far down the minus scale, no one would touch me.
Letters that I sent to the Banks 'CUSTOMER CARE DEPARTMENT' were always acknowledged, but were always very rude and sometimes bordering on slanderous.
One letter suggested that 'The bang on my head from the accident might have made me confused'.
Both my wife and myself were by now becoming very, very depressed.
Now the real dirty tricks started.
I tried to make appointments to try and sort out this problem.
I was always refused.
Whenever I rang anyone they would politely ask me to hang up and say that they would ring me back in a few minutes on my mobile. (mobiles then had no recording devices..!!)
On two occasions I insisted on a meeting, I was told that everyone was too busy, but that I could meet with a 'Mr Clark' (not his real name) on the corner of ????? Street, at ?O'clock.
Both times I was checked over for any sort of recording device and hidden microphones, I had to show him my mobile and show that it was switched off, both times the meeting lasted just minutes, both times I was warned about creating a fuss.
During the period that my money kept going astray and then coming back again. I had a strange phone call from a guy who said that he was a manager of a branch somewhere. He told me that my money would appear in his banks accounts and that he was instructed to return it usually about a week later.
He was aware of what was happening and said that if I just gave up trying to sort out the problem and accepted what had happened then all this stupidity would stop.
I never found out who he was or where he came from.
Eventually, after about eighteen months to two years I wrote and said that I really could not take any more from them and wanted to give up. I said that I would walk away providing that they agreed to remove any records from their database about me.
In effect, I had never existed as far as the TSB were concerned.
They replied almost straight away with a very, very carefully crafted letter agreeing to my suggestion and offering me by way of compensation a sum of £200. WHICH I NEVER RECEIVED.
And that should have been the end of the saga.
But, the TSB were not allowing me to get away so easily.
About three years later, I started looking for a mortgage. Every evening I would phone a couple of providers, go through the usual question and answers and then suddenly, they would all very politely say that 'I'M SORRY, BUT WE CAN'T REALLY HELP YOU AT THIS TIME'
It was only after about four nights of polite refusals that I plucked up the courage to ask WHY.
''Well sir, I am not really allowed to discuss this with you, but maybe I could suggest that you apply for your credit report, that might help you''.
So I sent off my £1. And a few days later the biggest shock of my life came through the post. (I still have the original copy)
The TSB had recently placed a note on the Experian site saying that I had absconded owing £750 and that they had no way of contacting me.
I was still at the same address, I still had the same phone numbers, nothing had changed.
They had waited for nearly three years to get their own back on me for trying to stand up for myself. Someone in their office had bided their time for three years.
I was shaking so much when I rang and spoke to a snotty nosed girl about it whose first comment was ''Well if you paid your debts then these things wouldn't happen''.
As calmly as I could manage I asked to be put through to someone with at least half a brain. A few minutes later a very apologetic sounding lady came to the phone and without going into any sort of detail, or asking any questions just apologised and said that within the next ten minutes the entry would be removed. Which it was.
They followed this up with a letter the following day admitting to their mistake and offered me £250, as compensation. I NEVER DID GET THIS CHEQUE EITHER.
This week, nearly twenty years after the event, I have finally plucked up the courage to apply for a PPI refund.
But, what I would really like more than any money even. Would be for someone from the TSB to meet me and sincerely apologise for the nightmare two years that they put my family and myself through.
I genuinely believe that if had not been for the huge stress that they caused, I would have eventually recovered a lot more than I have done and a lot sooner.
And that's it.
Of course I fully understand that a few words cannot fully convey the real pain and suffering that the TSB put me through, trying to deal with fresh air, you can feel it, but you cannot see it, you can't reason with it, not stop its relentless onslaught, the days that I was unable to work because I was crying and shaking too much to be able to drive because another cheque or standing order had not been paid due to 'Insufficient funds'
During this period, I think it was ITV did one of their undercover reporting stories.
They reported on a guy from Wales who ran a motorcycle business. They did manage to wire him up as he met with this mysterious Mr Clark on street corners and record everything that was said.
Sadly, this guy had had enough and committed suicide whilst the programme was being researched, he had been made bankrupt, lost everything, but whilst the programme was being aired it was almost as though it was all about me and everything that was happening to me, almost word for word, letter for letter.
And, it all started with the same or very similar small error on the banks behalf. The bank....TSB
YOU REALLY COULDN'T MAKE IT UP...!!!
PS, Please feel free to make any comments about the above, or say if you or someone you know has had the same or similar experience.
