Devils Advocate- why should i pay for your mistakes

[Nattie]

*******DISCLAIMER*******Come one let us get on with some gritty talk and discussion. I have decided to take the devils advocate roll so as to bring a hearty meaty discussion to the table. On this thread i will not be taking the view on charges that you know me for, I think the mindset you will recognise so i hope that you can see the no charges no nonsense approach.
*********************DISCLAIMER******************* ******

I have never had charges in my life and yet the fact that all you people are trying to get your charges back means i will have to pay for your mistakes. How can that be fair to me? I have savings and work hard for a living and always make sure i have money in my account to cover payments going out. Have you not heard of a calculator?

[Niklowe]

thats me

Bur it is an injustice to those who were forced into bank accounts by this government, who ill thought out the ramifications that it would cause

[Mad Hatter]

Look at it this way.

Why should i pay for your free banking? In nearly every other part of society the better off help the poorest.

Why should i, thru no fault of my own, be penalised for going OD?

Why do you allow me to go OD when clearly there is not enough there?

Don't pay my DD's and SO's if the money isn't there. I will sort it out with my creditor myself...

[Nattie]

I think the government is right to try a cut down on the amount of benefit fraud which costs me and you as a tax payer. The fact that people could manage their finances without a bank account and now are abusing the bank account will cost me, the law abiding tax paying bank account holder. I hope your mistakes will not cost me more money.

[Guest]

I think the problem with this premise is very simple.

It assumes that the bank have to make the level of profit that they have been enjoying and that is simply untrue.

If an element of the profit that they have been making is unlawful, then that should be denied them and this idea that they should be entitled to make that up elsewhere is wrong.

[Nattie]

If you mismanage your account then you should be penalised because you have abused the bank by using its money for your purposes. Should i say why do you not keep proper account of what you are spending? Why do you pay by Standing Order or Direct Debit if you cannot plan for those payments? The normal bank account holder will pay in the long run.

[PJ69]

I hope this is a 'what if' scenario Nat, and that you don't really believe this!! lol

What a lot of people don't seem to realise is that many people who rack up charges have done so through no fault of their own. I never had a bank charge for years, and always kept my account straight, until myself and long term partner split up. At the time I was working full time, with two young children, and he was a stay at home dad [we were better off this way]. However, when we split up and he moved out, he obviously had to get a job to provide for himself. This meant me having no full-time childcare for my baby, and no-one to pick my eldest up after school, or take him. I ended up having to put my youngest into full time nursery, and tax credits don't cover it all - this is when the charges started.

It started off with a charge of £8 per day for being a couple of quid overdrawn - when this happens the week before you get paid [monthly salary], then you get a £25 monthly charge banged on top, it quickly builds up. Also, because I was then living on a very tight budget, it meant I got charged again the following month - its a vicious circle once you get a charge, if you're living within a strict budget.

I reckon that's basically how a lot of people end up getting charges - so believe me, it's not that we can't add up, and its not that we are trying to live beyond our means - its just circumstances, and if they didn't charge so much in the first place, many people wouldn't end up in the debt they're in and therefore we wouldn't have to claim them back.

So there lol

PJ xx

[Nattie]

Cetelco, no judge has ruled that bank account charges are unlawful, in fact Lloyds Tsb has had two judges seeing the service it provides. Are we now against a bank making profits?

[Nattie]

I am sure that if you had gone to your bank earlier then they would have helped by providing an overdraft that would have seen you through those difficult adjustment of a break up.

[PJ69]

I had an overdraft, and I couldn't really afford a bigger one, cos at the end of the day its still a debt which I'd to pay back

[Guest]

You should know better than to say that I am against profit. Not at all - but the law states that one must not profit from penalty and I think, regardless of two inconsistent rulings, the idea that these are charges are for a service is simply not credible. Were it so, the tens of millions pounds that have been handed back totally uncontested would have not have been.

The banks can afford the best legal advice in the country and thus far, that advice has been to pay rather than appear in court. The two cases that you make mention of were not actually "won" by the banks but rather were "lost" by the claimants.

[Nattie]

Which, when you had budgetted and acclimatised to your situation in time would have eased. The Bank were there for you and if you chose not to ask for their help and then when you go overdrawn you complain about, well, they would have helped. This will end up with ME paying because of YOUR mistakes.

[Nattie]

Have you not been into a branch, they have costs and people in place to deal with people who cannot run an account and that costs money. There is administrative costs to provide the service of returning direct debits. You have informally asked the bank for an overdraft, surely you did not think it was free did you?

The bank have chosen to pay in some cases i have heard as a gesture of goodwill, it shows them to be nice chaps and chapesses.

[PJ69]

The only problem with that Nattie, is that it takes a while to acclimatise to such a huge upheaval in your life and I couldn't get any kinds of benefits. I had a minimum overdraft which they wouldn't increase at first, and they wouldn't refund the initial charges - if they had perhaps they wouldn't have spiralled the following month, then the following and so on. Once you've had charges, like i said, its a vicious circle because you always end up living in your overdraft then as the charges eat away at your wages. I finally managed to increase my overdraft to stop all the charges - after about 18 months!

[Nattie]

So the bank did help you and provide a service to you, and then you took them to court. That is how you repay them for servicing your account, by causing them distress by claiming service charges back?