A rant about insult and injury

[queenjayne]

I returned to this country 8 years ago, having lived 20 years (all my adult life) in the Netherlands - where gratuitous penalties are illegal and banks are obliged to send immediately a statement for each material transaction (anything over about £25, I think) on your account - and they may never charge for statements, advice notes or letters.

 

Imagine my surprise then on finding that I was quickly incurring on my new HSBC account here massive bank charges of which I was totally unaware until I received my monthly statement. It had gone something like this:

 

Being unable to find work straightaway, and being a single parent, I was on income support. I trustingly arranged DDs and SOs for regular expenses. One day, I checked the balance of my account to make sure I had enough to cover an upcoming SO. There was going to be a shortfall and so I nipped into the bank and paid in enough to cover this with a few quid to spare. Unfortunately, I had forgotten another payment and this led to my being overdrawn by around £3 for approximately 10 days.

This gave rise to a penalty of around £25, which meant my next DD could not be met, was reversed and in turn cost me around £30.

 

This was followed by several more automatic payments, with me depositing what I knew to be more-than-sufficient amounts to cover them, blissfully unaware of the gathering storm. When my statement turned up, it was accompanied by a nasty automatic letter demanding immediate payment of all the money I owed them.... by then over £500.

 

In addition, I was incurring interest charges, and in some cases penalties and bad blood with my creditors who had not received their money.

 

I went into my branch to discuss this and the manager smilingly dismissed my opinions that they had been secretly stealing the money I'd lent them, then helpfully insisted that I sign a managed loan agreement to pay off these charges. I fumed but presumed (wrongly) that there was nothing I could do about it. I paid the loan off in two years.

 

Sadly, all this was too long ago now. But it gets better.

 

Shortly before one Christmas, due to an error by someone at the benefits office, my IS was cancelled. The letter informing me of this was held up in the Christmas post so the first I knew of it was four days before Christmas Day, when the post office took away my book and told me I was scr***ed. Luckily, I was able to turn to relatives to tide me over but not before incurring more excessive penalties on my bank account. The benefits were sorted out in January and I received a Giro for just over £300, which I duly cashed. Foolishly, I kept only some change and deposited £300 into my bank account; this was on a Thursday. On Saturday morning, my Switch card was refused at the supermarket. Rushing to the ATM to check my balance, I found the machine swallowed my card.

 

The bank manager apologised on Monday, after checking my account and confirming that it had been in the black for over six months apart from a brief hiccup at Christmas (which I had explained to them). He said they'd simply forgotten to remove the old 'bad, bad customer, take card away ASAP' instruction from the system. I said this was hardly good enough, seeing the amounts they charge me when I make a mistake - how much was he going to give me in compensation. £10 was the answer. Looking back, I should have asked for more, and even gone after them for emotional and material damages (e.g. having no food for the weekend).

 

I'm not sure exactly how long ago this episode was but I'm going to be looking through my records this weekend to find out.

 

More recently, they excelled themselves. They offered me an 'account review' which turned out to be them touting for more business. I was by then earning pretty regularly and I said I'd like to see the preliminary proposal (I forget what they call it) they offered concerning a mortgage for me to buy my council house. A week or so later, I was alarmed by a notice to go to the post office and pick up an item sent from the HSBC. This involved a special trip into town and parking fees while the post office is in fact right next door to my HSBC branch. It turned out to be their mortgage proposal - the only reason I had to collect it was that it had INSUFFICIENT POSTAGE ON IT!!

 

I certainly won't be giving them my mortgage business. But why have I never changed my bank? Why bother - they're all as bad as each other.

[richardc]

Your story is typical of British banks treatment of their customers.

 

However, having read the FAQs and around the forum you know how to get your money back.

 

Good luck.

[queenjayne]

As stated above, the bulk of these charges ocurred sadly too long ago for recourse now. Hence the title of this thread: it's an impotent rant

 

I did read the FAQs before posting anything but I cannot promise to have memorised the contents. Also, I must admit that I have not read all 14,400 odd posts on here - I see here and there a statement that this will take two days but I think it will be rather longer than that. I still have only scratched the surface after a week or so.

 

I can't spend as much time on it as I'd like so I haven't got to the stage of counting up everything various banks/credit cards owe me yet. Life goes on and I have distractions such as trying to survive from day to day, looking after a family and then there's my mum's affairs to arrange; she just had a severe stroke.

[queenjayne]

Further to the ranting above, I have been going through my statements and found that there were some more excessive charges within this century. I'm concentrating on going after a credit card first, who took (current estimation) over £1000 off me in the course over three years, but I'll be getting to HSBC in time.

[queenjayne]

This topic was closed on 03/06/19.

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