Yorkshire bank and Whistleblower. True costs revealed

[BankFodder]

Although it was only a fleeting glimpse, Whistleblower revealed that the Yorkshire bank employ a sophisticated system to ascertain the true costs of handling delinquent accounts. The BBC revealed that this true cost is never more than £2.00 and that this assumes that the process in question is conducted manually.

 

We can imagine that it costs far less when it is automated and most of the problems raised by customer contractual breaches are not subject to manual intervention.

 

Please watch this forum and this thread for advice on handling your claim which will be posted in the next few days.

We believe that the Whistleblower disclosure has an impact on the way you should make your claim.

 

We should say that is these revelations made by the BBC are correct then it is difficult to reconcile these costs, with the £35 charges made by the bank and with the statements which the bank routinely makes in its court defences to the effect that its charges reflect its administrative costs.

 

We do believe that the bank should be invited to give an explanation.

 

We have heard that the BBC have invited the Yorkshire bank to comment and that so far they have refused.

 

I hope that they will come forward and clear up this very natural confusion within the next few days.

 

We should add that the Whistleblower reference to the Yorkshire bank costing system was only part of a very much longer and much more detailed piece of film.

Disappointingly the Whistleblower team decided not to use the rest of their footage in the documentary

[noomill060]

Perhaps they could be persuaded to make this additional footage available to CAG or post it on their own site?

[Gogivit]

As I have Virgin tv I have been fortunate to watch this programme twice. It astonishes me that banks are operating the way they do. It is shear greed and dishonesty that comes to my mind.

 

I do not think Yorkshire will respond to CAG's request as in my case; My branch manager never responds to my letters. Somehow I think branch managers who'm we have all trusted should resign. They know whats going on. It seems to me we are victims [edit]!

[Gogivit]

It only costs the Yorkshire Bank 0.09 pence when we go overdrawn. Im astonished.

[barnett]

Thanks Bankfodder, I will follow this thread with interest for any advise you can give on handling claims. I am still waiting for a hearing date for my two cases which were adjourned and transfered to Leeds. Please can you also advise on going back further than 6 years. Any advise gratefully received.

[Yoda]

Time to expose myself I suppose. Bankfodder has encouraged me to join the conversations so I can clarify what I said last night. As Bankfodder has mentioned elsewhere on the site, the clip shown last night was just a tiny part of the filming. I need to clarify that the true cost of returning unpaid items when you have gone overdrawn is LESS THAN £2 as I said verbally. NOT 9p as some of you appear to have picked up from the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was me explaining to Amanda how it worked & we used a simple debit & credit transaction to illustrate this. The BBC in true media style have shown the clip in such a way as to make it appear that I was showing the charges sheet.

Hope this clears things up a bit.

[bandonbhoy]

thank you for that explanation. as it was on screen i also saw the figutr 0.09 and concluded that what was showing wsthe actual cost of loss for the charge to be applied

[barnett]

Yoda, just wanted to say thank you so much for coming forward and taking part in last nights programme. I,m sure there are hundreds of people like me with Yorkshire bank accounts who are extremely grateful to you.

[bandonbhoy]

doesn't the weight of evidence that weighs heavily on the sides of all consumers against the greed and avarice of banks trying to justify their profit making motives which are as we have seen on the side of [Edit] not allow us to force the government to bring in legal measures throughout the UK to criminalise those organisations that carry out these pratcices? The banks have organisations that lok after thier interest, but have clearly shown by what has happened over the last ten years to have turned blind eyes agisnt the banks [Edit] schemes. When the oil companies were making huge profits in the 70-80's, didnt the chancellor o f the time bring in an extra tax to claw back much of th extra profit? retrospectiuve legislation! the appalling thing last night was the old gentleman who wanted 500 of a loan, but was turned down probably because the computer ptogramme didnt give an old buddie many credit points, then the employee tried to sell him insurance. It is all righ to rip off the poor, but it is not all right to garnt him a loan? HYPOCRASY. I hope that some conscious driven MP reads this(if there are such animals left) and serioulsy takes up the [Edit]banks. A law should be brough in that forces all banks to refund all charges taken from all customers i the last ten years. If the banks statements aretrue, then they only have a small fraction who are charged and it wont make much dufference to thier profuist. However I would guess that the figures are very much larger than we think or they state. Gordno Brown could guarantee his winnig the next election if he instigated processes NOW to open up these [Edit] organistaions that drive thier staff into stress treatment clinics/counselling/ retirmenent/redundancy

[bandonbhoy]

zootscot,

 

thank you for your editing.i was so angry after that prog

[zootscoot]

You are forgiven. I think we're all a little angry ;-)

[noomill060]

yoda-I quite fancy Amanda, dont suppose you could give me her phone number?

[Yoda]

yoda-I quite fancy Amanda, dont suppose you could give me her phone number?

 

Noomill,

 

I don't have her number but if I ever see her again, I'll be sure to put in a good word.

[richard625]

noo...if you don't get anywhere with her, send her on to me and point out that i'm due soon for a big payout and will treat her to a rather lavish Nando's.

[weewizard69]

Hi after this whistleblower find on Yb, should i still submit my list of charges the same way? using the spreadsheet etc?

 

Cheers

Richard

[Tigs]

to be honest i'm astonished that the figure of £14 was even thought of. i worked in banks many years ago, when this sort of thing was genuinely done manually. we used to take the ledger to a manager and he would give the yay or nay on the spot. no more than 5 minutes max.

 

as i have worked with computers for a number of years, i always assumed that the act of bouncing, paying or whatever each item was automatic. In which case, £2 seems rather an overestimate, unless they are paying their computers way too much!

[noomill060]

I am beginning to wonder if (among other thiings) the bank's penalty charge figures and the associated interest could be a way of artificially boosting a bank's bad debt figures to off set this against tax.

 

Bank imposes charges upon charges upon people who can barely manage to keep their heads above water at the best of times, their balance rapidly snowballs into the red, with no hope of ever getting back into the black because the customer has been deceived into believing its all their own fault and that they have brought it all upon themselves.

 

The artificially imposed debt is then audited and added to the bank's bad debt, which can be off set against the bank's tax bill.

 

If later on maybe in a future tax year, the customer actually pays off this debt, it is with compound interest, so the bank wins again.

 

Shoot me down in flames if Im wrong, which I probably am!

[nevos]

What do you expect from banks who got rich by funded the slave trade!

[JonCris]

Subscribing

[amonkey-rbs]

Time to expose myself I suppose. Bankfodder has encouraged me to join the conversations so I can clarify what I said last night. As Bankfodder has mentioned elsewhere on the site, the clip shown last night was just a tiny part of the filming. I need to clarify that the true cost of returning unpaid items when you have gone overdrawn is LESS THAN £2 as I said verbally. NOT 9p as some of you appear to have picked up from the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was me explaining to Amanda how it worked & we used a simple debit & credit transaction to illustrate this. The BBC in true media style have shown the clip in such a way as to make it appear that I was showing the charges sheet.

 

Hope this clears things up a bit.

 

 

Yoda, I expect you get asked this a lot. Is it possible to see a copy of the spreadsheet glimpsed in the BBC film? This would be really useful to me in another matter not to do with bank charges. I am trying to find a scientific way of working out the cost of each of the many tasks involved in using a computer. Your spreadsheet seems to show that you have developed an excellent way to do this and it would be tremendously useful to me if I could see it, for that reason. Could you help in any way?

[tsugi]

Having been chasing Yorkshire's little sister, Clydesdale; I am meeting my MSP next week to chase further abuses of the situation. My main issue is the same as noomill puts forward. Too often I hear the counter-argument (not just from banks, but also from the self-righteous perfect folk who have never been in debt): "if you didn't spend what you don't have you wouldn't get charged". However, the scenario I'm putting to the MSP is the inescapable spiral: you are self-employed and a cheque is late, or you are employed and there is a screw-up with the wage run. The amount is £1000. Six bounces to pay £800 happen, you are charged £210 in bounces plus £25 to tell you you're overdrawn. The cheque finally goes in. Now it's £1000 minus £235, leaving you £765 to pay £800. More bounces, more charges. Next month's payment now won't cover the bills and the deficit, and so on. It is tantamount to constructive bankruptcy.

 

The other point to note is that even if you DID get charged for overspending: it's the cost of bouncing an item - NOT a punishment meted out by the [morally superior] bank manager.

[avatari]

tsugi, a rather late response to your post admittedly (while I trawled the posts looking for interesting stuff).

 

Probably the clearest, most succint and apposite explanation for why the banks are guilty of far more than simply running a business. Too right about the moral aspect, too.

 

What a shame that the Supreme Court didn't see it the same way.

[tsugi]

Thanks for the comment.

 

The Supreme Court may have let it go, but I'm afraid I'm in it for the long haul! I'm not even necessarily reclaiming; I want the unfairness of the situation to get noticed.

 

My latest letter (via the MSP) is reiterating the request to get a breakdown of the £35 "costs" of returning a direct debit.

 

The bank don't refuse to say, they just change the subject - "it is the responsibility of the customer...." "We pride ourselves on our superb customer service..." blah blah.

 

We shall see what happens next.