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Banking Gripes - Discussion |
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Written by Valda Lynen
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1) Anyone who has lived here long enough knows that communication in the public sector is a luxury. Once more I was 'had' by lack of information.
Waiting for a sum of money which was likely to take more than a month to arrive, my girlfriend in England offered to help with a small bridging loan. To free up my budget for a holiday, I agreed. She preferred to send me a cheque in sterling. It went into the bank on the 2nd May. I explained to the cashier that it was to cover my account until my money arrived. She took the cheque and gave me a chit.
Knowing that it would cost a bit to change the currency etc., I waiting patiently. 3 weeks passed. I phoned to the bank's telephone centre – they knew nothing. Asked them to ask my bank to phone me back – they didn't. Went back to the bank... cashier explained, "Trois semaines? C'est normale."
"So why didn't you tell me that it took so long, I told you why I was doing it."
"I didn't know that you didn't know."
"It takes half a second to do money transactions around the world, how come my measly little cheque lies dormant day after day?" The money hadn't even left my friend's account, so I couldn't even accuse them of keeping the money in transit.
Two questions here. Why does it take so long? and Why wasn't I told?
The cheque was finally cleared on the 8th June. One month and 6 days after it was handed in. My sum of money had already arrived, so the whole thing was a waste of time. It's cost me the charges on the transfer, the stress of waiting and phoning and now I must reverse the whole procedure to repay my patient friend, with more charges.
2) On the aforesaid holiday in Britain at the beginning of June, I changed some euros at the airport, and decided to pay for any shopping with my Visa card. Each day I went to the hole in the wall of the local bank for some extra cash for the usual restaurant meals and the odd taxi. It mentioned that there would be a charge for the transaction, was I agreed? Yes, well, it was convenient and it couldn't be more than about £5 so I went ahead. Imagine my shock when I got home and looked at my account. For every £100 I took out, they charged me £147! Nearly 50% on top! The logic was, in my mind, that if I got my money from the machine, I was not using up the precious time of a employee, therefore the cost would reflect that.
Question: Why don't they display on the screen the % charged? It's lack of information again. Is it just to trap naive customers like me? Is that how they make their millions?
The most frustrating thing of all is that the individual is so insignificant, that any complaint would be like spitting at a juggernaut, like an ant getting the attention of an elephant, like the very worst aspect of globalisation.
Valda Lynen
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Where it becomes unfair is where the charge is perceived to be disproportionate to the level of service received, and here I agree fully with Valda (having just been charged £57 for a relatively small transfer between two sterling accounts!)
I suppose they can't display the amount of the charge on the screen when you make the transaction because the charges are based on variables and only accrue after the transaction, but they could certainly display a message inidicating that this transaction would typically accrue a charge which could be in the region of 'x' per cent of 'x' units of currency.
Complaining does help by the way. I complained to my bank that they were offering a free credit card to new customers whilst I had been paying £35 a year for mine for many years. I threatened them with moving my business elsewhere and I got a goodwill payment of £500. Not bad for one email?