F*cking Banks!

What I can't stand is seeing charges for £30 levied on my account when a direct debit for £10 or so "cannot" be paid on my behalf.

Smee, if you want to get straight through, dial yr. bank's hotline number and when the 'press one' options come up, hit the 'hash' key twice for SYSTEM BYPASS and INSTANT MINION.

Banks are great if you get paid once a month on a given day, never actually need anything from them apart from ATMs, and live very close to your branch.

Unfortunately I am sooooo not this person.

Fuck you guys, I've decided to owe someone else money. (Like the idea in when transfering this debt you "lose it".)

HOWEVER when you work in a service industry, it's fair to expect (angry) complaints about inadequate service to crop up as part of your job, especially if it's finances. Most people are charming until someone fucks with their cash flow. Most people who ring up these hotlines are cross about something, have had an emergency, or are chasing after a fuckup perpetrated by a machine. They've sat on hold for Christ knows how long listening to 3 years' worth of the Four Seasons and are aware it's not a good idea to take it out on the poor schmuck working for the call centre who's first to get your call (I generally save it for management, as they're the ones with an investment in how things are run, not some poor C2 wifey, student or McJobber who doesn't fancy bar work).

Of course it is also said call centres job to make sure I never get that number. They are - in part - being employed to be shouted at and so hopefully are aware of this and don't take it personal.

(that's a lie, I agreed with Ronan)

My most recent probelm involved my ATM card. I got a savings account, but it wouldn't let me deposit into savings. So I went to the bank, but it was closed (2pm on a weekday). I saw the drive-through was open, so I tried that. After waiting in my car for a really long time, I got up to the speaker only to find out that they can't help me with that problem through the drive-through, I'd have to come in some time later when they were open. So I eventually did get there when the lobby was open and had to wait forever and wait again, repeat to fade.

Wait, that's a lie: I needed a new checking card from them once, and they screwed up getting it to me before I left on a business trip. BUT they directed me to their only branch that was open on a Sunday afternoon, which was in a supermarket, and this absolutely killer Polish guy helped me out -- he was the best customer service person I have ever in my life encountered, absolutely Jeeves-like, to the point where one began to wonder if he once did some sort of high-level international diplomacy in Poland but had lost career traction when he emigrated. Ladies: if you are looking for a husband, I highly recommend the terrific Polish guy at the Bank One branch in the Jewel sort of over by Devon and maybe California here in Chicago.

I've been lucky now with them for twelve years. But you never know...

I can arrange overdrafts, pay bills, transfer money to another account without using cheques, switch money from my current acount to my high(er) interest savings account (I get about 3% on my current acount, but it only results in a pound a month) and vice versa in seconds, and I also get a much better looking cheque book and debit card than most people too (which incidently I can order at the click of a mouse.)

So go on, move, you know you want to. Still don't trust them though despite them being alledgedly the "ethical bank".

http://www.tie-a-tie.net/windsor.html

RAAAARGH! Why is it that every time I travel abroad, even though I let my bank/credit card company know in advance, my card keeps getting refused until I make a mighty expensive international call to persuade them to let me spend my own money?

And so they tell you the security has been lifted on your card and you can now use it, and you go to a cashpoint and it still doesn't work and then you phone again and the bank tries to tell you you've been entering the wrong pin number. The same pin number you've been using for the last five years. It is kind of unlikely, eh?

wow. i've never had trouble with that - and i've travelled to alot of fucked up places. i'm sorta worred that if my card ever gets lifted someone is going to make off with alot of shit!

yeah it sucks! next time i travel (next week, actually) i'm wondering if it would be any use at all to notify the bank before leaving so they could put a note on my account and not freeze it, or if all the freezing is done completely mechanically and no human even knows it happened unless there is an angry phone call.

I got sent a letter from my bank yesterday saying that it was "in my interest" tyo contact my bank straight away about my account.

Should I be concerned (I'm not in my overdraft, tho I have just taken out a loan) or are they just trying to sell me stuff?

That sounds very vague indeed, surely there was more substance to the letter than that?

in these turbulent times, you should consider rescheduling your loan repayments every couple of months (don't know the official terms in English, just that the intrest rates are all over the place, deals are to be had) - probably something like that

No, there was no more substance than that. Simply "It would be in your interest to phone us urgently about your account." No extra bumf, no leaflets, no telling me how I can rejig my loan, anything. I went to my online banking but there was nothing popping up. They didn't send me an email either. V. odd.

I would call them, just to check you haven't been defrauded or something. It's not like you've got anything to lose by calling them.

Apart from 30 minutes of your life jumping thru hoops to get to a call centre employee who can't help you

Yeh, i'll give them a call tonight.

A collegue was telling me about a time she got a similar letter, rang up, made an appointment to see someone is person, then they just tried to sell her home insurance and get a credit card.

So my debit card got skimmed about three weeks ago now and I'm STILL waiting on my replacement debit card. Originally was told within 5 business days, then I was told 7 business days, and finally told 10 business days. Now its been 14 business days and still no sign of the card. Called the bank yet again this afternoon to find out what was going on, turns out I have to order another one by visiting the bank in person and waiting ANOTHER 10 business days (or so they say). Never have I been angrier at a bank. I keep having to go back to the only local branch, find parking, pay for parking, and withdrawing more cash to get me through the next few days. Which would be fine, but when I kept being told I'd only have to wait another couple days, I figured I wouldn't withdraw too much. I hate banks.

how do they work

TD is way convenient with replacement debit cards. You just walk in and say "I need a new debit card" and they give you one. It is activated instantaneously.

Got to the end of my chequebook without having received a new one. Phoned Barclays to ask for a new one and they told me I'd received one 8 years ago which their records show wasn't finished. Said "oh, umm..." a bit and told them I didn't know where it was.

Woman says "oh well if it's MISSING that could be very serious, we must etc etc" which I thought was a bit daft since it's almost certainly in my parents' house and if nobody's used it in the past 8 years then they're probably not about to, so I panicked and said I'd accidentally destroyed it. Now I am being charged £12.50 to cancel it.

Fuck you, banks!

(also, fuck me, for making up a weedy lie out of paranoia that the woman's tone suggested I might be charged if I didn't, and it not working)

Anybody else that banks with Chase and/or U.S. Bank get that lovely email this morning about their email addresses being compromised? We got doubly slammed, since my wife and I both have accounts at Chase and our mortgage is through U.S. Bank. Hopefully the spin is true and this is nothing more than the email addresses, but annoying.

getting a loan for a house is some serious bfgoanduofnadofvzllll

you'd think they would actually want your business considering that you are going to pay them back 2-3x the value of the loan

My bank loaned every moron in the country money to buy houses at grossly inflated prices. Or to build houses to sell at grossly inflated prices. As did every other bank here. And then housing prices collapsed, and the government said they would guarantee all bank deposits, and now we are a colony of the IMF.

blimey, just saw an advert for some new company...use your valuables to get a short-term loan. Banks are getting into pawn-broking.

ugh, banks. so i had to go deposit a check for my wife today into an account that isn't our main one and is kind of annoying because they have like one branch and ATM in the entire Loop area. anyway, planned to make the trip and do the deposit though the ATM because its quicker. no dice, down for routine maintenance (who plans routine maintenance on an ATM for the lunch hour on a weekday?). go into the branch and, because of the ATM being down, there is a line with about 15 people in it. and, despite having six employees wandering around behind the counter, ONE teller window open. ONE. thirty-five minutes later, and my opportunity to actually eat lunch over my lunch hour shot to hell, i get to the counter to make my deposit. and, y'know, its not this poor girl's fault so i'm making polite small talk with her during the transaction and she goes, "gee, everyone thats coming in today seems so crank". UM GEE I WONDER WHY.

I have been to a bank to open a checking account on my lunch hour, and not been able to talk to a rep within my 30-minute window because all but one of their customer service people were on their lunch breaks.

six months ago:
me: can i open a new isa with your bank, i've already got a savings accounts with you?
them: that's not good enough, you need a current account and to open a current account you need photo id
me: i don't have a current passport
them: then tough tits

time passes, i get a new passport, cost nearly £100
me: can i open a current account please, i have id
them: we don't do that "in branch" anymore, just download the app, it'll take you 3 minutes
me: ok, thankyou

later that same day:
web: you can't open a current account because we don't have an email address for you, would you like to add one?
me: yes please
web: just use your card reader to validate yourself
me: i don't have a card reader (or a card)
web: or you can use biometric validation in the app
app: you've just registered so you can't use biometric validations yet, please try again later
me: *SOBS*

every use of the app or the web requires the password again, only they never ask for the password but the 4th, 1st, 10th letters of the password which i can't work out in my head (said password being a bunch of random letters, not a word).

same bank asks me every year if my savings account is still required. i've not added anything to it since i opened it, no, nor taken anything out, it's a savings account. i'd still like the money to be mine though, thanks.

They don't have those rules that cost them potential customers for fun, though. Some of that is them being forced to investigate/report fraud or links to shady regimes/enterprises/industries by stricter and stricter regulations.

Banks are getting pretty unusable. There's so much bullshit done under the pretext of protecting me from fraud - all the "we flagged up this transaction, please confirm this was you" messages, and of course even if you confirm the transaction still won't have gone through. And so many hoops to jump through to transfer larger sums, the other day I had to tell two different ppl on the phone that yes I have made sure that the builders I'm paying aren't scammers, after what felt like hours and hours of hold music.

yeah, i like that banks have to check. but i was there, in person, with passport and id and would've preferred a real person to do said checks in front of me. the biometrics validation on the app apparently entails video and voice recordings done on my phone.

and i actually want to move my isa from the bank that has closed the nearest 5 branches to me, despite billions of pounds of profits, partly as punishment for those closures. so we're talking 10s of thousands here, surely they can spare / employ one person to do that?

this perhaps needs to be in the 'technological advances' thread

The credit union that I have my mortgage through has the absolute buggiest website, not very reassuring. And the nearest branch to me is in INSIDE THE FREAKING PENTAGON (NB I do not work there). The nearest accessible branch is in DC, which is a pain.

I've been astonished and disconcerted by the lack of banking security in the US compared to the UK. User name? Password? You're in! No codes or readers or two-step confirmation or pictures of ladders/giraffes etc. Makes me constantly nervous.

Yeah even when I lived in the US ten years ago I had a card reader for my UK bank and my expat pals were commenting on this.

Oh, missing from my whinge upthread: the wonderful gambit of "we'll send you a text with a confirmation code to finish this transaction", followed by failing to send that text until I've been logged out of the bank's website.

after a week of it telling me to try again later i was all ready to go to the bank and plead with them to open a current account for me. but i checked before leaving and the biometric app finally let register. i do worry now that it'll only recognise me if I'm not wearing my glasses, have just shaved and am standing in the bedroom so the light is just right but hey, current account approved.

not being able to do things in person is absolutely enraging. i'm here, i'm talking to you, this is a commitment, we're both human beings

text this morning at 06:45 to tell me things i already knew - account approved but not yet open.

For real is there a UK bank that won't flag up random transactions because of "fraud alert"? Co-op person told me on the phone that if I answered affirmatively to the "was this you?" text a transaction would then go through within 2 hours. Not the case - it just gave me the same "oh ok try again then lol" message I got from santander and when I did the card still got declined.

hsbc hasn’t done this to me in years, kinda wonder his hard they’re trying tbh

log into bank...

"We notice that you have not viewed your account statement online for a while. View your online statement now" (once for each of current account, savings and isa)

look at statement. last change was 6 months ago. THAT'S WHY.

The 'your monthly statement is ready to view online' email you can't seem to opt out of is still baffling to me. Ironically I only really check my ALWAYS AVAILABLE statement once a month or so anyway.

Been having to go to the bank more often because I'm volunteering at an immigrant centre and a lot of ppl there need accounts (obv), and in the UK as in Portugal, what I've found is the general standard of the people working there is high, friendly, helpful people trying their best, but banks are woefully understaffed. Like the Lloyds on Upper Street, you arrive and there's a cue, so you join the cue, turns out that's only for withdrawals, everything else has a separate "cue" which is in fact not a cue but rather ppl randomly standing and sitting around, thus much confusion about whose turn it is. Last time there were two people in charge of us, one of which could only help with online banking and nothing else. Standard line is "do everything you can via phone or online", which doesn't work for my clients, they need to provide letters of assurance that can only be handed in personally, plus many of them do not speak English. That is admitidely not representative but I also resent being pressured to opt for listening to hold music for an hour or wasting my time with an AI that's incapable of helping me out when I could be taking care of this with an actual human.

> ppl randomly standing and sitting around

in nat west on a saturday morning there's a queue in front of the little pedestal thing to get your name on the list to be seen, and then you sit around randomly, which confuses people who don't know about the list. the person in charge of the list is also attending to customers so often there's nobody there. it's not great.

why do banks not have counter service on a saturday, the only time some people can attend? i'm at work 9-5 mon-fri and the bank is an hour's roundtrip away.

that's some f0cking bullshit

My bank not only closes it's branch nearest to me at 5 pm, but they even close the attached ATM kiosk at 5 pm!

And I mean, close close. Most locations require you to use your card to access kiosks off-hours, this one does not.

banks just couldn't gaf, could they? every service they offer, digital or in-person, is shit and mostly designed in the hope it triages you away.

no wonder the newer digital banks are so popular, easier to start again than reform one of the big legacy banks.