Banks pressurising Customer

Without boring you with a long screed about my misfortunes, but very briefly I slipped on some stairs, fell on my back, got up with no visible sign of injury.

48 hours later I collapsed, have been carted into hospital twice, surgery was scheduled for September, put back to October, cancelled as being too dangerous at the time, finally being scheduled for November 30th.

For someone who avoids going near doctors, never take drugs voluntarily, spent one night in hospital at the age of four and leads a healthy active life, enjoying all the things that doctors do not recommend, this was a complete shock.

However, in between hospital incarcerations, I had a letter from my caring, sharing bank saying my overdraft was being cut to some substantially reduced level, I didn’t need the level that I had, but might if something came up to get involved in.

I phoned the bank and ended up with hard nosed lady who took no prisoners, she grudgingly agreed to leave a realistic overdraft, but owing to my love affair with the local hospital I had not earned any money to feed into that particular account, apart from the fact that most of the time I was half way out of my tree with cocktails of drugs. I did point out that I had been in and out of hospital and was due to be operated on at the end of November, which carried very little weight, possibly some concern that if I snuffed it they may have to write the overdraft off.

They hospital gave me two shots of Ribena flavoured morphine which made me hallucinate for 15 hours, how drug addicts cope is totally beyond me, apologies for the digression.

I had discovered that I had several thousand bank shares and explained to the iron lady that I would prefer to retain them for the immediate future, since there some sort of bonus due.

The alleged bonus vanished shortly afterwards and the shares started dropping, time to sell.

I spoke to my caring sharing bank, who I had bought the shares through years ago, they no longer sell shares, they gave me a number to call.

Three quarters of an hour later, I get through to another hard nosed lady, she said they could sell them but I needed an online account and could take up to ten weeks to set up, by that time the shares would be substantially lower.

I got on to a stockbroker and sold them a few days later, cleared my overdraft substantially, without losing too much on the shares, lesson learned.

My operation came and went, with serious warnings any stress or vaguely rapid movement would cause serious bleeding problems, taken which ever way you like.

8.00 am Saturday morning, having had a very bad night with a lot of pain, disturbing and worrying my wife, who at this time was dead to the world.

I hear my mobile ringing, the only people that have my mobile number are immediate family and my caring sharing bank, it must be a family emergency, it won’t be a bank, they gave up working on Saturdays years ago.

Very carefully I rushed downstairs, the phone stopped and the landline starts, I grab the phone a woman’s voice asks for me, I as usual say “Who’s calling”, my caring sharing bank, can I identify myself?

I hit the roof, scammers would not phone at 8.00 am, the last thing that I am going to do is give security information to a casual caller, she refuses to discuss anything and we get nowhere.

Unfortunately I am bleeding and tell her to write to me, slammed the phone down after giving her an earful about people recovering from serious operations and calling first thing on a Saturday morning.

I get the letter via second class post (Snail Mail), they are reducing my overdraft by £400.00.

I was not overdrawn, the previous person that I had talked to knew that I had been seriously ill and was due to be operated on, what sort of bank rings at 8.00 am on a Saturday morning.

The service from this bank has been appalling over the last few years and I have now written a strong letter to the CEO, which may well be followed by one to the Ombudsman unless I can get satisfactory answers, which may well be beyond them.

I had problems with another bank some years ago and they refunded me £1500.00 as an ex gratia settlement, which I politely questioned, they replied refunding me £13,500.00. I turned the letter over twice to ensure that I had read it correctly.

A salutary lesson, make a note of every abuse, misinformation or any unacceptable practice and write a pointed letter to the CEO, before you switch banks, but do ensure you have a second bank account in credit, if you have, do switch, with only one account they will screw you.

If I don’t get a satisfactory response, be assured the Bank will be named and shamed, which is what we all need to do.

Potboy West.

Note:- I received a letter from the bank saying very little of use except, that the writer from Customer Service is only available after 10.00 a.m. on specific days during the week.

The saga continues.

The views expressed are not necessarily the editors and  accepts no responsibility for them, we do try to avoid offensive or litigious statements being made. They are written by concerned professionals in the industry who feel that these issues should be raised to ensure that all licensees are made fully aware of many hidden pitfalls.