I have banked with Smile.co.uk for ages now and never had a problem
However I had my mortgage with Abbey National.

Now about 4 years ago my lovely tiny introductory interest rate was about to run out.
I noticed that Abbey we advertising an equally new and exciting rate. So I wandered into the branch and asked the man if I could transfer to that rate. "No, that's new customers only" quoth he. (this was before the Nationwide ads). "But I have not missed a payment in two years, please let me have that". "New-customers-only, now shove off".

So off I shoved and got a new mortgage lined up at Nationwide. I contacted Abbey and asked for the balance I owed.
They sent this to me and it included a £99 redemption fee. Fair enough, they had told me about this at the start.
Paperwork in place I left it to Nationwide and Abbey to sort it out.
On the day the re-mortgage took place I got a letter from Abbey and noticed that the fee had gone up to £200.
With no other option I paid up, even though the fee had changed from what they had quoted only days before.

Once the re-mortgage had gone through I wrote to Abbey and said I thought it was rather shitty of them to up the fee without a good reason or mentioning it.
Their reply was 'Tough shit, we'll do what we want'.

About a year later the Guardian Money section ran a story about these charges and how it wasn't right. They had online a letter you could download, fill in your details and get your money back.

So I did this and got the £101 back.

Sorry for lack of funnys, or any kind of interest really, but I did get my own back on Abbey. Cunts.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Mon 20 Jul 2009, 17:49, 2 replies)

The thing is
not every customer knows heaps of corporation law and civil law. Not every customer has read through over 200 pages of laws just to get to basic grips with how stuff like this works. For this reason banks can get away with all sorts of naughty.

I was doing some low-level coffee-boy work with a firm, this firm wanted a cleaner, they gave me the job of going through the contracts for the cleaning contractors. A couple hours of reading up on the laws and I knew more about the regulations they were quoting than they did (it was an argument over a clause in the contract).

Now when a business that incorporates this stuff into their contract can't even get it right fuck knows what hope the most of us have. The only reason I found it is because I went through the entire thing with a fine tooth comb, and it was my job at the time, if you have another job and it's a minor 50 quid inconvenience from a bank and you're knackered from doing whatever it was you do at work...
(Frozen_Banana Shaved against the grain; thoroughly unrewarding., Mon 20 Jul 2009, 19:28, closed)

I had a similar experience
...when moving house, but went into a branch and told them that it would cost me nothing to move to Bradford and Bingley because they paid your transfer fees. So, did they want my custom or not?

They said "let's have a look in 'the other book'" and lo and behold, there was a special rate in there for awkward customers, with a nice big cashback as well.

Result.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Mon 20 Jul 2009, 23:30, closed)