I'm a student.
And I've had a bank account with "Monastery" for some years. Due to said studentishness, my current account has never been exactly overflowing; I do varying amounts of work in the holidays, but I reckon my total work-related income for the year is probably £1-2000 (though obviously plus the normal student support).

I recently (we're talking at the height of the recession here) applied for a credit card with them (largely for all the extra assurance the company is legally obliged to provide you with - anti-fraud, chargebacks etc). Now, they full-well know I'm a student, and also full-well know about my relatively small income.

So guess what my credit limit was?

£5,000. At 18.9% APR.

If I went on a spending spree tomorrow, I reckon I'd be trying desperately to pay it off for the next four years I'm at Uni, almost certainly without much success. I can't help but feel they're being a *little* irresponsible here.
(Merrep, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 22:52, 3 replies)

I must confess
All the grumblings about "the banks charged me this and that and won't let me take my money out" don't get a huge amount of sympathy.

With any other business, you'd play by their rules, after all it is what you sign up for.

I appreciate they are money grabbing barstewards, but then so is any capitalist based organisation.

I could get on my soapbox now but won't.
( ogwen69 has returned from Reddit, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 22:39, 5 replies)

Once saw a guy piss on an ATM
It was late in Derby city centre, Friday night loads of people out, wanting money out of the cash machine as they do. I was pretty sober and whilst walking down the street, I saw this drunk lad pissing all over the keypad of the town's busiest cash point. Cue a few minutes later and said man had now positioned himself at the opposite side of the street, laughing hysterically everytime somebody used the machine. NOBODY checks the keypad before inserting the card, and by the time people had clocked on to the piss, they HAD to put their finger in just to press the cancel button! Genius.
(silkysean pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 22:39, 4 replies)

I bought a pint of milk that cost me £29
£1 for the milk. £28 for the charges that got levied on my account due to not actually having any money in there at the time.

Cheers fuckwads.
(Big D, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 22:34, 2 replies)

I was going to post about how I work in a bank
...and that the customers are all utter cnuts, but it appears that the feeling's mutual....

Meh. It's just a job, I'd rather be a footballer but a blatant lack of skill ruined that ambition at an early age.

I am constantly surprised that people expect banks to be not-for-profit organizations, though; Big Businesses = Bastards. Twas ever thus. I'm just a little cog in a very big machine.

Aren't most other b3tans marketing/advertising twats anyway? :-P
(minlan no longer barks at bancleys, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 22:22, 6 replies)

Cashless banks?
Having sold a cheap-ish car, I had a few hundred pounds cash, which I wanted to pay into my bank. I strolled into town and while walking through a shopping centre, noticed a new branch had sprung up in there. woohoo.
I went in and approached the overly preened metrosexual chap at the desk, sat down, put my card and money down and asked him to pay it into my account.
"Oh, you cant do that here."
I had a look behind him for another desk, as I was obviously at the wrong one. No more desks.
"where do I go then?"
"you will need to go to your bank" he replied.
I had a sly look at the wall posters to see if I had made the Bank of Scotland / Royal Bank of Scotland mistake again, but no, I was defintely in the right bank.
"eh?"
"we dont handle cash here"
"but this is a bank"
"well, yes, but we have no means of handling cash in this branch"

WTF is the point of the place then?
I assume this chap sits there all day selling insurance and loans etc, but the whole concept of a cash-free bank just annoyed me.
(dave likes cheese, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 22:08, Reply)

BANKS = CUNTS
I've moaned about this before. The Post Office Bank mislaid my money which was 80,000 quid for nearly 12 weeks - it turns out they put a 5 instead of a 3 in my postcode. In itself fucking hellish but I had a 125,000 dollar bill to pay and the pound went down the toilet that weekend just as they mislaid the cash.
Oh they accepted they were in the wrong - after all I lost something in the region of 13,000 quid on the back of this - and offered me 200 pounds in compensation.
A boring story I agree but they were a bunch of incompetent cunts and I feel better now for this chance to vent my spleen.
(beaverwastemanagement a real company. I want to work for them!, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 21:10, 2 replies)

Bit of a pea but probably more relevant than the original.
Well, when I was in Iraq a few years ago I was lucky enough to get something called OSD. Operational Stand Down, where 4 lucky guys a week out of the thousands of troops there get to go to Kuwait, stay on the American camp and have fun and explore the city (which is very much like Dubai/Qatar).

As it was the first time I'd been out of the desert in 5 months I went a bit overboard with 5 months worth of untouched wages (with overseas extras) in the American PX. We're talking new DSLR's, Lenses, clothes, knives, Jet-Skiing in the Gulf, presents for people, huge cigars, food....new bags to put it all in. I was having a blast.
What I didn't know, is that this was flagged up back in England with my bank as 'strange behaviour' as my card had gone from not being used for so long to being rinsed. What I also didn't know, was that the American ATM's and chip & pin machines on base, were routed through America first, not Kuwait.

I got a phonecall off my dad a few days later (who was managing my mail etc. for me whilst I was away) saying the bank had detected fraudulent activity on my account and someone had been spending my money in Texas.
I didn't click on at first and neither did he. He had already told the bank I was in Iraq, not America and could prove it.

I got back every penny I spent there as the bank assumed it was fraud and got I to keep everything.

People were telling me the bank would check the CCTV monitoring the cash machine etc. and I'd get found out. I don't think the US Military give out their surveillance tapes willy-nilly though and I imagine the bank would be looking for them on the wrong continent if they did. That's about the only time the bank have done anything in my favour.
( Terry_Tibbs Coarse and violent nudity. Occasional language, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 21:01, 6 replies)

There's no other organisation as talented at complete an utter cuntery as banks
The planned and staged attempts at trying to get their fucking claws even deeper into you than the current account which offers a litany of useless accoutrements for a monthly fee. The contiunual upselling where you call to query a transaction and Pradeep, "My name is Jonathan", tries to get you to take out home insurance.

Banks are a necessary evil but what I dislike is the continual intrusion into my life solely on the basis that "We enable you to live your life as you want" As if their 'personal' banking service has bestowed upon them some kind of family member staus ...... Well fuck you. Fuck you in the arse and your Mum can lick the shitty bit after. Morrison's sell me condoms, does that mean they have a vested right in which sexual position I adopt?

I rally against the wankers. I argue every point, I refuse to give any quarter to them and do it with a smile on my face and a song in my heart - Every pound wrestled back from those Godless motherfuckers is a victory. In the unlikely event that my bank manager's reading (like he'd ever know who I was except a number on a balance sheet) then; Fuck you and all.
(SpunkyMcSpunkbubble Diddled your nubbin on, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 20:54, 4 replies)

Slight error...
A man in the United States popped out to his local petrol station to buy a pack of cigarettes - only to find his card charged $23,148,855,308,184,500.

That is $23 quadrillion (£14 quadrillion) - many times the US national debt.

"I thought somebody had bought Europe with my credit card," said Josh Muszynski, from New Hampshire.

He says his appeals to his bank first met with little understanding, though it eventually corrected the error.

It also waived the usual $15 overdraft fee.

BBC article: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8152278.stm
(Just a girl., Thu 16 Jul 2009, 20:47, 1 reply)

Genuine story
100% factual.

Around the time I was leaving school, a mate of mine called Simon opened a bank account with what used to be called TSB. A week or so later, he received his cheque book and cash card/cheque guarantee card in the post. All normal, you would think. His dad was a main-board director of HSBC bank and pointed out that the TSB had made a small mistake. Over the next 3-4 weeks, Simon went on a spending spree the like of which has rarely been seen, writing cheques left right and centre until eventually he gets a phone call from the branch manager of the TSB asking him to come in for an urgent chat.

The manager is pretty upset and demands to know why he has been so irresponsible and just how the massive overdraft is going to be repaid and which point Simon asks him to check the current account application form and specifically his date of birth, handing over his birth certificate as confirmation. At which point the manager just cuts up the cards and cheque book and tells Simon in no uncertain terms to fuck off out of his bank.

You see, he was still about a month away from his 18th birthday and his dad had pointed out that you can't legally be held liable for debts until you hit that milestone. The bank had screwed up by giving him a cheque guarantee card and there was nothing they could do to get the money repaid.

Free money.

Huzzah!


(Oh, and massive kudos to dad for the tip eh?)
( Linbox has a serious dunk habit, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 20:11, 4 replies)

Natwest
For once a topical QOTW for me.

Being a student I move around quite a lot, and being a student I have a tendency to forget to tell the bank that I have moved. Last October I moved into halls of residence and, for the first time ever, actually remembered to inform my bank in a timely manner. Deciding that I didn't actually like living in halls, I moved out in January and did my normal thing of not getting around to telling the bank for a couple of months. When I did go in I was told that I had a no trace on my account because mail had been returned, which I assumed was because halls had returned my mail to sender in the two months or so after I had moved out. I gave them my new address and thought nothing of it until two Fridays ago when a cash machine malfunctioned and decided not to return my card (it told me that I'd taken too long to take my card despite the fact that it had never attempted to return it). I duly rang up customer services and asked them to cancel my card and send me a new one only to be told that I'd have to go into a branch because the address they had on file didn't match the one I'd just given them. Knowing for a fact that I'd changed my address since I remembered having the conversation about the no trace, I asked them what address they had on file. It turned out that they still had the address I was living at before I moved into halls despite the fact that I had attempted to change it not once, but twice since then.

The next day I went into a branch, changed my address for the third time and asked them to send a new card to my local branch since I didn't trust them to actually succeed in sending the card to the proper address. I've been through a few cards since I've been banking with Natwest (two to drunken nights out and now two to being eaten by ATMs/ticket machines), and on previous occasions I've had a new card in 2-3 working days. I've been into the branch 4 times now and my new card still hasn't turned up. On the first or second visit I got chatting to a teller about it and she told me that for some reason it takes longer if you order the card in branch. So far I reckon I've been without a debit card for an extra week and half just because Natwest have been incapable of updating my address, not to mention the inconvenience and cost (bus fair) of having to go down to the branch a total of 6 times (assuming my card is there when I go in tomorrow). And of course none of this would have been a problem in the first place if Halifax were capable of maintaining their cash machines properly so that they didn't eat peoples cards.

Edited to add that on one of my fruitless trips to see if they had my debit card they managed to get me to sign up for a credit card (it makes sense to have a back up card in case this sort of thing happens again). I jokingly asked the woman if it was going to come before my debit card did - I'm starting to think that it will. I was planning to keep it in a drawer for emergencies, but I'm starting to think that it might be a good idea to use it for my day to day living and every time I use it transfer the purchase amount to my e-savings to pay the bill off when it comes. This way I can essentially make Natwest pay me interest on the purchases I make.

Update: I now have my card but they've somehow managed to reset my pin number so I'll have to wait about another week for them to send it to me, so the only thing I can actually use my card for is online shopping. At this rate I will almost definitely have the credit card before I can actually use my debit card in the shops.

Update 2: I now have the credit card and pin, no sign the new pin for my debit card. This is quite impressive given that the debit card had a good 4 days headstart on the credit card.
(mmm....beer, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 20:10, 1 reply)

first direct
err i bank with first direct, they are rather good sorry no horror stories (yet!!!!)
( discobunnywalker, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 20:10, 3 replies)

Some of my mates are bankers...
I recently went on one of them's Stag Do in North Wales. On the way back down to London in the minibus after two days of hard boozing, they had a four hour conversation about the economy.

To make it worse, my iPod battery ran out after 45 mins.

The utter, utter cunts.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 20:01, 2 replies)

Barclay's Bank stole from me, and I hadn't noticed.
They sent me a refund for £30 after they discovered they had been deducting money for that overdraft protection thing after I'd cancelled my overdraft. I hadn't even noticed the money going from my account. So I used it to buy this www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/womens/7fa9/
(ToysForBigBoys would spread her legs for Nick Clegg., Thu 16 Jul 2009, 19:53, Reply)

HSBC
I was moving into a new place and so needed to take out about £600 to pay for my first month's rent and deposit. Knowing that you can't take that much out of the cash machine in one day, and since I had a cheque to pay in, I went into the Knightsbridge branch. I got to the counter and paid in the cheque and asked to take out the £600 (I had this much in my account not including the cheque I'd just paid in) only to be told that I could only take out £500 in one day. I informed them that if I didn't get the money then I would be rendered homeless and probably have to sleep on the streets. Again I was politely informed that with my type of account I could only withdraw £500 in one day. This surprisingly enough got me just a tiny bit annoyed and if it weren't for the cheque I had just lodged I would have closed my account then and there and demanded to be paid the balance.

A bit of advice for anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation. If you start shouting "It's my money - why won't you let me have my money" in a busy bank (especially a busy branch in an affluent area like Knightsbridge) they tend to deal with your request rather quickly. Needless to say, the day the cheque cleared I went back and closed my account.
(mmm....beer, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 19:34, 6 replies)

Barclays
I opened a savings account with an interest rate of 6.5% about a year ago.
Before they'd managed to click OK on the computer it had seemingly dropped to 6.25%, although they never bothered to tell me this.

I've now closed the account because they are so useless, and the closing statement (only the second one in 15 months) said the rate was 0.8%.

As soon as I can be arsed I'm writing to them to ask why they've not calculated the interest at 6.5%, seeing as they've not told me it has changed!
( thistle, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 19:11, Reply)

I Robbed a Bank Once
I worked for a car and truck rental company while in college. The downtown office was in an area that had been neglected when the city "urban renewed", so the owners were fanatical about security and leaving cash about.

One Friday I worked alone due to the manager leaving early for a family event. She gave me a list with explicit instructions for making the bank deposit that afternoon. We had a fair number of cash deposit customers for the rental trucks, so a lot of cash on hand.

I almost forgot until too late, but I managed to lock up, grab the cash and deposit bag, hop into one of our new cars, and race to the bank just in time. I went in, filled out the deposit slip per the instructions on Florences note, and handed everything to a teller. She seemed a little shaken up, I assumed because of the large amount of cash -- it certainly had me shaken up. I recall it being several thousand dollars, at a time when $20 was a good days pay. I had never done a business deposit before, and the teller position gave me a nice view into the vault. I was fairly salivating at the amount of cash I could see!

Anyway, she handed me my bag back, and I noticed right away that it seemed rather full, but not having any idea what to expect I shrugged it off. I did have to ask the teller for my note back, I needed the office safe combination from the note.

Leaving the bank I was kind of in a hurry -- I was going camping for the weekend with my girl. I hopped in the car, zipped around the block, down the alley, and used my remote to open the garage door of the truck rental garage. I parked the new car in between a couple 28' trucks, stripped off my coveralls, and slipped into the office to put the bag in the safe.

That done, I got into my pickup, drove home, and headed off into the wilds of Idaho for a 4-day weekend.

When I got back to work, Florence was really pissed off! Apparently I had handed Florences note to the teller along with the deposit slip -- the note said, among other things:

PUT ALL THE CASH IN THE DEPOSIT BAG!

And:

THIS IS SERIOUS, DON'T MESS AROUND!

As these instructions were the only ones in all caps (with CASH & SERIOUS underlined), the teller read those lines and assumed I was robbing the bank. Some $75,000, plus our original deposit, had spent the weekend in our company safe. I had to give a statement to the FBI, but was fortunately off their wanted list by the time I got back to civilization.
(danalan Pretty good, for an amateur., Thu 16 Jul 2009, 19:09, 7 replies)

Cheques
Four working days to clear. Or so they pretend.

Paid in a cheque for 300 quid, spent some of it, then got a letter from them that it'd bounced. And my account debited £300. After the phone banking person told me it had cleared.

Fuckers.
(razakel, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 19:02, Reply)

banks - pah!
they lent me money - then wanted is back - bloody money grabbing gits!
( Rev. Jesse. broke his ankle, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 18:58, Reply)

They took my money!
I use my company credit card to pay for some of my stock purchases.
In any month, this amounts to quite a hefty bill and my credit limit isn't that big due to the fact that I couldn't be arsed to fill out forms to change it.
What I do, when I need to pay a bill, is to transfer the cash into my credit card to cover it.
I did this, as usual. Transferred a very hefty sum. The next day I tried to use my card and it was declined.
I phoned my bank who informed me that I'd exceeded my credit limit even though I told them I'd transferred more than enough the previous day to cover what I was trying to pay.
Long story short, I'd transferred the cash on the 26th and apparently, on the 26th of every month, any surplus funds left after clearing the credit card's balance get put into a "holding account".

I was told that if I wanted MY money back on my credit card, I would have to send them a letter of motivation, as if my threatening to break their legs wasn't enough.

In the meantime, I had to beg the company I was trying to pay to release my goods, unpaid for, knowing they were leaving the country while I sorted out this problem that I explained to them. I still think they thought I was telling porkies as it was so unbelievable. Luckily I trade with them all the time and they released the goods.

I got my bank manager involved as I prefer he fight my battles. He got nowhere, I got nowhere and in the end I gave up, transferred another hefty sum and paid the bill.

I had to wait until the 26th of the following month for some of MY money to be used to clear my credit card balance and as MY money that they held was more than my credit limit, had to wait another month for the balance of MY money to be put back to pay that month's bill.

The credit card company held MY money, MY surplus funds in THEIR account and got stroppy when I asked for it back!

By the way, I am in the process of changing credit cards because of this. I had to fill out TWELVE pages of forms. When I enquired last week why it was taking so long, they admitted that they'd lost my application.
( Flowerpot No longer has the vapours thanks to DTH, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 18:57, Reply)

Show me your what?!
Whilst sat in HSBC for over an hour trying to fix a balls up they had made, the 'counsellor' I was speaking to left the booth we were in to go find something or other of little importance to this story. While she was gone, I took the opportunity to survey the area for anything that might momentarily relieve me of my boredom. Lo and behold, I spotted a laminated guide to 'good practice' or some such bollocks stuck to her monitor. Amongst such gems of wisdom as 'Keep smiling' and 'Show interest in the clients problems' I spotted the holy grail of hilarious dimwittery that caused me great difficulty in keeping a straight face when she returned. On this guide to good practice were the words:

"Show the customer your knowledgeable."

I can assure you, the irony was not at all wasted on me.

Should any of you wish to observe this first hand, to my knowledgeable they are on every single HSBC monitor in Bath.
(Stinky Wizzleteats Should probably be doing something more productive, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 18:41, 1 reply)

How to deal with banks
I've written here a few times about my late father, the guy who was the original Captain Placid. He was a highly-trained killing machine, a lover of poetry, a very practical and innovative engineer and a thoroughly nice guy.

Unless, that is, you crossed him. Then he was truly relentless.

In the far off days when everything was done by cheque, all was rosy in the garden of my dad's bank. Being an up-to-date kinda guy, he had allowed the bank to change all of his regular payments to standing orders.

Then the bank went computerised.

Then the letters came in. One from the building society regarding the non-payment of the mortgage, one from the insurance company, one from the savings/assurance policyholders all saying the same thing "blah blah non-payment blah blah further proceedings" etc etc. Now, my dad held his financial probity and reputation as a mark of his own respectability. He always paid on time - ALWAYS and he felt that the bank had severely dented his reputation with people he'd dealt with for years and was 'miffed' to say the least.

He didn't shout or rant. Worse than that, he went quiet, a VERY bad sign for whoever was going to be on the receiving end.

He made an appointment with the bank manager and, as a 'valued customer', he was graciously granted an audience with the head office manager. He took me along (I was 14) to show me "how to deal with these vermin".

The meeting went well with the manager apologising for the 'mistake' and giving assurances that the payments would be made 'immediately'. My dad seemed mollified by this and the manager sat back smugly and asked if there was "anything else he wanted to discuss".

"Well" replied my dad in his best honeyed tones, "I'd like you to explain this statement to me, it's a bit confusing".
The manager explained the codes in the margin, my dad nodding sagely and taking notes until the last entry - a debit with the code 'SC'.
"That's a service charge" said the manager.

"WHAT THE FUCK FOR YOU SNIVELLING SHIT I'VE HAD NO SERVICE, THAT'S WHY I'M HERE" opined daddykins.
"And while I'm at it, you can close the company account (over £2 million turnover - a decent amount in 1974) immediately" handing over a letter from the MD to that effect.

I've never seen a smug bastard blanch so quickly, nor heard such grovelling in my life. Once the terror of seeing my dad angry had worn off he realised that one of the biggest customers of the bank was about to swan off to a competitor because they'd been so blase about a small customer. I'm not sure which terrified him more.

Once the shock had had chance to fully sink in my dad continued.

"Furthermore, unless you personally write to each of these companies explaining that the non-payments were entirely the bank's fault, I will sue YOU for defamation of character and, believe me, I will pursue you to the grave". As I recall the manager actually whimpered.

From that day he had a direct line to the bank's regional director and never paid another service charge.

My dad also told me that the collective noun for bankers was "A wunch". As in "A wunch of bankers".

Still true to this day.
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 18:38, 6 replies)

Who gives you xtra?
not that speccy twunt

I've had my account for 19 years. I've only ever been overdrawn twice.

1st time I'm overdrawn
I decided to go back to uni and was getting a nice chunk of student load, bursary and my old git bonus(the over 25 mature student grant) so finically I was stable. Tootle of to the shops to get some food put card into ATM balance = -1500. WTF I knew I was well in the black so I try another ATM same story. As its a sunday the bank is shut so I ring the number on the card and report it. Bank is going to investigate, cancel card etc.... all is okayish. I refuse an emergency loan as my bursary is due in a week and I will be okay.

What really boiled my piss however was the letter I got a few days later saying:

Dear Miss Goldfish

You appear to have no money in your account please deposit £1500 by the end of the month etc,,,,,,

Took 2 months for them to investigate and refund my account. TWUNTS

2nd time I'm overdrawn
I graduate - woo yay, but no job so I work as a supply teacher for a year - wasn't too bad but the money was a bit unstable coming in I was living hand to mouth for a while and the agency fucked up my tax code so I paid way too much in tax. So things were a bit strained for a while and I dipped into the old overdraft for support - which is what its for. I get a job and need to move to a different part of the country and therefore need a deposit for a flat I need some extra cash. The tax peeps owe me £1000 and I will be getting a nice regular wage in a month or so but my overdraft was well into the fumes. So I ask the bank for a paltry £500 extension on my overdraft and was refused. TWUNTS

Now I'm in full time work and don't need any extra money why do they keep offering me extra debt? I'm staying with them for a year making sure my credit rating is perfect then moving to another bank. I'm thinking the CO-OP no-ones slated them yet.
(DryGoldfish, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 18:30, Reply)

Free money from the bank? Well, er, no...
Many years ago, when I was around 18, an acquaintance of mine - who wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer - opened a bank account. A couple of weeks after, he received a letter to tell him that he was several hundred pounds in the red. He swore blind that he had only written a couple of cheques which totalled way less than his funds, and that there must be some mistake. So he, with his parents in tow for moral support, went along to have it out with the manager of his local branch.

Since it was too soon for him to have had his first statement, the manager dredged up his records to date and presented them. Patiently, the manager pointed to several ATM withdrawals which explained his being overdrawn.

"What," said my acquaintance, in total surprise, "you mean that when I use my ATM card it comes out of my account?"

I swear to God I'm not making this up.
(eesnahk, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 18:29, 1 reply)

One more
I had to take a look at my lifestyle when the bank stopped my card due to "suspicious activity".

I asked what that was, and they said "you spent £55 in one go".

OK... anything else?

"It was in a sports shop, not a pub or off licence". Bloody cheek!!!
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 18:21, 2 replies)

I lived abroad for a grand total of nine months (October - July)
In this time I spent about four weeks in the UK (Christmas and Easter) and for most of it I carried on using my TwatWest account (I never bothered getting an Italian account) and/or my Swiss account in Lausanne.

Why, then, did I get a letter from TwatWest in June saying that they had detected suspicious activity on my account and did I know why money was all of a sudden being withdrawn in Italy? Makes me wonder what they were looking at the rest of the time.

They've also locked me out of online banking on no less than three occasions.
( Maladicta, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 18:15, Reply)

I just remembered
my friend Tim went to the bank for a loan in 1997. Back then you actually went in and spoke to someone.

He went in smoking a cigarette, and the bank manager said "I'm afraid you can't smoke in here", so Tim put his cigarette out in the man's yucca plant.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 18:13, 1 reply)

HSBC...
I hate them. I have banked with them since 1996 when I opened my first adult account but in the past year they have screwed me firmly in the anus with a piece of sheer genius.

The cashpoint machines around the country that are owned by other banks used to tell me if I was about to shove myself into massively overdrawn moments. If I had £9.99 in my account then it wouldn't let me take out a tenner. Simple maths really and the same at every cash point I ever have used. My nearest to work is Lloyds so I use them...

... up until the start of this year when I went overdrawn twice in two months to the tune of a couple of hundred quid. I know it was my fault for not checking my balance but when you have used a machine for a decade and a half you don't realise things may have changed.

So I was charged £300 quid in two amounts (which I managed to moan them into reducing to £75, if you whinge at the fuckwitted little cunts then they back down, just keep on)...

...when I enquired as to why the machines no longer told me I was going to be bounced into the red the dopey bint in HSBC said "We changed the machines so only ours tell you if you are taking out too much money. We did it to help our customers." HOW EXACTLY.? By raping me because you changed the rules and didn't inform anybody.?

Cunts. All of them. And when their fucking bank goes down the toilet because they all make wildly stupid gambles with your money then the bloody Government saves them and helps them out. The poor cunts at Woolworths etc got nothing but fatbastard bankers get money out of us hand over fist. When I clear my overdraft I am off.

Oh and Barclays can fuck off too.
(elfinpunk Touching Cloth Since, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 17:58, 1 reply)