» Debt pron

Lloyds f***ing TSB
Whilst at Uni, I moved house several times, and instead of keeping my same home address, and expecting my parents to forward all my mail to me, I used my current address as my correspondence address. When I moved, I'd tell my bank, and they'd then send my statements etc to the new place.

Or so I thought....

Lloyds, being so super efficient, didn't quite grasp the concept of sending all of my post to this address. They also had this ridiculous scheme of requiring you to renew your overdraft every year, which was a bit of a PITA, but not too much of a hardship for their interest free cash.

By the time I was in the 3rd year, this O/D had crept up to £1500, and I thought that all was fine and dandy, statements were arriving, I wasn't going over my limit etc, was managing my finances reasonably well.

What I wasn't aware of, was that Lloyds were sending increasingly nasty letters to an old address asking me to renew my overdraft, until they phoned me up one day asking me to repay it all immediately.

When I suggested that it might have been useful to send these letters to the same address as the one they used for my statements, this was dismissed as a crazy notion. I also foolishly thought that they might be able to reinstate this overdraft for me. Yes, not a problem, as soon as you pay it all off.

So, let me get this correct, if I give you £1500, you will let me borrow it again.

Yes sir, that's correct.

What if I don't have £1500 right this very moment.

Not a problem, you can arrange to pay it off over a period of time, and for every month we will shaft your credit rating.

So, I paid it off to the tune of £100/month, and promptly shut the account, never to deal with Lloyds f***ing TSB ever again.

That was of course until a couple of years later, when I was in a bit of a hole, and stupidly took out a loan, and due to them shafting my credit rating previously, were the only ones who would touch me, and I agreed to the tune of around 30% APR on £2k.

Fortunately I then got a decent job, with a nice overseas bonus, and could afford to pay it off early, and not be raped quite so badly.

Since then, things haven't been so bad, but looking back, it could have got a lot worse

Apologies for length, it’s my first time
(Mon 27th Nov 2006, 14:18, More)

» Debt pron

Foolproof Money Making Scheme!
Further to my Lloyds F***cking TSB post, I thought that I'd add my marvelous uni money-making plan.

Stundent account - interest free overdraft generally in excess of £1k.

Simple - open several accounts, and shove those £1k's into a decent savings account.

Repeat every year until uni is over, jobs a goodun - I had some crazy spreadsheet going which suggested that I'd be in pocket to the tune of around £16k. Not quite sure how I arrived at that amount, as it was clearly complete bollox, but anyway, I digress.

Of course this didn't quite go to plan - opened 3 student accounts in the first year, generally they wanted a grant or student loan payment going in to open them, so didn't manage the 4 that I had intended, and decided that the paperwork was too much to keep track of if I was going to continue doing so in following years.

Of course what my grand plan didn't account for, was some muppet (me) promptly spending all this free money as soon as it became available, hence finishing uni with a load of debt instead of huge wads of cash.

Such is life!
(Mon 27th Nov 2006, 15:18, More)