Thanks banks!
The authoritative Which? Commission report (Chaired by David Davies MP) tells it like it is.
In the 21st century we get a rotten service. The Economist Will Hutton’s warning in yesterday’s Observer declares in stentorian tones ‘The Banks Have Refused to Mend Their Ways’.
At noon on Friday I had occasion to ring my bank’s Visa department. An online error on my part had led to an over-payment on my card (never dabble with bill payments when your mind is on six other jobs!).
I was ringing to ask them to pay me the several thousand pounds by which my account was in credit.
They promise to do so, by cheque. Because it was Friday at noon they warned me the cheque would not be issued before Monday.
They added that it would take FIVE to TEN BANKING days to arrive! It would then take me the standard THREE to FIVE banking days to get the cheque cleared. In other words it could take TWO weeks to recover several thousand pounds of my own money.
I suggested that they pay me by bank transfer. They said they simply don’t do that. I asked why.
They told me ‘well all credit card companies are the same, you wouldn’t get any different treatment from any other card company’. So that’s it. I spoke to a manager and secured a repeat performance and no improvement.
Then I asked for a reference number so that I could track what was happening. ‘We do have a reference number, but its for our use, we don’t disclose it to the customer’.
So, if after TEN days there is no cheque, I have no reference number, and every possibility of starting the two week operation all over again.
Why when our payments to a bank can go though in an hour does it need to take them up to two weeks to pay us?
They did offer helpfully, that I could go out and spend the money right now – on my credit card. But I didn’t want to. Despite all the debt, the failure, and the liquidity collapse of the banks, has nothing changed?
And given that we own a bank or two, why don’t we turn them into model providers to sting the rest of the market into reform?