“The People’s” wonderful new Supreme Court has ruled that the Office of Fair Trading can’t investigate the rip-off fees charged by banks for unauthorised overdrafts. “Quite right”, chorus the smug idiots, “we’ve always got enough money in our accounts!”
The British Bankers Association is, of course, delighted. It had been putting out the propaganda that customers would be charged for simply having bank accounts if they lost, because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to make a profit. Hello?!? That’s not how banks operate and they should be ashamed of themselves. And the smug rich people should be ashamed too – if their argument is correct then their free banking is being subsidised by the poor. (Incidentally, in case no one’s told you before, banks make a profit by paying savers a lower interest than borrowers, lending out considerably more than is deposited I might add, and pocketing the difference).
It’s a practical necessity to have a bank account if you live in this country, and banks are clearly exploiting this fact. Would the (old) Law Lords not have done something about this obvious problem?
And as for the numerous spokespersons for the banking industry trotting out statistics that this issue doesn’t affect most customers anyway, they must be joking! As well as the financially challenged, this affects everyone who’s paid in a cheque that’s bounced, everyone who’s suffered a bank error and everyone who’s employer has messed up the payroll run (often a problem with the bank themselves). It’s really easy to end up overdrawn on a current account, through no fault of your own, even if you have plenty of spare cash with the bank in a deposit account. This two-account approach is necessitated by the customer-unfriendly ‘financial product’ culture the banks themselves operate.
The people who are going to suffer from this are the normal hard-working types who operate through a current account and save a little for a rainy day. One simple mistake made by someone else and they’re stuck with a load of ridiculous charges. If you’ve got a lot of money in your deposit account, a quick call threatening to move your cash elsewhere gets rapid results. If you’re not in this happy position I wouldn’t rate your bargaining power.
The banks should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves, but I expect they’re too busy pocketing their taxpayer-underwritten bonuses to even notice.
It’s no surprise that New Labour is letting them get away with it, but there’s a deafening silence coming from the other parties too. Scared to upset the bankers?