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Originally Posted by SMHarman
Someday we will have to start paying for our banking again. We are in the curious position in this country that we have free personal banking, something virtually nowhere else in the world has.
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And we have banks that:
1) pay laughable rates of "interest" (0.1%!),
2) charge usurious rates of interest unauthorised overdrafts (30% in some cases!!)
3) charge you £10 a transaction if you go over your limit and then have the gall to charge you for letters *telling* you you've gone overdrawn!
4) take three days to clear cheques (and then say there's no need for them to change the system because everyone's going to be using plastic for everything soon, but in the mean time they're loaning out our money on short term deals to financial institutions and making interest on it)
5) foist Chip and Pin cards on us "for security" but don't warn us that if our card is abused it's going to be up to *us* to prove that we *weren't* careless with our PIN, despite the fact that many input terminals are not screened or are in clear view of check-out operators or security cameras...
Remind me again *why* we should be *paying* for this...
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Effectivly personal banking is cross subsidised by other products, but when you think the average small business account charges 20p to pay something in 40p to write a cheque and 25p to make an electronic payment or withdrawal then you can add up how much the bank thinks your account costs to run.
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No, you can add up how much the bank thinks it can get away with charging.
Do you *really* think that those charges are justified? Do you really think they represent the cost to the bank of processing each of those transactions (especially the electronic ones?) Hell no!
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ATM fees, well there is a cost to runnign the network, but £1 + a transaction I don't think so. What this could well lead to is people withdrawing more cash each time and a greater risk of muggings though.
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And, of course, it will hit poorer people more. If you take out £100 pounds, it's only a 1% charge. If you take out only £10, that's a 10% charge!
The banks have been ripping us off for years. We change spouses more often than we change banks!
It's no point being "loyal" to a bank, because they don't give a toss about you or your loyalty once they've got your custom.