Regular Charity Donation
There are some charities I support and others I don’t. For instance as someone who has lost his wife and son to cancer, anything with cancer or loss in it, gets my consideration. On the other hand charities who use chuggers don’t. You will see from the links on the blog, a couple of the charities that I currently support.
So I had this idea to set up a suitable payment for all of these and other charities every year on my birthday, which just happens to be in a few days time. The advantage as I see it, is that because of the payment date they will be easy to find, modify and if necessary remove.
I have chosen to do it on my birthday, as that is a good psychological day for me. I suspect it is for others too! There is also this feeling that you’ve made another year, so perhaps these payments are your present to say thanks for still being here.
I will of course know that on my birthday, I better have a certain amount in my bank account. But then a reminder on my computer for say the first of August every year, would cure that.
I also feel that say £50 each year for ten years is probably better than £500 one year and then a whole lot of aggro as the charity tries to get more.
When in the future I pop my clogs, it will also be easy for my executors to sort out my charity payments. Especially if you put a little note in your will, explaining the payments. I think a good solicitor could write a nice clause for a will saying that some of the estate would be distributed to various charities in proportion to the birthday standing orders.
Since I wrote this piece originally, I’ve set up two of these charity payments.
One was for a small charity and all I needed was their bank account number and bank sort code.
For a national charity, I actually chose them from a list on Nationwide’s on-line computer system.
My only worry is that the charities get the Gift Aid right!
But let’s face it, bankers have had a lot of bad publicity lately and perhaps putting a Gift Aid check box, when you choose a charity from their list can’t be the world’s most difficult programming task.
I would welcome the views of anybody involved in charity fund raising.
Creating A Funding Circle Account
I have just created a Funding Circle account, as I want to see how other peer-to-peer lending sites work.
As a Zopa user for many years, I could be considered biased, but although I got registered quickly, there are some things I liked and didn’t.
E-Mail Address Based Account
All accounts, should be based on e-mail addresses. They are in Funding Circle.
Passwords
Because of my gammy left hand, I don’t like passwords where case is important, as I often get it wrong, when I use the shift key. Funding Circle insists on at least one Capital letter and one number.
At least though they didn’t use the dreaded Captcha system beloved of so many sites.
Check Questions
They did have, who was my best friend at school as a check question. This is a question, that I don’t really have an answer to, because I had a bad time at school with personal relationships.
Addresses
Because I’ve only been at my current address for less than two years, I was asked to enter my previous address. I made a mistake and ended up with the wrong address in my profile. I was able to change it easily to the correct one.
Debit Cards
The first investment was by debit card, which brought up the dreaded Verified-by-Visa system. I would prefer to use a Direct Debit or a Bank Transfer. Especially as fake Verified-by-Visa e-mails are being used by fraudsters.
But I did successfully register my account and transfer £1,000 into the account.
The Cheek Of It
Any establishment that displays a sign like this one on the Olympic Park, doesn’t get my custom.
The Cheek Of It
It didn’t!
Peer-to-Peer Lending Has A Record July
This article from This Is Money has the story and it seems the banks competence and behaviour is to blame. I can’t see the banks improving their ratings for a month or so, so that must be good for the social lenders.
Is There A Case For A mini-Peer-to-Peer Lender?
By all accounts, the lender of last resort, Wonga, is successful, despite the fact that it lends money at extortionate rates to those who shouldn’t really be borrowing money. On the other hand, the major peer-to-peer lenders, like Zopa, Funding Circle and Ratesetter, go from strength-to-strength and continue to gain plaudits from financial commentators.
If the peer-to-peer lenders have a problem, it is the perceived entry level, where potential investors like the concept, but are put off by not wanting to put several thousand pounds at risk.
So could the parameters of the peer-to-peer model be modified to borrow smaller amounts and lend it to out in dribs and drabs as payday loans?
I’m not sure, but it would be a much more ethical way of satisfying the market and possibly educating the borrowers as well.
You’re probably venturing very close to a completely automated credit union.
Now Nationwide Drops A Clanger
According to this report on the BBC and a message on their site, Nationwide have processed debit card transactions twice. It didn’t affect me, as I only use a debit card to get money from a cash machine.
This should never happen.
I have said that processing and senior management should be co-located and preferably at the same place where the programmers work.
As in this Nationwide clanger over 700,000 accounts were affected, it is quite likely that several senior managers or their friends would have been effected by the error. If those managers were worth employing, they should have been straight on to those responsible to find out what had happened. Co-location puts the fear of God into operators and programmers. Try doing that if they’re halfway around the world.
But at least in this clanger, Nationwide found out what had happened quickly and rectified it within 48 hours. But how much did the whole incident cost Nationwide and its customers? And as Nationwide is a mutual, how much did it indirectly cost its members?
I always remember Bob, the guy who taught me cost accounting, said that banks had a totally different approach to the way things added up. Perhaps things haven’t changed all that much!
Smart Bank Managing
When David was Metier’s bank manager, he did not put us in the bank’s database as a software company, but as a computer leasing company, as we leased the hardware and software as a package. He once told me, this was because those that be in the bank considered computer software to be decidedly high risk, but computer leasing, which was generally huge mainframes to FTSE 500 companies was a low one. He didn’t point out to those-that-thought they-knew-better, that some of the bank’s biggest losses had been in computer leasing. But then David had trust in his customers and knew those that would deliver. We did!
When David once asked me what was the difference between hardware and software, I told him, that the former hurts when you drop it on your foot and the latter doesn’t.
What Do You Do If Your Bank Is Taken Over?
Now that the Co-operative Bank is going to take over 632 branches from Lloyds TSB as is reported here, the question is what do you do?
If I apply my late friend David’s rules, there isn’t too many problems.
The Co-Operative Bank is owned by its members and domiciled in the UK.
The Co-Operative Bank is now probably of a size not to worry David, about the bank ending up being controlled by a forcefull and misdirected individual.
I’m not sure where they do their processing, but are they immune from an RBS/NatWorst problem?
On the other hand, just as some people feel that too many banks are close to the Tories, some might not like the fact that the Co-Operative Bank could be too close to the Labour party.
In fact that last point might make lots of customers go elsewhere, if they were to be transferred without asking their view. It’s like ordering a new Ford and getting a Vauxhall delivered.
And that is the heart of the matter. Can your bank account be transferred from one bank to another without your approval?
It strikes me, that this could be another part of banking, with rich pickings for lawyers.
But let’s face it most banks are the same to the general public. All they do is pay bills from on-line accounts. I bank with Nationwide, and I haven’t been into the bank for a banking purpose since probably November last year and that was to pay in a cheque for a few pounds. I do go into their branches sometimes to use a cash machine, as they often have comfortable chairs, where I can sit down to organise where I put my money.
Now here’s an idea!
Let’s put cash machines into coffee shops like Starbucks or Costa. Abbey National did have some Costa branches in their foyers, but then along came Santander and stopped it.
It would be interesting to see where I get my money out of cash machines. I’ve used these a couple of times in the last few weeks.
- Barclays by the bus stop at Islington Green, where I sometimes get off the bus.
- Nationwide next to Starbucks in Upper Street.
- Lloyds by the bus stop at the Angel, where I get the bus to come home.
- One of the machines in the subway at Kings Cross station.
So no real pattern there except that all these machines are of course free! I would never use me a cash machine that charges me for the privilege of accessing my own money.
Verified By Visa Revisited
I have moaned about this crap before.
I have been fighting it for a couple of hours and in the end I managed to buy two extra Olympic tickets. Can the reason that so many people find buying these tickets difficult is you must use a Visa card and you can’t fight your way through this awful system?
I have just written to my credit card company, saying that after the Olympics, they can put their Visa card in a place where it will hurt.
Today I was adding a new password all the time and then when I tried it the next it was rejected, so I had to start again. Surely entering a new password every time you use the card is the most insecure way to use a credit card on line.
It might well be that the US version of this system works because everybody uses the last four digits of their Social Security Number. In the UK no-one knows theirs and anyway it ends in a letter. So perhaps the problem is that the system has not been properly rewritten for the UK.
Anyway it’s crap!
NatWorst Try Traditional Marketing
This form of advertising is popular with pubs. But banks!
NatWorst Try Traditional Marketing
However, the message gets across. Is the problem with banks, that now customers are just numbers on the computer?
The Anonymous Widower 