Fair Treatment of Widows by the Banks
I didn’t have a particularly bad time when my wife died from the banks. But many others do!
I’ve just listened to the influential MP, John McFall, complaining that many widows have difficulty accessing money that will come to them. I didn’t, but the endless sending of death certificates to get information just makes the bereavement process worse.
It’s not just the banks but part of a much larger and very important area.
It is now over nearly two years since my wife died and I can now think rationally about what has happened since. And especially about some of the nauseous paperwork that has arisen! I should also say that I’ve not had it difficult, compared to some stories I have heard.
I was prompted to write to The Times about this and they published my letter on April the sixteenth, 2008, albeit with a few modifications.
Sir, I was widowed last year, and it is only now that I’m starting to get my life together. The response of the various government and local authority departments in handling all the paperwork involved has been very patchy.
Registrars: excellent, very sympathetic and efficient; Work and Pensions: bereavement allowance came through with a few hiccups, but not too difficult; Premium Bonds: system worked but could have been better; council tax: this was reduced automatically on signing a form by St Edmundsbury — totally painless; DVLA: its online systems worked well; winter fuel payment: found difficult to claim and missed it for last year.
The private sector wasn’t that much better, with some companies having people whose sole job appeared to be to deal with bereavement faring much better than those that didn’t. Some wanted death certificates, some accepted faxed copies and others took my word.
We need a lot more joined-up thinking in this important area, as, with nearly a million deaths in the UK every year, it would surely help the bereavement process for those left behind if every company, organisation, government department and authority were automatically notified. After all, if St Edmundsbury can do it here in supposedly sleepy Suffolk, then surely everyone else can.
They left out the piece where I praised The Carphone Warehouse, but severely criticised a large British company, who find it impossible to take my wife off their mailing list. The former showed how it should be done and the latter are a disgrace.
As I said in my letter, my local council met the Gold Standard and the Registrar effectively started the process of adjusting the Council Tax.
In tracing my wife’s credit cards, I ended up talking to a Fraud Manager at a well-known bank. We felt that it should be possible to have an automated system that would flag the cards of those that had died. Apparently, these cards are an area that is aggressively targeted by criminals.
He’d also had problems with some shares that had been held by his late mother. This is a common problem and was noted in some of the replies to my letter in The Times. Luckily, my wife didn’t hold any shares except for a few in a now-floated Building Society.
But I’ve since met several people, whose husbands or wives have died abroad and they’ve had problems with getting bodies home and others where the Death Certificate has been delayed because there was an inquest. If you haven’t got the Death Certificate, then the Banks won’t give you access to the bank accounts!
So I had it easy. But I know now, how I can make things even easier.
Beware of Calls from VISA/Mastercard – 2
I have just had another call from these crooks.
I thought that I should phone my credit card company and ask if there is anywhere where the scam can be reported.
They said there wasn’t! They also said that nothing could be done as they are abroad. But if enough people reported the calls to a central number, then at least the country of origin could be traced and shamed in the press.
So we’re all on our own on this one, then!
Loan Fraud
I assume that these two e-mails I received this morning are up to no good.
This one is from Homesteel Loan Management.
This is HOMESTEEEL LOAN MANAGEMENT, a private loan lender.We provide funding for companies and individuals that need funding. We work domestic as well as international companies. Our funding sources specialize in creative solutions to meet your needs for expansion, growth etc.
Our company do grant loans to individuals and companies as the loan grant varies from $5 thousand to $5 million Dollars with an interest rate of just 2.5 %.Borrower’s Information Needed
Full Names:…………………………………………
Country:……………………………………………
Phone Number:……………………………………..
Loan Amount Needed:…………………………….
Loan Term Duration:……………………………….Contact us today with the above information at honorablekalebcole1@gmail.com,mrkalebcole@sifymail.com
Company Name:HOMESTEEEL LOAN MANAGEMENT.
Registration Number: EA-ASL/941OYI/02/LN-UK
Telephone: +44-701-112-8005
Fax: +44 91-791-52-20Regards,
HOMESTEEEL LOAN MANAGEMENT
homesteelmanagement@gmail.com
And this one is from Eagle Loan Management.
This is Eagle Loan Management, a private loan lender.We provide funding for companies and individuals that need funding. We work domestic as well as international companies. Our funding sources specialize in creative solutions to meet your needs for expansion, growth etc.
Our company do grant loans to individuals and companies as the loan grant varies from $5 thousand to $5 million Dollars with an interest rate of just 2.5%.Borrower’s Information Needed
Full Names:…………………………………………
Country:……………………………………………
Phone Number:……………………………………..
Loan Amount Needed:…………………………….
Loan Term Duration:……………………………….Contact us today with the above information at eagleinvestment@sifymail.com
Company Name:EAGLE LOAN MANAGEMENT.
Registration Number: EA-ASL/941OYI/02/LN-UK
Telephone: +44-701-112-8005
Fax: +44 91-791-52-20Regards,
EAGLE LOAN MANAGEMENT
eagleloan.2009@gmail.com
Note that the registration, telephone and fax numbers are all the same.
Obviously, both of these e-mails are the same fraud. I suspect, that you will pay a lot of up-front fees and never see any money.
There is also the possibility that just phoning the numbers will be very expensive. In fact it is a good idea never to phone any UK number beginning with 7, unless you know who it belongs to! Many are mobiles, but some of them are linked to very expensive personal numbers.
Don’t whatever you do have anything to do with these crooks!
A Double Cliche
Someone said something like this on the radio, when discussing their predictions for the recession.
We think it will be a saxophone shaped curve, but that would be blowing our own trumpet.
I bet that was pre-planned.
A New Variety of Dead Parrot Sketch
I liked this comment from The Times on Thursday.
“I wish to register a complaint.” Britain’s financial services industry heard this refrain nine million times over the past three years, according to new figures from the Financial Services Authority.
This sounds like an awful lot of unhappiness. Dissatisfied customers are now returning their dead parrots at the rate of more than 8,000 a day.
This is the first two paragraphs and it continues in the same vein.
But doing simple maths says that we complain about 3,000,000 times a year about the financial services industry. That probably means it’s about one complaint for every six or seven houses in the UK. As probably only half the houses do anything governed by the FSA, that’s one hell of a level of complaints. So it’s nearer one-in-three!
I could add my complaints too. About excessive paperwork for a start. It seems that every time you move or breathe anywhere near any financial company they need everything in triplicate down to your inside leg measurement. You need certificates for this, documents for that. Surely, the fact that I pay my taxes and I only bank with reputable UK banks should be enough and they should guarantee my probity.
Job done!
How many complaints are of this nature?
But just imagine this level of complaints on cars. No-one would ever buy one. So perhaps this is why people don’t buy pensions.
After all if you want to make a small fortune, give a large one to a financial adviser.
Zopa Returns – August 2009
I posted a graph and explanation of this a few weeks ago.
So have things changed?
Zopa Returns - August 2009
There are various lines shown on the graph.
- Red shows the A* lending rate
- Blue (Earn1) shows the returns discounting for any bad debt, but including accounts in arrears.
- Orange (Earn2) shows the returns discounting for any bad debt and arrears.
- Dark Blue at the bottom, is the OBR or Official Bank Rate
Notes.
- Earn2 is creeping back up towards Earn1. I think this is because after initial hiccups accounts tend to settle down. I also think that Zopa have tightened their lending conditions, which may mean they get less hiccups.
- Earn1 seems to have a sawtooth pattern. This is because, most contracts are from the 25th or one month to the 3rd of the next. At least the monthly peak rate seems to be rising.
- At present the Inland Revenue does not think that bad debts are allowable against tax. Many disagree and my accountant has said that he believes they will be allowed. After all do they want a big fight over £200?
I’m still happy.
Clouds on the Zopa Horizon?
I’ve now got over £30,000 invested in Zopa.
Nothing really untoward has been happening with my money and according to the latest figures, I’m earning a genuine five percent on my money. By a genuine five percent, I mean one that includes all the charges and bad debts. It also takes into account money that is in Zopa, but is not been lent out yet.
Of the 650 or so people I have lent to, only three are in trouble, with one a genuine bad debt and the other two limping along still making payments. That level is below the level forecast by the company and well below the levels experienced by the average finance company.
The graph below shows the rates at which money has been lent out on Zopa.
Zopa Rates to August 2009
Note that since mid-April rates have been rising, but over the last month or so, they have flattened off a bit and they may even have been falling slightly.
The graph below shows the amount of money requested.
Money Requested on Zopa - August 2009
Note how over the last six weeks, the amount of money requested by borrowers has dropped significantly.
Is this and the drop in interest rates linked to the banks being easier places to borrow money or does it reflect a typical lack of business because of the summer holidays? You could argue that the peak in June/July was caused by people borrowing money for holidays or new transport to take them there!
So there could be some fluffy cumulus on the Zopa horizon. We’ll see if business takes off in the autumn.
But a bigger thundery cloud has been seen courtesy of the Office of Fair Trading.
When I first got the letter saying that I must register because of Anti-Money Laundering Regulations, I thought it was a joke or at worst a try-on. Basically, reading the letter it just seems to be a catch-all to raise more money for this beleaguered government.
Why should I pay £115 a year, when my lending is controlled by Zopa and I only transfer money into them, by a straight transfer from my bank account? It is a yearly charge and would cut my rate from five to 4.7 percent.
If every lender on Zopa had to pay this tax, then it would not be the place for lesser mortals to get a decent rate on their money. But then Prudence and his ilk, have never liked private enterprise. Unless of course it benefits themselves!
It could be argued that Zopa is also a competitor to the various State Banks, that Prudence has saddled us with.
But despite all these clouds I will still be putting a percentage of my spare money into Zopa in the future.
Credit Card Fraud – After Death
As a complete afterthought to the previous post and not directly related, when my wfe died, I couldn’t find one of her credit cards and ended up at the security department of a major credit card company. As it happened, she had probably cancelled the card as we could find no trace.
But the guy I spoke to, gave me the fact that a lot of credit card fraud, involves creating new cards for people who have just died. The criminals would often use the notices in papers and then quickly create an ID. Whether it would work now I don’t know. But beware!
Credit Card Security – A Picture?
On Tuesday, I wrote about another credit card scam.
It strikes me that the Internet has moved on with things like Twitter, Facebook and all of the other social media. But institutions like banks seem to be very much stuck in the last century when it comes to embracing, not the social media, but the technology that drives it.
For instance, go into your average shop, supermarket or garage, the till is unlikely to be something archaic, but a computer with a screen, masquerading as a sophisticated money-taking terminal. So when I put my credit card in the card reader, this computer can do, and I hope it does, a lot more than just check the pin code.
As an example, we should be able to upload other data to our card account. For instance, suppose I uploaded the registration of my vehicles to the bank. Then in a garage, I could choose that these were displayed to the operator, so that if I was not in a named vehicle, he could check the card further. I think that only once in the last five years, have I filled up with fuel, without knowing the vehicle number. And that was when I collected a new horse box from Newbury.
But other things could be done. Why can’t I upload a picture to my credit card company, that is then used on my card? I’d probably put one of the Lotus. So if my card was cloned and suspicions raised, then it would be easy to check that it wasn’t the correct card. Perhaps, a description but not the picture could be downloaded to the terminal. After all if this said “yellow Lotus Elan” and it was a plain red card, this should ring a few bells.
But we could also upload a personal photo, that we gave permission to be downloaded when we used our card. It would probably only mean that if a few percent of cards had a picture on them, then criminals would be wary of using all cards in shops and garages. I suppose they could check that a card was picture enabled, but that would mean that they would have to do a purchase in a dodgy retailer, thus leaving a trail.
I also wonder too, why you can’t have SMS messages enabled on your card or bank balance. Say once a day, you get a balance and you are informed of every transaction over a preset limit. I can look all this up on the Internet, but it would not be difficult terchnology to impliment and I’d pay a few pence for the messages.
This are only a few of my thoughts.
But we have to ask, why banks and credit card companies are not thinking much more like the general population.
After all, according to many sources, bank and credit card fraud is going to get much worse. I also don’t believe that they can beat it on their own and they need all the help they can get. And especially from those with most to lose; their customers.
Beware of Calls from VISA/Mastercard
I’ve just had a call from an undisclosed International number saying they were VISA/Mastercard security and that there was a problem. I put the phone down on them, as I know the scam. If it’s the one indicated, they know your address and credit card number and they’re after your pin, with some cock and bull story.
Don’t ever type anything in.
I’ve had about six International calls that I did not answer in the last month or so. I suspect it’s the same crooked scam.
The Anonymous Widower 