Paid-For Bank Account Complaints Soar
It is being reported that complaints about paid-for bank accounts are soaring. It’s here in the Guardian. Here’s a flavour.
Complaints about wrongly sold, fee-paying current accounts are rising sharply according to data that suggests this could be the latest mis-selling scandal to hit the financial sector.
Nationwide have been trying to sell me a paid-for account for some time. It gives a whole series of things I don’t want like car breakdown cover and a guaranteed derisory interest rate on a small amount of money. They even tempt me with an Upgrade Now button on my on-line account. I wonder how many people have been fooled by it!
The Peer-To-Peer Invisible Firewall
I still have some money on deposit with my bank, as I need it to pay builders and things like that, but I don’t think I will have it there for much longer.
This morning, I got a load of messages trying to target my non-existent NatWest account. As I have never had a message targeting any of my peer-to-peer lending accounts, it would seem logical that any fraudster will more likely get my bank account details than say those of the peer-to-peer lenders.
But suppose they did break into my peer-to-peer accounts, they could only transfer money back to my main bank account, which was used to load the money to the accounts. So I doubt it would do them any good.
So to get any of my money out of the peer-to-peer sites, they’d probably need to take complete control of the site and replace the software with their own.
With my software hat on, I would propose that that is virtually impossible.
So in my view in addition to the obvious security on peer-to-peer sites, there is an additional invisible firewall, due to the design of the sites.
This would make them a very unlikely target for a sophisticated criminal. They would find it easier to set up a completely bogus site and get punters to deposit money with them, for onward transmission out of the country. Hopefully, that would be spotted, given the high-profile nature of sites like Zopa, Funding Circle and Ratesetter, who have been through the mill on credibility with the media, regulators and politicians.
They can’t all be wrong!
An Arrogant Building
I don’t like this building, as it destroyed a perfectly good Nash Terrace.
An Arrogant Building
But then it was done a few years ago and at the whim of bankers.
Abbey National Lives
On Wednesday, I got some money out of a cash point machine in Bethnal Green. It was a branch of Santander and it was close to a bus stop, so was convenient, as I was waiting for the bus.
This morning, four days later it appeared on my on-line bank statement fully annotated.
Cash machine wdl Abbey
According to Wikipedia, Abbey was rebranded as Santander in 2010. But obviously, they haven’t updated the computer systems.
It seems to me, that millions of crap programmers are alive and well and working for banks.
Spanish Practices
Is Santander getting rattled, as it has just launched a loan sale?
i don’t need a loan and if I did, I wouldn’t go any any Spanish bank! Especially, with all the Spanish practices at Gibraltar.
Will The Banks Actually Allow This?
It is being reported in the Telegraph, that the government is thinking about allowing peer-to-peer lenders to be funded by ISAs.
I suppose it will be very good news for those who invest in ISAs, but it will be bad news for banks, as they will be losing one of their ways of selling low-interest rubbish products to their customers. The only way, they could get a piece of the action, would be for a bank to get into bed with a peer-to-peer lender. But the likes of Zopa and their peers, probably have enough financial friends to set up a way to sell ISAs and give the banks even more of a kicking.
After all, how many of those on the Dalston omnibus would trust a banker with anything but small change.
I suspect George Osborn is going to get an enormous amount of lobbying to stop this well-thought out scheme.
Hold tight George! Our savings are dependent on you not giving in to the wunch,
It’s Just Not Good Enough!
On Sunday morning, I heard a guy called the Casual Hopper on BBC Radio 5. As he was raising money for a reputable cancer-related charity, I thought I might send him a donation.
So I logged in to his Just Giving page and donated, using my John Lewis Partnership card. I got an acknowledgement from Just Giving, as expected. However, a few minutes later, I got a message from them saying that the payment had been rejected. Now as I’d just paid my credit card bill, I knew that I was some thousands of pounds below my credit card limit.
I then attempted to login to my Partnership card account and found the problem. Their system was down and I couldn’t log in.
I have managed to login this morning, but there is no trace of the payment to the Casual Hopper. In fact, there is no trace of any payments made by the account and I used the card twice yesterday in Sainsburys and Waitrose.
If we can use our cards on a 24-hour basis, surely we ought to be able to see the information in a likewise manner.
After all, if I missed a payment, they’d be on me like a ton of bricks.
It’s just not good enough!
Especially, as it’s caused grief and extra work to a whole series of people like the Casual Hopper, Just Giving and of course myself.
Is Nationwide Being High-Handed?
On my on-line bank summary from Nationwide, there is a button saying Upgrade Now against my Current Account.
It doesn’t say any more and I suspect, it would put me on one of their pay-ten-pounds-a-month accounts, which give me a right to useless interest rates.
Surely, I demand something a bit more informative!
Tumblr News Give Me A Plug
I don’t read Tumblr News but they must sometimes read my blog, as this article entitled, Former OFT boss: regulation can be a bridge to new customers, has a link to this post of mine. In that post from August 29th, 2009, I said I had over £30,000 invested in Zopa and now nearly four yeas later it is just a shade under £140,000, with total interest of nearly £140,000 and bad debts of just £650.
I think I’ll accept that!
My investment in Zopa has certainly performed better than pudence’s investment in the Royal Bank of UK Taxpayers and Lloyds TSBleed.
An Unseen Advantage Of Peer-To-Peer Lenders
There are three main peer-to-peer lenders in the UK; Funding Circle, Ratesetter and Zopa and I have extensive filters and Google alerts that look for any fraudulent activity concerning these companies.
Have I just not found them, but I haven’t seen or heard of anybody trying to get access to any of their web-sites for illegal purposes. I’ve not even heard of anybody trying to hack Wonga either.
On the other hand I’ve had over thirty phishing attempts in the last few weeks to try to get into my non-existent Barclays account.
So are you at an advantage if you keep your savings with a peer-to-peer lender?
Certainly at present you are! But phishing attempts will come, even though I think they would be a very difficult scam to setup and target successfully.
The Anonymous Widower 