Positive positive positive today. Ok so I got a bit hot under the collar about the banks (see article below) Today then is a new day. Jedward have been fired but still making headlines. David Cameron looks like woodentop. Groundhog Day?
So, in the words of Fred the Weatherman “what have we got today?” Well the spin is that the green shoots of recovery have just been stomped on by a fat man with shiny shoes. Doh! It’s dem pesky banks again.
That Angela Knight really got my goat with that PR bilge about us naughty people not managing our accounts properly. Sorry British Bankers’ Association. You didn’t manage our economy properly and there’s plenty of your primary stakeholders out there who would agree with me. OK yah? You don’t get the final word on this even if the judges reckon it’s game over.
Oh ok I will continue with my rant. 6.59% was the cheapest rate I could get on a mortgage. On 120k that’s £950 a month in new money. There’s people out there with negative equity. Enter the willing punter (me) and any number of keen sellers (you?) and that rate separating us and we have that rather boring 0-0 draw. Hey we don’t even get to argue about the price of the dodgy curtains any more.
You see, to continue the analogy, banks are those fair weather supporters who are quite happy to stay aloof from their major stakeholders when going is heavy. When United are winning, it’s they who crowd us out of the 20/20 club and flash the cash. A bit like that scene in Batman with Jack Nicholson as The Joker where he distributes the dirty dollars to the good people of Gotham…before gassing them.
And I thought I was going to be a cheerful PR man today flower arranging the news so that it looked all rosy. Sorry but there are some good vibes on the way. I teach PR which these days means social media and I am running my own case study which might need your help. You see I want to be rich beyond my wildest dreams. Banks don’t come into it. Social media does.
More later. A little bird tells me that links are the way forward. So I will link Hokey Cokey style to you all and back again. Ohhhhh do the hokey cokey oooohhhh do the hokey cokeyyyyyy …told you I would end on a postive note. Praise Angela the all seeing eye.
#1 by BritishBankers at November 30th, 2009
British Bankers’ Association here. No no no. Can’t let you get away with your statement: “You didn’t manage our economy properly and there’s plenty of your primary stakeholders out there who would agree with me. ”
Sorry we didn’t know we were supposed to be managing the economy. We thought we provided services to people who wanted to use a bank, that’s all.
The Government manages the economy, more or less. And the Bank of England works to keep inflation in check. Meanwhile banks do banking.
#2 by keith at December 1st, 2009
Thank you for taking the trouble to reply, Brian. I take your point and of course strictly you are correct and know more about the sector than I. However we are also talking about perception here. There are very many people, like myself, who feel that banks have an influence on the nature of our economy. Its ethics are almost iconic.
I suppose if we’re not careful, we could go on for weeks about this topic, but I suspect neither of us have the time. I concede that my statement was loose but also feel very strongly that we, as a major stakeholder, are asked to support the banks when the going gets tough. And yet the treatment many of us have received when we needed their support has been, to say the least, shabby.
The difference between bad banking practice and bad customer practice is huge. Here’s a customer who has been recently refused a mortagage by Natwest as a result of complete incompetence by HSBC in 2003/4. And yet its the banks who stick together like gangsters – even though they are in “fierce competition” with each other – against the customer. I know I am talking about two different things here. 1) bank charges 2) credit rating. And yet the two are related certainly in my case. Karen King’s comments spoke for many of us when the news broke. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8376906.stm
When was the last time a bank was stopped doing what it’s always done for six whole years or effectively fined for treating a customer like something that’s just crawled from beneath a rock? That’s what I am facing. And yet I am being told by a leading opinion former that I should have managed my account better. My point is that the bank in question, HSBC should have handled my affairs more sensibly. I bet they payed more than £2400 to DG Solicitors to take me to the cleaners! There are no ethics in that whatsoever.
I also understand that the BBA can’t speak for individual banks or accounts. But, by the same token, I think the BBA do have an inherent responsibility to set a climate for conciliation on this issue of bank charges and many other matters, I note that bodies like the OFT and FSA are looking at this issue in detail. But this will not have any effect on the thousands of people who feel totally let down by the “closed shop” retail banking system which exists in the UK.