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Are the Banks deliberately exploiting the Pandemic rules?.......

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ponym
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Are the Banks deliberately exploiting the Pandemic rules?.......

#313207

Postby ponym » May 29th, 2020, 12:54 am

To deny hungry children Essential Foodbank Funds.?

Every year in March my local Council produces the Council Tax Rates for the next year.
They used to produce a very helpful slip of paper that you could post or take to your Bank detailing the new rates.
Since Direct Debit was introduced the Council tries every year to get me to change from my Standing Order payment routine to Direct Debit.I am loath to do this, I like to retain the control that Standing Orders gives me.
This year, in April, because of the Travel restrictions I wrote my Standing Order instructions and sent my letter to my "home" bank which is about 130 miles away.first payment to be made on 1st May.
A few days ago I received a telephone call from a local branch of the Bank,which I have never used. The young lady who rang was asking about how I was coping during the Pandemic and whether she could help in any way? I was about to say no thanks and ring off when I remembered my Standing Order letter sent many weeks ago, so I asked her to check in my account to see if my new payment of council tax had been made. She replied that she could see no record of the payment. Then I remembered that in my letter to the Bank I had also given instructions to set up a new Standing Order and I asked her to check whether this had been done.She became very hesitant and said "I can't get into your account now".
I was beginning to get a bit irate by now and made a comment about the management of the Bank. she did say I could ring an 0800 number but I was very annoyed and rang off.
Thinking about the call later I realised, it was out of the blue, an unknown caller offering help and then referring to another unknown tel no. for the help she had originally offered.

I am posting this here to see if anyone else has had a similar experience with their Bank.
I'm assuming there are many like me who much prefer Standing Orders over Direct Debit.

I could be totally wrong of course ! and I will apologise profusely if so but I think some smarty pants seeker of Brownie points has suggested this as a Policy to get those " awkward " customers to go electronic.

And my reason for being angry?
That other Standing Order instruction was to provide monthly funds to a foodbank to which I normally contribute food.

Nothing has been done to process my instructions which means, as the header states, this Bank has denied those children much needed funding for the month of May.

Thanks for reading,

ponym.

stevensfo
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Re: Are the Banks deliberately exploiting the Pandemic rules?.......

#313231

Postby stevensfo » May 29th, 2020, 8:32 am

I try to avoid DDs and use Standing Orders. Since internet banking came along, they are so easy to manage online. The only DDs I have are for one or two professional organisations and Ancestry. Plenty of Standing orders for charities!

Your post started alarm bells ringing. How do you know that the woman was calling from your bank and was not just trying to get some info from you for fraud or ID theft?? I may be wrong, but I always understood that banks will never contact you in this way.

Steve

Alaric
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Re: Are the Banks deliberately exploiting the Pandemic rules?.......

#313245

Postby Alaric » May 29th, 2020, 9:16 am

ponym wrote:Nothing has been done to process my instructions which means, as the header states.


I might suspect that processing a Standing Order requires someone in a local bank to do something. If they are running on reduced staffing levels, that may be it.

swill453
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Re: Are the Banks deliberately exploiting the Pandemic rules?.......

#313254

Postby swill453 » May 29th, 2020, 9:52 am

ponym wrote:I could be totally wrong of course ! and I will apologise profusely if so but I think some smarty pants seeker of Brownie points has suggested this as a Policy to get those " awkward " customers to go electronic.

If you "go electronic", Standing Orders are dead easy to set up, verify, modify, etc.

Just saying...

Scott.

mc2fool
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Re: Are the Banks deliberately exploiting the Pandemic rules?.......

#313313

Postby mc2fool » May 29th, 2020, 11:25 am

ponym wrote:A few days ago I received a telephone call from a local branch of the Bank,which I have never used. The young lady who rang was asking about how I was coping during the Pandemic and whether she could help in any way? I was about to say no thanks and ring off when I remembered my Standing Order letter sent many weeks ago, so I asked her to check in my account to see if my new payment of council tax had been made. She replied that she could see no record of the payment. Then I remembered that in my letter to the Bank I had also given instructions to set up a new Standing Order and I asked her to check whether this had been done.She became very hesitant and said "I can't get into your account now".
I was beginning to get a bit irate by now and made a comment about the management of the Bank. she did say I could ring an 0800 number but I was very annoyed and rang off.
Thinking about the call later I realised, it was out of the blue, an unknown caller offering help and then referring to another unknown tel no. for the help she had originally offered.

I have to concur with Steve. My immediate thoughts on reading the above are, OMG, classic scammer technique!

I strongly recommend you call your bank, on their published number that you have always called them on before, and ask them for the balance and (even if the balance is what you expect) if there has been any activity of any sort on the account since you received that call, and tell them about the call and ask if that was really from them.

dealtn
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Re: Are the Banks deliberately exploiting the Pandemic rules?.......

#313333

Postby dealtn » May 29th, 2020, 12:18 pm

You don't know it was your bank that rang you.

How do you know nothing has been done about your standing order(s), you don't say?


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