Beginning Of The End For Free Banking

[cashinmattress]

link

The shake-up means people who remain Lloyds customers, but whose local branch becomes a TSB, face being forced to travel miles to do their banking.

They will also be hit with a £5-a-time fee if they pay in cash or reduce their credit card balances at the old branch, and will be banned from paying cheques into TSB branches.

Experts fear some Lloyds customers have no idea about the changes. Derek French, of the Campaign for Community Banking, says: ‘Many people probably haven’t realised what’s happening yet, but when it dawns on them it could turn into a very serious problem.

‘It is going to be very inconvenient for people — especially for those in areas where there is no other Lloyds TSB branch nearby.’

After the shake-up, Lloyds customers who want to make a deposit in their Lloyds account using a TSB branch will now have to wait days for their cash to arrive — meaning they face losing out on interest. Previously, the money arrived on the same day.

Credit card holders will also face delays, increasing the risk of penalty charges. Lloyds TSB customers who use TSB cash machines will also be barred from checking balances, receiving statements, making bill payments or paying in cash as they could previously.

A spokesman for TSB says Lloyds customers should use internet banking instead and that Lloyds will still have 1,300 branches.

He says: ‘While we are really sorry some customers may be inconvenienced if their local branch is transferred to TSB, Lloyds will still have one of the largest branch networks of any High Street bank. For most customers, there will be a Lloyds in the vicinity.’

More than 1,200 towns and large villages in the UK have been left without a bank, and 900 have just one branch remaining, according to a recent report by the Campaign For Community Banking.

Last year alone 288 bank branches shut as banks continued to push customers online to save cash or to counter services at the likes of the Post Office.

In many areas the closures have sparked protests from disgruntled customers and business account holders who face long journeys to do their banking.

Oh well. Until Britain has 'normal' holidays that celebrate historically significant heroes and humanitarians instead of days off for the bankers, we are going to get it more in the eye and have less in our wallets.

The likes of Tesco bank is going to to very well with all this shenanigans from the bigger, failed banks.

[scrappycocco]

still can pay huge bonuses and salaries for shifting digits about though, its just like the public sector - people at the top never feel a thing.

[Cosmic Apple]

I don't think this is really as bad as you are making out... people can simply switch banks (its not that hard, and is going to get easier), or simply not use these 'TSB' branches and use a Lloyds one instead. There is a choice here... vote with your feet.

Halifax paid me to join them, and pay me £5 a month for using them... and £5 a month for putting £300 of spend on a CC (which a) I'd be spending anyway and I pay off so I'm not paying a penny in interest), this is better than free banking!

Edited June 19, 2013 by My Name Is ??

[Guest eight]

still can pay huge bonuses and salaries for shifting digits about though, its just like the public sector - people at the top never feel a thing.

Interbank clearing taking days in this day and age is just a joke. And not a very funny one either.

[fluffy666]

Interbank clearing taking days in this day and age is just a joke. And not a very funny one either.

Probably because all the banks IT systems are decades old and they've since made the 'efficiency saving' of laying off everyone who knew how they worked.

[goldbug9999]

Interbank clearing taking days in this day and age is just a joke. And not a very funny one either.

Its because traditionally there wasn't enough capacity in the banking sytems to process each actual moment of money separately.

Hence they use a process called "deferred net settlement" so on day 1 the transaction is queued for settlement, on day 2 the queued transactions are tallied up to work out the total inflow/outflow of cash of each bank relative to the others, on day 3 these net transfers between the banks are settled.

[Bloo Loo]

Im with the co-op....they have a faster payment system...payment clears next day to other accounts, indeed, i have had some clear on the same day.

[VeryMeanReversion]

Halifax pay me £5 per month for having a current account with them. Better than free.

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

The new bank is simply saying that it doesn't want the Lloyds customers it's going to inherit, is what this looks like to me. As others have pointed out, switching banks isn't rocket science.

[TheCountOfNowhere]

The headline would be so much better if it were:

Beginning Of The End For Free Banking Bankers.

[@contradevian]

Get ready for them to sell the TSB to the public, ALL OVER AGAIN!

http://www.solhaam.o...ticles/tsb.html

Ownership of the bank and its reserves became important when a Conservative government decided to 'privatise' the bank and convert it into a shareholder-owned profit-maximising bank just like the commercial banks.

So the government is proceeding to sell the TSBs although it considers that they do not belong to the government, on the basis that the TSBs and their assets belong to nobody, that no one owns the bank.

The above refers to the "privatisation" of the TSB by the Tories, even though err, they didn't technically own it. Eventually it was acquired by Lloyds.

I love the City and the Rentier government. Selling us back what was already ours, over and over again.

Edited June 19, 2013 by Secure Tenant

[DTMark]

Probably because all the banks IT systems are decades old and they've since made the 'efficiency saving' of laying off everyone who knew how they worked.

Recent conversation:

Me: You've put a late payment charge on my account this month. Why?

Credit card company: The payment was received late.

Me: No, it wasn't. The payment was due on the 28th and it was made on the 27th.

CC: But it takes up to five days for the money to reach your account, so you need to bear that in mind.

Me: No, it does not. It was a Faster Payment made on the 27th and received by you on the 27th which your statement acknowledges ("transaction date"). Even you acknowledge that you were paid in good time.

CC: It takes three days for the payment to reach your account with us

Me: If it takes three days for the money to move from your bank account to my ledger balance with you because you have no IT systems and have an army of monkeys copying and pasting transactions from your bank to your systems, that is not relevant. What is relevant is when you received the payment. Which was well in time. So why have you applied a late payment charge?

CC: (pause) Bear with me and I'll have a word with my supervisor (line goes dead eventually)

This is, frankly, outright fraud.

[Guest eight]

This is, frankly, outright fraud.

It's all fraud.

I had a temp job in cheque clearing over ten years ago. Even then the transactions were all processed by 8 o'clock the same evening. Why it then takes five days for the money to turn up in your account is anybody's guess. Especially since it used to only be three!

[Traktion]

When you use Bitcoins, you realise just how obsolete the monetary system is*.

[*I'm not talking about price stability etc (another debate!), but purely how easy it is to move any amount of money about, anywhere in the world, with negligible costs, in a few moments/minutes.]