I continue to be "concerned" by the behaviour of the banks. I'm not concerned about the fact tha they appear to have caused major disturbances in economics in recent years, but more by the way that they treat some savers, many of whom are older and often not able to "look after" their finances as sharply as some younger people might. Having said that though, I would advise many to be very careful about asking other "financial advisors" to "look after" your money, as there is a definite possibility that they will optimise their finances at the expense of yours.
One thing which is really annoying is the "need" to keep tweaking accounts to make sure that interest rates are not down in the 0.05% range. To my mind this need, which we are reminded about by programmes such as R4's Money Box, is simply a way for banks to hope that we'll all forget the interest rates after a year or so. They are I fear often right. My mother did for years, though I did eventually manage to get her one year at a decent rate before it became irrelevant.
Another scam is if one is fortunate to be able to have a sufficiently large sum to be able to achieve significant income from interest (this could be a temporary state, for example when selling/buying houses) banks may misrepresent their accounts, and neglect to tell customers that an interest bearing account has an upper limit for interest purposes - which might be £100k - this even if specifically asked. The result might be a considerably lower income from savings than expected, yet later the bank will probably assert that it wasn't their fault.
Yesterday I tried to get the paltry interest rate on one of my accounts upgraded back to 2% - from 0.05, and was told that could be done. All seemed to be going well and the counter lady filled in a form and asked me to sign it. Then she told me it wouldn't be processed until next Wednesday, as the man who keys in the data wasn't coming in until then!
As a reult of this I moved a significant sum to another bank a few doors away, where the account is already offering 3%, and I believe I may already have "earned" a cup of coffee by this process.
I'm not particularly in favour of "unearned" income by the way, but equally I'm not in favour of banks or other organisations expecting us to work when we are able to, and then ripping savers off later when there might be reasonable expectations of at least a small income from savings interest.
One thing which is really annoying is the "need" to keep tweaking accounts to make sure that interest rates are not down in the 0.05% range. To my mind this need, which we are reminded about by programmes such as R4's Money Box, is simply a way for banks to hope that we'll all forget the interest rates after a year or so. They are I fear often right. My mother did for years, though I did eventually manage to get her one year at a decent rate before it became irrelevant.
Another scam is if one is fortunate to be able to have a sufficiently large sum to be able to achieve significant income from interest (this could be a temporary state, for example when selling/buying houses) banks may misrepresent their accounts, and neglect to tell customers that an interest bearing account has an upper limit for interest purposes - which might be £100k - this even if specifically asked. The result might be a considerably lower income from savings than expected, yet later the bank will probably assert that it wasn't their fault.
Yesterday I tried to get the paltry interest rate on one of my accounts upgraded back to 2% - from 0.05, and was told that could be done. All seemed to be going well and the counter lady filled in a form and asked me to sign it. Then she told me it wouldn't be processed until next Wednesday, as the man who keys in the data wasn't coming in until then!
As a reult of this I moved a significant sum to another bank a few doors away, where the account is already offering 3%, and I believe I may already have "earned" a cup of coffee by this process.
I'm not particularly in favour of "unearned" income by the way, but equally I'm not in favour of banks or other organisations expecting us to work when we are able to, and then ripping savers off later when there might be reasonable expectations of at least a small income from savings interest.
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