John York Posted June 24, 2019 Share Posted June 24, 2019 Don't you just love 'em? My bank of twenty, thirty years or more sent me a letter that didn't make sense to me. They gave an address at the top pf the letter and a telephone number, so I 'phoned them. Guess what, the girl on the end told me they could not talk to me about it because I wasn't registered for telephone banking and that I should visit my local branch some 30 miles away! I'm now in the process of changing to a bank that has a branch local to me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VH-KDK Posted June 24, 2019 Share Posted June 24, 2019 Yeah, Banks! A few years ago I got a letter to say that they were "amalgamating" our sub branch. I phoned the branch over the river and asked why not just say it was closing and that I would probably change banks as it would be inconvenient for me to get the bus over the river when I become to old to drive. I also wanted to speak to the area manager, who wrote the letter and invited him to give me a call to discuss the closure and why he couldn't say that the sub branch was closing instead of avoiding saying that they didn't want to waste any of the billions of dollars they make each quarter on a few country hicks, thus upsetting the shareholders, you know the people that really matter to them. Naturally he never contacted me as I am only a customer but the threat of me changing banks after 35 years prompted them to offer free banking which was enough to persuade me to stay with them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy1252 Posted July 6, 2019 Share Posted July 6, 2019 When we moved down here and were looking to buy the place we currently live in, it had to be financed via a business loan rather than a mortgage because it was sold to us technically as a holiday flat business with owners' accommodation included. Actually, it was pretty much mostly "owners' accommodation" but with some small flats to rent carved out but that's another story. Anyway, we arranged the loan via a local financial guy who is very on the ball, and we were put in touch with NatWest. The guy there was very impressed with our business plan (I think we were about the only applicants he'd seen with a spreadsheet - it's not a very sophisticated market down here!) and gave us a loan at 2% above base rate. After a year we went back and squeezed him down to 1% above base. A couple of years later we went back and got another loan to purchase our freehold bookshop, and got that at 2% as well. By this point we were in for over 500k sterling. And then the crash. And then the base rate went down and eventually settled at 0.5%. And we never reduced our repayments. So the whole lot got paid off in about 16 years and the bank was pretty much losing money on the deal all the way. Hey - we beat the (insert derogatory term of choice here)! All a bit different from the days under a certain supposedly financially prudent government a decade or so earlier when the rates were up around 15%. The bank guy who gave us the loans (who was actually a very nice guy, and not just because of what he did for us) quit not long after we'd got our loans because he was fed up with the bank's attitude. We got a new "business relationship manager" and ceased to have any kind of real relationship with them from that point on! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 6, 2019 Share Posted July 6, 2019 Yes, I've just changed our bank because the bank we had closed down and wanted us to either travel 30 miles or go to the Post Office. I told them, well, I had better not say and have opened an account with another banks who have been very welcoming but we're now drowning in paper from them! Talk about a performance. I wouldn't have thought we had enough to pay for it all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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