So yesterday saw the banks win their case in the supreme court, against a ruling allowing a regulator to investigate bank charges. This is very bad news for customers and was doubly displeasing for me, because I managed to get charged twice (on the same day as the supreme court ruling) for making one silly error. This error is going to cost me the best part of £70 and to be quite frank it makes me sick.
Now I don’t want to descend in to an immature rant against the banks because that would be foolish and unhelpful. Banks have taken a big enough bashing over the past year for their idiocy. But how can they justify charging somebody £35 for going £1 over their authorised overdraft. There is absolutely no defence for this action I am afraid. I understand that banks and building societies have to inform customers when they go overdrawn and this will incur some administration costs. But £35? Charging customers that amount often perpetuates the problem that has resulted in them going overdrawn.
This is symptomatic of the greed that dominates our financial sector in this country. In the pursuit of profit, banks will try every means possible to squeeze money out of their customers. Banks no longer care about their customers, they see them as commodities not people; objects that they can extract as much as possible from. Banks need to learn the lessons of the past and eradicating punitive charges from the system is one way of doing so.
And government has a role to play in solving the problem. I’m glad the government will be dealing with this in the Financial Services Bill going through the house currently. Perhaps I can make a suggestion. A £5 cap on bank charges. This would be sensible and it would help to stop the perpetuation of problems for hard hit customers. Now is the time to act.
