GRIPES

[willedoo]

This is not really a gripe; just stating the obvious about banks. The bank I deal with has been running ads on TV saying how understanding and compassionate they are during the Covid crisis. They're here for us, they are saying. They have a phone number for customers having financial difficulties to ring, so that the nice caring bank can help them out.

 

Yesterday I received a letter from them. Apparently my credit card account briefly went $3.19 over the credit limit, and the letter was to inform me of a $40 fee for being overdrawn. Low down, lying, effing hypocrites, I say. A pox on all banks.

[Jerry_Atrick]

You'b be surprised at the cost of this to the bank:

 

1/8th of the 3.19 has to be allocated to captial reserves: say about 29c.

 

Then there's the letter: Say about $2, with all the processing involved...

 

Someone will have to look at a consolidated report and sign it off as within risk appetite.. Say about $20.

 

It will be included in the consolidated stats and the next board risk committee and considered by the most senior execs to determined: $1000..

 

You're getting a bargain

Edited May 13, 2020 by Guest

[old man emu]

Along similar lines.

 

I have a friend in Sweden who has been trying to settle an inheritance from relative's will. He shared the asset (family home) with his sister and they decided to sell it. Here's what he said the other day:

 

Yesterday my local Swedish bank sent to me a letter stating that from now on, more precisely from July, transactions from and to Brazil (among other crappy lands) are not going to be allowed. In this bank letter they state that those countries in the list are known for poor adherence on anti corruption and money laundry (laundering). Honestly I feel like I was a criminal, really.....

 

I called the bank asking for clarifications and to know if this is a new government regulation or so, but they did not clarify a thing. Then I contacted another banks in Sweden and they said that each bank can impose their own rules, but they found this decision to be strange and offered me to move my account, which I did. I also contacted my bank in Brazil and spoke with my manager, which found this news an absurd and asked me to send to them this letter so they can investigate. I also have a friend whom is the First Secretary at the Brazilian embassy in Denmark, who found this peculiar case very strange.

 

The case is resolved for me, but among my values, honesty comes always first. When I received this letter, it made me feel like I was a criminal. I agree that corruption should be righted against and that rules must be tough, but to generalize and put everyone from a single country like black listed, it is just not right.

[Yenn]

Banks must be good now. We had a royal commission into them, but we have had royal commissions into all sorts of thing and I really cannot see any change. What we need is a royal commission into royal commissions.

[red750]

Just state the outcome you want, then spend as much money as possible achieving it.

[facthunter]

The Banks were pretty Naughty tho. Nev

[ClintonB]

Dirty scoundrels have all offered loans to be put on hold, but little asterisk denotes we will add around $6500 in interest for the privilege. With 2 large mortgages and a small one, this is going to hurt at the end. Then in the first month of coved 19 they told us use cards and cash was like poison at the shops. I got a $12 fee for 24 excess transacations On card. If you counted all the customers and charged them that much each month, imagine how much they are raking in. Merchants are still paying fees for the terminal and each use, extra charges apply for each tap and go transaction. Would be a good time to be a caring bank.

[Jerry_Atrick]

I have to admit, the Aussie banks get away with financial extortion. The banks here were directed to provide payment holidays with no extra charges, not even to accrue the interest; simply add the number of payments mssed to the end of the terms. I am with three banks (because they have no current account fees nor do they have ATM/EFTPOS charges). On one I rarely use, it has a £250 overdraft... I have had letters from all three saying I can go to £750 in overdraft without incurrign fees or interest until the end of I think it was September. Since it was the same amount, I am thinking if the government didn't invoke some rule, they leant heavily on the banks to make it happen - something about repaying the bailout they got for their shennanigans during the global financial crisis. Even before COVID-19, they were forced to reduce their charges for insufficient funds and only after they gave you until 3pm that day to transfer money to cover the shortfall.

 

When I came back to Aus for a bit in the early to mid 2000s, I took a job on a project team for internet banking for a tier 2 retail and commercial bank. When the business owner of internet banking told me they hated the type of customer (I forget the name of the type) that just checks their balance rather than transfers funds online, I asked why. I couldn't contain my laughter when he said once customers transfer money between their own accounts in the bank more than a certain number of times per month, they get charged, as I recall, 20c per transaction. When I told him in the UK, normal retail banking is free the look of bemused incomprehension was priceless.

Edited May 15, 2020 by Guest

[willedoo]

Why is it that a lot of Youtube posters these days, when presenting an informative video, insist on speaking the narrative in a moronic, purposely robotic monotone. They also run one sentence into another and it just doesn't sound human, almost like a brainwashing technique. The end result is that the video is unpleasant to listen to and spoils what could have been a good video. Do they think it's an effective method of presentation or are they just wankers?

[old man emu]

It's because the maker of the video has fed a text script into software that reads the text to make a sound recording. The software sounds each word as it comes along, without the use of intonation and all those other factors that make speech interesting.

 

Perhaps they do it because English is not their first language for speaking, and they think if they tried to recite the text, the result would be more unintelligible. Whatever the reason, I agree that the result is ear jarring. Like trying to have a conversation with a poor soul who stutters; you are left hanging when the stutter starts.

[willedoo]

Perhaps they do it because English is not their first language for speaking, and they think if they tried to recite the text, the result would be more unintelligible.

Probably explains why most of them are American clips.

[old man emu]

Who killed off carbon paper?

As part of my fabulous home-schooling efforts, I want to transfer a drawing of a puppet to a sheet of corflute so we can make an articulated puppet for Craft. But where do you get Carbon paper these days? I have already scanned the image and had it printed on A3 paper. I don't want to paste the sheet to the board because the image has to be coloured in.

[octave]

Who killed off carbon paper?

As part of my fabulous home-schooling efforts, I want to transfer a drawing of a puppet to a sheet of corflute so we can make an articulated puppet for Craft. But where do you get Carbon paper these days? I have already scanned the image and had it printed on A3 paper. I don't want to paste the sheet to the board because the image has to be coloured in.

Would this work? Transfer Images Without Carbon Paper

[red750]

It depends on how much you need, O.M.E. You can buy a 20 sheet pack, I think it's A4 size, at Officeworks. See here.

 

Alternatively, duplicate cash receipt books usually have a sheet of carbon paper. We use them at our parish fete when collecting takings from the stalls. You should nbe able to get them from your local newsagent/stationer, or again from Officeworks. Cash receipts sizes and prices.

[old man emu]

Would this work? Transfer Images Without Carbon Paper

 

Basically, that's DIY carbon paper.

Actually, I foresaw this problem, so I had two copies of the image made. Total cost - 40 cents.

[kgwilson]

I use my credit card for everything possible, even a cup of coffee. It has no fees and no rewards & I pay it off on the due date every month. As it is on line is it a very easy way to manage and monitor expenditure.

 

I pay it off fully every month but one month somehow got the cents back to front so instead of 54 cents I entered 45 cents. The total bill was 3 and a half thousand. The next bill had a late payment interest fee of $125.00. I rang & was originally told "Tough that is the way it is". When I explained & asked them to look at my payments history they agreed to look at it. The next month it got worse & this time I got a bit more agro in my stance & told them "How did they think this would look given their current roasting at the Royal commission. I got passed on to a Supervisor who immediately waived the initial charges and the next charges on top of the original charges. The next month the credits were there but there were more charges that had accrued between the phone calls so I got in touch again saying this time that unless it was fully resolved they could stick their CC up their fundamental you know what unless it was finally fixed. It took another month and another charge reversal to come right.

 

They have all these great systems set up to automatically do everything in their favour but when it comes to a mistake there is no process to reverse or fix it. What a pathetic process for a 9 cent underpayment.

Edited May 24, 2020 by Guest

[Yenn]

I have no problems with the my bank, same as kgwilson, but they have never tried to rip me off. I advise them that if they stuff me around I will go elsewhere.

They recently told me they had stopped my card and would issue another one. They had spotted a couple of thousand dollars of transactions on my card that they suspected were not made by me. I was without a card for 5 days, but not out of pocket. Personally I reckon banking is far better now than in the good old days. Easier to make payments by direct debit and no need to go into the bank in town.

[spacesailor]

" So you are getting three months to the litre, Spacey.? "

Now It's up to 6 months to the litre !.

If it was only true economy !. Yipppee.

 

Jerry

" I have to admit, the Aussie banks get away with financial extortion "

Even the government gets away with extortion, Medicare won't pay it's customers if they haven't got internet banking.

So they keep that money of the ones that don't Toe the Line.

or is it a scam so their own employees can get a little extra !.

spacesailor

[willedoo]

spacey, I don't think you need internet banking to get a medicare payment. But you need a bank account for it to be paid into; I don't think they hand out cash refunds anymore. An old lady who has never had a computer could go into Centrelink and see the Medicare person and give them her account number and BSB number and then Medicare would pay direct into her account. I think you can still get a medicare refund even if you've never ever seen a computer in your whole life.

 

But you're right about the extortion bit. The Robo-debt debacle is a good example. The AG has gone public and said that it was illegal, and always was illegal. It stretches back decades and the statute of limitations means all the people who were extorted previous to 2015 don't get their money back. Not far short of a billion dollars they have to pay back so far, and that's without any compensation. Makes Ned Kelly look honest.

Edited June 1, 2020 by willedoo

[octave]

spacey, I don't think you need internet banking to get a medicare payment. But you need a bank account for it to be paid into; I don't think they hand out cash refunds anymore. An old lady who has never had a computer could go into Centrelink and see the Medicare person and give them her account number and BSB number and then Medicare would pay direct into her account. I think you can still get a medicare refund even if you've never ever seen a computer in your whole life.

 

You beat me to it. At the moment I am helping my elderly mother who lives interstate with her finances. my mother does not do internet banking (although we are working on it). You definitely do not need online banking

[spacesailor]

But you still have to give away your bank details to a strange person that is employed by an entity that does.nt want to pay you.

The cost of that letter plus the form to fill in, is more than than a cheque that I could deposit in my bank.

spacesailor

Edited June 1, 2020 by Guest

[willedoo]

The virus lockdown got me into internet banking. Only new to it but love it. I wouldn't go back to not having it. A few clicks and I can check account balances, transfer between debit and credit accounts etc..

[willedoo]

 

The cost of that letter plus the form to fill in, is more than than a cheque that I could deposit in my bank.

spacesailor

 

It's time to wean off cheque books. Cheque accounts will be gone very soon. I think most banks have plans to scrap them in the very near future.

[kgwilson]

I haven't had a cheque book since 2005. Electronic banking has been around for a lot longer than that as well. I got my first bank card for withdrawals only in prescribed amounts when I was living in London in 1974.

[old man emu]

I remember, Oh so well.