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Thieving credit companies
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
A man was allowed to run up £65,000 of debt on credit cards, then he hanged himself because he couldn't face the shame of the debt.
RBS group, annual profits: £7billion, are chasing the widow for a debt of £700, and are refusing to write off the debt. Despite them killing a man.
They have blood on their hands and they should be punished. For every pound of credit they offer, they should have to pay £5 in tax. Fucking thieving cunting bastards.
RBS group, annual profits: £7billion, are chasing the widow for a debt of £700, and are refusing to write off the debt. Despite them killing a man.
They have blood on their hands and they should be punished. For every pound of credit they offer, they should have to pay £5 in tax. Fucking thieving cunting bastards.
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
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Comments
The problem with credit cards is probably the convenience factor. In that you can spend lots of money without carrying a wad of cash around with you.
The lesson here is to learn greater self-control.:yes:
Some interesting facts on the state of American consumer debt at present...
Total consumer credit: $1.7 trillion.
Credit card debt carried by the average American: $8,562.
Total finance charges Americans paid in 2001: $50 billion.
Percent of U.S. households deemed credit worthy by the lending industry: 78%.
Number of credit card holders who declared bankruptcy last year: 1.3 million.
http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20040209.html
Compound this with a total national budget deficit which continues to skyrocket, a concurrently alarming trade deficit (despite the weaker dollar) as well as the weaker dollar itself and it doesn't take a genius to figure out the impending financial disaster looming on the horizon.
Meanwhile the corporates are cozily enjoying carte balnche to expatriate their profits, pay diddly in comparative tax burdens and outsource jobs to more easily exploited countries.
There's a fox in the henhouse for sure!
No, the lesson here is that companies are using irresponsible means to make obscene profits.
If these profits were earned and deserved then fine- but they aren't. people are given carte blanche to take out as much credit as they want, and if they turn it down the hard-sell is put on. My girlfriend doesn't have a credit card, and every time she goes to pay a bill the banks are begging her to take one because it's easy dough.
If they aren't going to be responsible then some hard labour for the fat cat robbing executives might persuade them. Instead of jobseekers doing loads for shit all pay, lets get fat cat executives out on the road mending potholes and scrubbing graffiti.
Might make them more socially conscious.
I did get one once, which opened my eyes big time. They didn't even find out my income* so they had no idea if I could pay them back or not. If you got one of these cards for each shop you could get around £30000 credit, no questions asked.
As for credit cards, I have never and don't plan to ever have one.
*I was unemployed at the time, so I didn't have one. This didn't bother the company of course. All they want is for you to be in a spiral of debt.
Big Issue vendor offered £300 credit by Barclaycard
And apparently a lot of Big Issue vendors are getting approached and given credit- talk about fleecing the most defenceless people in society in order to make another quick buck.
Barclaycard as in Barclay bank?
Those people are fuckers and should be shot one by one. They are thieves by the true sense of the word. Not even indirectly.
I don't owe anything on it, everything comes off my debit card. If I can't afford it....it goes on my overdraft lol. But I'm in the black at the moment so I'm alright.
I don't agree with credit at all, unless it's for a mortgage or a car. If you can't afford it, don't buy it. But then the companies are exploting us, and I think the solution would be for everyone with some debt to file bankruptcy at the same time....fuck the banks proper.
Anyway, as for the big issue sellers, how do they enforce the repayments exactly....?
After being charged £20 for a £10 overdraft, 30 year old Michael Howard of Leeds changed his name by deed poll to 'Yorkshire Bank PLC Are Fascist Bastards'. The bank has now asked him to close his account, and Mr. Bastards has asked them to repay the 69p balance, by cheque, made out in his new name.
Haha - my dad was customer services manager of yorkshire bank when the guy did that, and the letter was addressed to him.
he was very amused.
Did he keep the letter? I would have hung it on my wall if it had been addressed to me.
it was photocopied and put on the wall in every department. there was a framed photocopy on the wall of the call centre when i worked there.
it was actually just addressed to 'customer services manager', and there's one for each type of banking, so they all got a copy. my dad was the credit cards CS manager guy, and he had nothing to do with overdrafts, so he got to laugh lots and then not even have to sort anything out. but he didn't get personally named or anything. which is a shame.
the summer after i did my GCSEs i worked in the post room for card services, and some of the letters of complaint we got were greatly entertaining.
this one guy had sent his visa card, cut up, with explicit instructions on where he thought we should stick it. and i have to say, some of his suggestions were very creative.
we had a special pigeon hole for entertaining complaint letters. they all got read and responded to, but the funny ones did the rounds of the office first.
You cant blame the banks for people being stupid!
The varst majority of people use credit cards with no problems, I think its quite patronising to assume people are too stupid to deal with credit cards.
Well they evidently are. Trouble with this bloke is, the only reason it made the papers is because he killed himself over it. His actual situation isn't unique. People in this country owe nearly £1000 BILLION in credit, about 2/3's being mortgages, the rest being on credit cards. Do you have any idea how much £300 billion is? Noone does, the idea of having that amount of money is inconcievable, it would take thousands of years to count it, let alone spend it.
How have we got into this situation? because of the ease of being able to get loans, credit cards and credit agreements, this guy owed 3 times his annual salary, he had to pay back more each month than he was recieving.
Like I said, most people don't think about how they'll pay the money, a credit card to them is just another source of cash, hence the reason why some people find themselves facing death as the only viable alternative.
And I dont mean that to sound harsh, but to try and regulate everything just in case someone makes a bad choice is not only restrictive on the rest of us, but as I said very patronising.
patronising, perhaps, but not any less true. i think you grossly overestimate the intelligence of the british public.
like i said, i used to work in the call centre for a bank, and i got at least one call a week from someone who didn't realise that they had to pay the money back. then there were the people who didn't understand the concept of paying by a certain date, at least one an hour who needed the payment of interest explaining to them, the woman who said her direct debit was 'stealing' from her, and the guy who didn't know his date of birth, and had to guess. and don't even get me started on the people who work in the branches.
yes, banks charge for stupid things, they rip you off, they try to bleed you dry, but all the charges they make are stated in the used agreement. the rate of interest, the annual fee, cash handling fee, all that is stated in the agreement BEFORE you sign anything, and people just either do not bother to read it, or read it and still haven't got a clue what's happening. and whatever anyone says to you, you do NOT have to sign it.
yes, exactly. i don't think it's too much to ask for an adult to have to manage their own finances.
But my point was that its not the banks fault if they are.
This is an education issue, if people understood the situation it wouldnt happen so often.
I'm gonna be looking for a mortgage soon, I dunno where to begin
Proper life skills classes should be taught in school to include;
- Sex, relationships, money, love, health, drugs, tax, jobs, law, a bit of politics...
If this were to be done properly it would do FAR more good than those badly thought out citizen classes.
Oh too true, I've spent years working with the great British public and it never fails to amaze me how dense they can be. You learn a lot about people from call centres.
If it was a builder charging £5000 for unblocking drains for an old lady who didn't know what was going on, there would be moral outrage.
But if it's banks people just say "stupid people deserve it".
Banks have a responsibility to be socially conscious, and to be fair and honest. They aren't, and they should be forced to.
As I said, making the fuckers who run these companies work down the salt mines in Siberia would teach them a fucking lesson. They are vermin who should be hurt in severe and creative ways.
No, but companies have a responsibility to not exploit people. They are unwilling to discharge this responsibility, and fleece people left, right and centre for personal gain.
They are as disgusting as the cowboy builders ripping off old ladies. And they should be treated the same way- with a long spell in jail. Without protection from other prisoners.
Of that £70,000, a large amount of it was interest and charges.
Banks shouldn't be allowed to charge unreasonable interest or charges, and banks should be forced to be judicial with who they offer credit to.
Every time I go near my credit limit it goes up by another £300, without me asking for it. That is grossly unreasonable and unfair, and practically begging people to fall into the trap of debt. Unsolicited advertising should be banned too.
Though some people deserve it- there's one moron on here who said that she runs up bills on her chargecards "because she can" and "she wants stuff". People like that are deserving of bankruptcy and ruin.
banks targeting vulnerable people is a seperate issue, i think, and i agree that it's not on. and i also agree that people should only be offered credit if they have a definite means of paying it back.
and yes, it is very easy to fall into debt, but that doesn't mean you have no choice. i have had a credit card for 4 years, and i've never had any extra charges on it at all, and haven't got into debt because of it. my balance is paid off in full, on time, every month. if i didn't think i could do that, i wouldn't use it. i think people have to learn to be more responsible for their own actions.
Thats what I have been saying, I wasnt really trying to defend the banks as such, I was just saying if you get into debt at the end of the day it is you OWN fault.
In theory, yes. In practise, hardly.
Store cards don't show their interest rates anywhere, apart from on the contract in very small print which even I would ahvew trouble reading, never mind understanding. In fairness, the NatWest are open and honest with me, but even then they always list the monthly rate in literature because it sounds significantly cheaper.
It's being rather generous to the banks and credit companies to say that they state the interest rates and charged. They put it in writing, but that's hardly the same thing- take Barclaycard being bollocked by the ASA for their adverts, but still insisting that the rate advertised was the actual rate.
People need to be more responsible, but they shouldn't have to take out a degree in legalese just to be able to understand the interest rates. I can't understand half of the sodding contract, and I study law! Banks need to be honest and forthright, then people can make an informed choice- one of the few banks that does is this the NatWest and the Co-Operative Bank. The HSBC are probably the worst.
they go on to explain what that APR means in real terms, with charts and examples and the whole of the site is fairly straightforward and easy to understand.
you just have to change all the 'we may's to 'we will's.