Speak free

Bankers

I know that a while ago, bankers were the media’s favourite target of hate and of course, they became the public’s favourite target too, but with good reason. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had some kind of run-in with their bank at some point, yet strangely we’re more likely to get divorced that to move our accounts to another bank.

This morning I received my credit card statement which has a fairly minimal balance on it. I was a day late with my payment this month, and lo and behold, I get slapped with bank charges. You can see why the public were quick to join the media with the hate-campaign can’t you really? All of this at a time of worldwide deep recession, while the general public, the ones who work hard and put money into the government funds so that we can all benefit, we’re the ones who end up paying, paying and paying again.

Luckily I’m not the type to take this sort of thing without a bit of a protest, so I rang my bank and politely asked them to refund the charges, admitting that yes, it was my fault, but that it was for such a short period of time and I had paid off more than the minimum payment, all with a distinct tone of grovelling (which was all about as much fun as leg vein treatment). Hey, I can play the game.

The woman I spoke to was nice enough and did indeed refund my charge. (Yes!) However, it came wrapped in a patronising sandwich of, “Well, because you haven’t claimed charges back before…we’ll refund it this once.”Oh so there’s a limit on how many unfair charges you can claim back then is there? I felt like a naughty school child caught out by the headmistress. But at least I got my money back, so it was a small price to pay. Mind you, I probably paid the equivalent of the charges in the price of the 0870 phonecall.