Insignificant/ Significant things that BYP or just wind you up a little

[gremlin]

In my limited experience, the bank DO NOT pick up the bill, they simply refuse to pay the retailer !

APP (Automated Push Payment) fraud doesn't involve a retailer, because the beneficiary of the funds is the scammer, not a genuine retailer, so I'm not sure what you are referring to.

Some figures from a gripping trade paper from recent months:

"According to the figures from banking trade body UK Finance, APP fraud rose from £208 million in the first half of 2020 to £355 million for the same period in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 71%. Applying the same growth to the second half of the year, the total losses from APP fraud for 2021 are forecast to reach £819 million.

While it is consumers that suffer both financially and emotionally from these scams, banks are also left footing the bill in many cases. For example, TSB has refunded 97% of all bank fraud cases under its Fraud Refund Guarantee."

2FA was brought in to reduce these numbers, not just for banks and their customers, but because the funds are used to fund more criminal activity. Another initiative, which you may or may not have noticed, is Open Banking whereby the beneficiary details are verified in real time when making an APP.

Well done the banking industry, right?

[Yambo]

Some figures from a gripping trade paper from recent months:

"According to the figures from banking trade body UK Finance, APP fraud rose from £208 million in the first half of 2020 to £355 million for the same period in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 71%. Applying the same growth to the second half of the year, the total losses from APP fraud for 2021 are forecast to reach £819 million.

While it is consumers that suffer both financially and emotionally from these scams, banks are also left footing the bill in many cases. For example, TSB has refunded 97% of all bank fraud cases under its Fraud Refund Guarantee."

2FA was brought in to reduce these numbers, not just for banks and their customers, but because the funds are used to fund more criminal activity. Another initiative, which you may or may not have noticed, is Open Banking whereby the beneficiary details are verified in real time when making an APP.

Well done the banking industry, right?

It's a great shame that basic banking and the use and access to our own money has been made difficult. Shame as in shame on the government of the day that took away the presumption of innocence with regards to banking and made us all criminals. Shame on the government for not chasing the real criminals that were (and probably continue to) laundering money through the banks. Rather than chase, catch and prosecute them, life was made difficult for everyone - including the banks who had to implement the presumption of guilt policy requirements.

My own gripe with Santanfuckingder is not about those issues although they have certainly been a factor. Santanfuckingder's communications both inside the organisation and with customers is utterly appalling. It appears that of the many people employed by the bank only a handful have any idea what banking is all about. They probably have no more idea than me and that is based on being a customer of a bank.

I had a number of complaints running and subsequently received 3 letters all of which started off the same way "I'm sorry you've had to contact us with a problem, this isn't the level of service that we aim to provide." They don't appear to have any idea about how to improve their service and I doubt anyone has been tasked with doing the job. All the letters have this sentence as well "While I appreciate the problems this situation has caused you, my investigations have shown that this wasn't due to a mistake on our part." Blatantly wrong. The implication was that I had done something wrong - and I hadn't. Another implication that can be drawn from that sentence is that they didn't investigate me or my issues but simply looked to see if their internal procedures were followed by staff. In one of the letters I was informed that "Santanfuckingder are unable to send letters by recorded delivery!" even when those letters may include cheques, cards or urgent requests for 'important information'.

I had two identical letters last week which informed me that they could not act on the Santanfuckingder form for change of address but both letters were sent to the new address I had given them on the form. You couldn't make it up.

Anyway, I've opened a Starling account and they seem to be considerably more switched on. I really hope so.

[gremlin]

My own gripe with Santanfuckingder....

Move your business. Simple as that.

So many people don't despite the Current Account Switching Service, which does it all for you. Same as you wouldn't go back to a restaurant with crap food and service or back to a garage that fucks up your car. Santander is known to be among the worst for service*, so switch and close.


*Another initiative is that all UK banks that participant in IPSOS survey need to put up a poster, in a prominent place (?!) within each branch of their ranking. Only issue is, nobody goes into their branch. So for your delectation...

Individual: https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/personal-ba ... ruary-2022

Business: https://www.bva-bdrc.com/products/busin ... t-britain/

[Pirahna]

The one and only time I have ever abused a call handler was RBS, then I swore at the manager I got passed onto. I was in the US at the time, as soon I got home I moved to First Direct and lived happily ever after.

[gremlin]

The rankings in the two links I put up certainly point to First Direct, Starling and Monzo having the most satisfied individual customers. Coincidental that they don't have any branches? Probably not.

Odd that an obscure Swedish bank should be up there for business accounts. I can only put this down to the high cailbre of staff they employ...

[Jody]

In my limited experience, the bank DO NOT pick up the bill, they simply refuse to pay the retailer !

APP (Automated Push Payment) fraud doesn't involve a retailer, because the beneficiary of the funds is the scammer, not a genuine retailer, so I'm not sure what you are referring to.

Some figures from a gripping trade paper from recent months:

"According to the figures from banking trade body UK Finance, APP fraud rose from £208 million in the first half of 2020 to £355 million for the same period in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 71%. Applying the same growth to the second half of the year, the total losses from APP fraud for 2021 are forecast to reach £819 million.

While it is consumers that suffer both financially and emotionally from these scams, banks are also left footing the bill in many cases. For example, TSB has refunded 97% of all bank fraud cases under its Fraud Refund Guarantee."

2FA was brought in to reduce these numbers, not just for banks and their customers, but because the funds are used to fund more criminal activity. Another initiative, which you may or may not have noticed, is Open Banking whereby the beneficiary details are verified in real time when making an APP.

Well done the banking industry, right?

Apologies, I thought we were talking about cards being used by scammers to buy products and services. IE My brother runs a breakers and sold a £1000 engine a while ago. Credit card company contacted him and said ....

*Paraphrased*

"stolen card details mate, you ain't getting paid" and he said "well I have the address where I sent the engine and who signed for it"
" we're not interested " was their reply

[cheb]

Some figures from a gripping trade paper from recent months:

"According to the figures from banking trade body UK Finance, APP fraud rose from £208 million in the first half of 2020 to £355 million for the same period in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 71%. Applying the same growth to the second half of the year, the total losses from APP fraud for 2021 are forecast to reach £819 million.

While it is consumers that suffer both financially and emotionally from these scams, banks are also left footing the bill in many cases. For example, TSB has refunded 97% of all bank fraud cases under its Fraud Refund Guarantee."

2FA was brought in to reduce these numbers, not just for banks and their customers, but because the funds are used to fund more criminal activity. Another initiative, which you may or may not have noticed, is Open Banking whereby the beneficiary details are verified in real time when making an APP.

Well done the banking industry, right?

It's a great shame that basic banking and the use and access to our own money has been made difficult. Shame as in shame on the government of the day that took away the presumption of innocence with regards to banking and made us all criminals. Shame on the government for not chasing the real criminals that were (and probably continue to) laundering money through the banks. Rather than chase, catch and prosecute them, life was made difficult for everyone - including the banks who had to implement the presumption of guilt policy requirements.

My own gripe with Santanfuckingder is not about those issues although they have certainly been a factor. Santanfuckingder's communications both inside the organisation and with customers is utterly appalling. It appears that of the many people employed by the bank only a handful have any idea what banking is all about. They probably have no more idea than me and that is based on being a customer of a bank.

I had a number of complaints running and subsequently received 3 letters all of which started off the same way "I'm sorry you've had to contact us with a problem, this isn't the level of service that we aim to provide." They don't appear to have any idea about how to improve their service and I doubt anyone has been tasked with doing the job. All the letters have this sentence as well "While I appreciate the problems this situation has caused you, my investigations have shown that this wasn't due to a mistake on our part." Blatantly wrong. The implication was that I had done something wrong - and I hadn't. Another implication that can be drawn from that sentence is that they didn't investigate me or my issues but simply looked to see if their internal procedures were followed by staff. In one of the letters I was informed that "Santanfuckingder are unable to send letters by recorded delivery!" even when those letters may include cheques, cards or urgent requests for 'important information'.

I had two identical letters last week which informed me that they could not act on the Santanfuckingder form for change of address but both letters were sent to the new address I had given them on the form. You couldn't make it up.

Anyway, I've opened a Starling account and they seem to be considerably more switched on. I really hope so.

Do you play video games? You've had training for this one already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy_(video_game)

[Yambo]

My own gripe with Santanfuckingder....

Move your business.

Doh! Why didn't I think of that!

Simple as that.

No it's not as "Simple as that". You sound like someone who works in banking.

If it was as 'Simple as that' I'd have moved banks 2 or 3 years ago. Due to the government's failure to chase the real criminals it is not a simple matter to just move one's business if one does not have an address in the UK for which they would need to pay utility companies. Apparently I can prove my identity if I have to pay for electricity, gas or water. I was having problems opening a joint account with my son ffs.

Anyway, it's sorted and I have already started the process of moving my business.

[gremlin]

My own gripe with Santanfuckingder....

Move your business.

Doh! Why didn't I think of that!

Simple as that.

No it's not as "Simple as that". You sound like someone who works in banking.

If it was as 'Simple as that' I'd have moved banks 2 or 3 years ago. Due to the government's failure to chase the real criminals it is not a simple matter to just move one's business if one does not have an address in the UK for which they would need to pay utility companies. Apparently I can prove my identity if I have to pay for electricity, gas or water. I was having problems opening a joint account with my son ffs.

Anyway, it's sorted and I have already started the process of moving my business.

Ahh. Forgot you were in forrin lands.

My advice, had we had this conversation many moons ago, would be to use somebody like TurkishBank UK or Turkyie IS (Spelling?). They would, one assumes, have been used to negotiating an ex-pat relationship between UK and Turkey.

Asking an ex-UK building society, now owned by Spaniards who employ Ant and fucking Dec was asking for trouble.

[Yambo]

Ahh. Forgot you were in forrin lands.

My advice, had we had this conversation many moons ago, would be to use somebody like TurkishBank UK or Turkyie IS (Spelling?). They would, one assumes, have been used to negotiating an ex-pat relationship between UK and Turkey.

I have an account with İş Bankası, they border on excellent. I have my UK state pension paid to that account - I wasn't getting any income for a couple of months so spoke to DWP who were very helpful and job done. I spoke to İş Bankası about opening an account with their London branch and they apologised profusely and explained that the banking rules were different for the UK and they couldn't do it.

Asking an ex-UK building society, now owned by Spaniards who employ Ant and fucking Dec was asking for trouble.

I was an Abbey National customer so was inherited by Santander when they bought it. When I was coming to live here I spoke to Santander to see if there would be any issues and they were quite happy to keep my custom. I also spoke to HMRC about moving here and again, no problem. I try to do things properly but probably have too many expectations of some organisations.

[Mussels]

The rankings in the two links I put up certainly point to First Direct, Starling and Monzo having the most satisfied individual customers. Coincidental that they don't have any branches? Probably not.

Odd that an obscure Swedish bank should be up there for business accounts. I can only put this down to the high cailbre of staff they employ...

They list RBS and Natwest as different banks so I'm not sure I believe any of it.

[cheb]

The rankings in the two links I put up certainly point to First Direct, Starling and Monzo having the most satisfied individual customers. Coincidental that they don't have any branches? Probably not.

Odd that an obscure Swedish bank should be up there for business accounts. I can only put this down to the high cailbre of staff they employ...

They list RBS and Natwest as different banks so I'm not sure I believe any of it.

RBS and NW might be part of the same group but they seem to run as separate division, RBS in Scotland, NW in England and Wales. Not always, but mostly.

I know some of this because until a few months ago I had a part time job with RBS. I wouldn't, and don't, bank with them for many reasons, the main one being how they treat their staff, very target driven AFAICT. That lost them lots of good staff.

[Mr. Dazzle]

I'm not sure I sign up to the "banks make accessing my own money difficult" argument.

No they don't, they make it difficult by the instant standards of 2022 you've become used to. Even I remember when it was significantly less convenient to access one's money.

You can't have it both ways, 2022 level of speed and 1941 Mr Mainwaring presumed innocence aren't compatible.

[KungFooBob]

I'm not sure I sign up to the "banks make accessing my own money difficult" argument.

No they don't, they make it difficult by the instant standards of 2022 you've become used to. Even I remember when it was significantly less convenient to access one's money.

You can't have it both ways, 2022 level of speed and 1941 Mr Mainwaring presumed innocence aren't compatible.

I remember having to phone the bank to tell them I wanted to withdraw £2800 the next weekend to buy a motorcycle, to make sure they had enough cash in.

This was 1996.

[Mussels]

The rankings in the two links I put up certainly point to First Direct, Starling and Monzo having the most satisfied individual customers. Coincidental that they don't have any branches? Probably not.

Odd that an obscure Swedish bank should be up there for business accounts. I can only put this down to the high cailbre of staff they employ...

They list RBS and Natwest as different banks so I'm not sure I believe any of it.

RBS and NW might be part of the same group but they seem to run as separate division, RBS in Scotland, NW in England and Wales. Not always, but mostly.

I know some of this because until a few months ago I had a part time job with RBS. I wouldn't, and don't, bank with them for many reasons, the main one being how they treat their staff, very target driven AFAICT. That lost them lots of good staff.

I've worked for them a couple of times but not for a few years now. They tried to ditch the Natwest name entirely until RBS got such a bad reputation they flipped the signs round in England and hoped everyone would forget.
Whatever the branding it was all run from the same offices on the same systems, not like two companies under the same parent. I agree about staff treatment, they had some very strange practices I've not seen in any of the other banks I worked for.

[Taipan]

I'm not sure I sign up to the "banks make accessing my own money difficult" argument.

No they don't, they make it difficult by the instant standards of 2022 you've become used to. Even I remember when it was significantly less convenient to access one's money.

You can't have it both ways, 2022 level of speed and 1941 Mr Mainwaring presumed innocence aren't compatible.

I remember having to phone the bank to tell them I wanted to withdraw £2800 the next weekend to buy a motorcycle, to make sure they had enough cash in.

This was 1996.

Same with TSB!. This was last week!

[mangocrazy]

I had dealings with one of the contractors at RBS, as we were both working on demising old X.25 crap. Rob was/is an Aussie with a fairly evil sense of humour and a deeprooted dislike of twattery and double dealing. He was perfectly placed to observe all the shit that went down about 10 years ago when RBS/Natwest systems were basically unavailable for about 3 weeks (give or take). He was scathing about the managerial incompetence and the scary way in which stuff was being recklessly offshored to untrained staff in India who were basically just following scripts. I've actually managed to dig up an email he sent to me about the whole shitfest, so here (most of) it is for your delectation.

Warning, there are a number of techy references that you may not understand, but the general thrust of the story is fairly clear:

Now about dear old RuBbiSh/Twatsnest probs... While it was sort of fun
to be so circumspect it's relaxing to be a tad more open - goes without
saying this email will stay here no coz I don't want to get my
flatemate in trouble. Feel free to talk about it everywhere with
everyone though. Sure this is breach of confidential agreements but
everyone likes a laugh - especially to them's who can understand and
think 'thank christ it wasn't for me to fix' !

Spoiler alert >> sloppy change put in by local (not tested in Dev,
backout not tested in Dev, Change not peer-reviewed - name it bad
change) on 16th, performance issues noted, backed out 3-4 days later by
someone else (not sure if local or India), that hyper screwed things as
per the CA warning, and then India offshores to fix - totally useless.
The core batch is called CAUSTIC and there's 3 UK guys (who are
scheduled redundant in Nov that have knowledge - needless to say they'e
busy.

At present contrary to the stupid lies the PR people put out about it
being fixed Friday week ago all that did was put pressure on the IT
guys trying to fix. There's 3 streams to the Banking batch - Ulster,
Natwest, RBS, Insurance batch has it's own scheduler so was
unaffected. RBS had it's first successful turnaround yesterday at 0200
and Natwest at 0300 - this means they can NOW start on the backlog for
those 2 brands. Ulster is fucked and will be for about a week, they
can't start work on it until Natwest is fixed - and that got fixed
properly Friday 28th.

My flatmate is Service Delivery Incident & Recovery Team Manager and
has been doing 13 hr shifts since Wed week before last trying to sort
this pig out. fell off the twig last Tue and had two nights off but
back in since - poor thing is totally knackered.

It's an unbelievable sequence of screwups. You're bang on the money on
initial caue of CA7 HYPER missing on the reversion. Edinburgh guy put
in a change on Sat 16 under 'accredited change' - that's one which
automatically triggers Endevor to promote code without peer checking
for content and consequences.

Management failure on so many levels - from initial 'lift-n-shift'
projects for the batch, to Incident Recovery being usurped by senior
mgmt, to offshore incapable of fixing - leaving 3 guys to rebuild 000's
of batch job schedule. As a laugh Deloites are in auditing for Risk etc
- and they'll crucify them for the snr mgmt usurping recovery outside
governance.

Basically my mate's damning view of RBS/Natwest senior management (or as he calls them RuBbiSh/Twatsnest) is that all they were really focussed on was getting off to the golf course as quickly as possible every day and anything that got in the way of that was ignored/devolved. Sounds about right...

[mangocrazy]

And this was The Register's damning take on the whole affair, back in 2012. Remarkably similar to my mate's, as it happens.

Golf is mentioned quite a lot.

https://www.theregister.com/2012/06/29/ ... it_crisis/

[Demannu]

My bloody woodshed.
I hope whoever built it suffers from blinding migraines for the rest of their lives.
Who ( apart from a dwarf carpenter) in their right mind would build a wood shed with a 5'5" roof height?
Just finished the first stere of firewood, the other can wait til tomorrow.
Cold compress and a couple of paracetamol and a warm bath in order.

[Pirahna]

My bloody woodshed.

Mine is brilliant, I built it myself.