THE GREAT BANK REVOLT: THIS MAN STOOD UP TO HIS BANK, NOW THOUSANDS ARE FOLLOWING HIM (Times UK)

Two years ago Stephen Hone, a Plymouth University law student, phoned his bank after his monthly statement revealed he had been hit with two penalty charges of £32 each.

Surely there had been a mistake, he said. Yes, he had breached his overdraft limit but only by 5p. The penalties were grossly disproportionate and could not possibly reflect the costs incurred by the bank in putting things straight.

<snip>

Hone tried to work out the effective interest rate in his head. Yes, they were offering to cut the penalty in half, but a £32 charge on 5p was still equivalent to being charged interest at a rate of 64,000%. “Look, I want all the money back,” he concluded. “What you’ve done is against the law. Unless you drop both charges I’ll take my case to the county court.”

Dismissive of Hone’s legal threats, the Abbey blithely refused to give him his money back. As the punchline from the comedy series Little Britain has it, it was a classic case of “computer says nawooo”. IN retrospect, it was a huge mistake. Perhaps the most expensive ever made. True to his word, Hone filed his claim against Abbey in Plymouth county court a few weeks after his initial complaint. And if the bank’s executives were initially bullish about winning, the smiles were quickly wiped from their faces when the judge ruled he should be given his money back.

<snip>

And publicise it he did. After the Abbey handed over the money he posted his story on the worldwide web. And like a virus it spread, with consumers across Britain downloading the details of his case before launching their own on the back of it.

Two years later and Britain’s banks are receiving thousands of claims letters every day. It is estimated that there could already be 1m cases in the pipe-line. Yesterday the Financial Times reported that the final compensation bill could reach £10 billion.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1434891.ece

EXTENSIVE DISCUSSION & COMMENTARY--MP3 PODCAST:
http://karmabanqueradio.com/?p=378
http://www.karmabanque.com/MP3/kbqr250207.mp3

RELATED DU THREAD:
CONSUMER MILITANCY ERUPTS: PEOPLE JOIN FORCES ON WEB TO FIGHT BACK (Independent UK)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x283975

I love it when corporations get their comeuppance. Greedy bastids.

Gawd I love this story. THANKS.

Justice can be a wonderful thing.

all they can not to be robbed while robbing the little folks.

A real good news story!

Doesn't that sound fair to you? That's what the bank tried to charge HIM. . .

I wonder if Britain's justice system has fewer roadblocks for the little guy, however ...

planet. Can't wait to take this one to the bank :D

funny thing was, my deposit cleared the same day.

before crediting.

then I don't know what does.

And you know what? High rollers that do business with banks like that one (like hedge funds) probably rarely if ever get hit with penalties like that; the bank doesn't want them to pull their big business, but doesn't care about average customers.

Banks have been trying to become broker/investors for their clientele. One-stop shopping/investing. Anybody have issues with this or see any conflicts of interest?


Here are a few things to keep in mind:

A stockbroker at your bank or savings institution can sell securities and mutual funds that are protected against certain losses, but not by the FDIC and not in the same way the FDIC insures deposits. The Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), a non-profit corporation (not a government agency) funded by brokerage firms, provides limited coverage if, for example, a member brokerage firm goes out of business. The SIPC doesn't insure you against financial losses caused by market declines. (To learn more, go to the SIPC Web site.)

Your bank or savings institution can sell annuities, which are investments with income guaranteed to start some time in the future. Annuities may appear to be "insured" because they guarantee a minimum payment for life, but these products are not FDIC-insured.
As part of the FDIC's ongoing efforts to educate consumers about what is and is not FDIC-insured, and to help you better understand the wide array of investment, savings and insurance choices available from banks and saving institutions, we offer the following guide.

http://www.consumer-guides.info/Financial/financial_consumer_knowledge.html

On a $3.20 debit about a month ago.

:hi: Sorry about your bank, I'd request a refund.

I say that as a former banker, who by the way, refunded overdraft fees every chance she got. ;)

I find this portion of the article very interesting:

The student, it seemed, had done his homework. British law does not allow banks, or any other company or institution, to hit customers with “unreasonable” charges even if those charges are spelt out in a signed contact. Charges must be proportionate to costs. Any more and it’s profiteering.

It is my understanding the US has similar laws, I'd love to see someone follow suit.

http://www.penaltycharges.co.uk/main_bank_charges.php

This guy is amazing.

the staff worked at, right in front of the customers, to the value of the money the bank owed him. He'd got an order from the court. You can imagine the manager's stupefaction...!!!! That'll larn him to heed legal warnings. I think they called it a warrant of execution, he got from the judge, to send the bailiffs in.

Max and Stacy talk about the bank asset seizure at some length in the MP3 podcast, to which I posted the link above. Wish we could get judges in the U.S. to authorize remedies like that.

that of the bank robber (in the conventional sense, not in this sense, here, of a "robbing bank"), who, after he had passed a note to a female teller at an Edinburgh bank ordering her with menaces to had over money, primly chided him that he'd just have to go to the back of the queue and wait his turn like everyone else.

Surely, truth is not only stranger, but often more wildly and improbably comical than fiction.

When I resigned, the corporation docked my pay despite the fact I had vacation time coming. They refused to respond to my letter. I went to an attorney. He wrote a very nice letter, asking that they pay me what I was due. Again, they refused. He then filed a little suit, word of it got around, and as it turns out the corporation was stiffing its present and former employees left and right.

HA HA! I cost them a frickin' bundle by the time it was over, because they ended up having to reimburse all their employees that they had stiffed. To make it even sweeter, their management practices were so bad, a few years later they went out of business.

Here's to you, Stephen Hone. :toast:

:headbang: :headbang: :yourock: :yourock:

More folks should respond in the way that you did. Otherwise, it reinforces within corporate culture the belief that they should be able to do whatever they can get away with.

As if they aren't shielded from enough responsibility already by the laws that allow these fictitious "corporate persons" to act like psychopaths; this effect is explored at length in the documentary "The Corporation," which you've probably seen by now.

firmly on their side, so I don't expect something like this to happen here.

anyway. They need to be more responsive to the local community, where deposits are used to fund loans. BofA, Chase, MBNA could care less what happens 3000 miles away from Wall Street here in Sonoma County, California.

they know where their bread is buttered.

Fight back against financial abusers usurious fucking banks and credit companies, fuck them right back ... Hope this spreads to America and SOON!
Before boosh signs some executive order in the middle of the night ant tries to claim it's a law. Fuck that shit time to expel the money grubbing tapeworms!!!

Hooray for Mr. Hone.

with a huge late fee