"To overcharge customers once, Irish bankers, might be regarded as a misfortune. To do so continually, looks like outright theft" Lady Bracknell did not say in The Importance of Being Earnest. But we know our bankers are far from earnest, don't we?Today we are told that AIB is to return nearly €400,000 to tracker mortgage customers it has been overcharging. While only the day before yesterday we learned that Bank of Ireland made a "technical error" leading to some customers being charged twice on their Laser card transactions. And this type of thing is nothing new. Have a look at some past mistakes, taken from the Value Ireland website:
May 2008 Bank Of Ireland refund €200,000 in interest to 16,000 holders of child savings accounts, after paying the wrong rate of interest.
October 2007 Allied Irish Bank refunds €266,000 to 3,773 accounts having taken stamp duty from customers who had AIB credit cards, but were living abroad
November 2007 Ulster Bank took upwards of €950,000 from 26,000 student account holders, after it applied charges to the accounts when it shouldn't have.
April 2005 Bank of Ireland overcharge customers on insurance products used to cover borrowings such as car loans. 65,000 accounts thought to be affected, up to a total sum of €15m, including interest.
I'm sure this list is by no means exhaustive - but you get the idea. Funny how these "mistakes" are always in the banks' favour, isn't it? Or can I look forward to finding an extra million or two resting in my account one of these days?
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6 comments:
I don't regard overcharging by banks, mobile phone companies etc. as mistakes, because as you correctly point out, the mistakes are ALWAYS in their favour, when a "mistake" is always in your favour, well it makes me, jo public wonder.
People meekly accept bad service from banks etc, which would Never be tolerated elsewhere ...for reasons of cross border transfers I'm with sister banks Northern bank ( NI) & National Irish ( ROI).
Some NIB’s blunders;* I wrote a cheque for 300 Euro- they debited 3000- just as well I was not on holiday abroad , as I only had funds to cover 300!. *Lost a chq I’d deposited for 100- they told me 3 bank staff had seen the chq- they just couldn’t FIND IT… this went on for 4 weeks & they charged me a fee as I had drawn on the cheque- and the funds were not there.. it took an indignant visit to get the 100 credited to my account, & OD fee refunded.
*Paid them a hefty fee to have a critical cross border transfer effected the next day…it came thru days later.
*Requests for cheque books, cards etc were regularly repeated 4 times, ditto made many requests before I got all the passwords, keypads off them for internet banking.
NONE of this happened with Northern. Yet they were sister banks, identical notepaper, banking software systems… only differing in humans and their training & attitude to service in general. No probs now I’m online with NIB tho….I no longer have to deal with their human staff….Anna
"Or can I look forward to finding an extra million or two resting in my account one of these days?"
I wish I did....
Not directly related to the topic, but maybe of
interest: the Peter Schiff video. It's three
news shows on US TV in 06/07 in which financial
experts (pundits) forecast and advise. Most of
them horribly wrong, before the crash. Their
opinions were parroted practically everywhere,
including Ireland. The video is pretty popular. Somehow it helps clear the mess, in that case call the expert bluff and media hype that helped create the crisis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw
Great stuff! Those two clowns at 2.38 are pure comedy. Cheers.
just found out ive been overcharged for 11 years on my credicard something to do optional insurance they paid it back into my credit card account but i thought they should have paid me extra im not happy what do u think they owed me 10,000 euro i meant extra for my trouble
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