Last night I met a man in the pub who claimed he could conjure up the Devil ( this kind of thing happens in Hebden Bridge). All I know is I have had a hell of a day.
Spent significant time today wrangling with a debt recovery agency who had mistakenly got on my case after the Post Office screwed up and mistakenly passed on my account - which I had paid in full. Today, a threatening letter warning of bailiffs and legal action for a phone bill sorted out in July.
Fortunately, my irate phone calls have resulted in some financial compensation and profuse apologies. But the attitude of the agency was of course that I was lying .
After my anger had died down, I could not help thinking of the fear which must accompany these letters for people who are not a mistake on the list, who can't pay the bills. And why is the Post Office handing over relatively piffling amounts to sharks whose business is to scare and intimidate.
Today, we learned that unemployment is at its highest for 15 years. Young people were protesting outside Job Centres inYorkshire and they are right to ask why isn't more being done when the Government has spent billions bailing out the banks so they can continue with their bonus culture. Months ago, we should have held the City to account. And properly nationalised the finance industry and held it to account
Thursday, 13 August 2009
DEVILS IN THE DETAIL.....
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1 comment:
Agreed. An anecdote, if I may: I used to work for Barclaycard processing all the letters that they received each week. I used to update account information to reflect the content of the mail. Firstly, the amount of people seeking assistance through the CAB or CCCS were mindboggling... if the letters were any indication, then there were many people who were given access to high levels of credit who simply should not have been.
Then there are the debt collection agencies. I discovered that it cost Barclaycard c.£20 to refer an account to a DCA. I was told to refer accounts to DCAs that had outstanding debts of as little as £7! In what sort of world is this good business practice; hounding customers in this way?
It's not that we necessarily need MORE regulation of the finance industry, it's that we need to ensure existing regulations are properly enforced rather than the FSA kowtowing to banks and financial service providers.
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