I was interviewed by the BBC a few weeks ago about the way in which the UK’s retail banks regularly rip off their customers. It wasn’t exactly a tough interview to do (you can watch it on Panorama tonight). There are hundreds of things to point to if you want to make a case for retail finance being a deeply unpleasant industry. In last week’s magazine I pointed to Lloyds’ treatment of my over trusting mother – they’ve helped themselves to thousands of pounds of her money via both incompetence and unfair policies and quite clearly have no intention of compensating her for doing so. Ruth Jackson had a go this week too in her magazine column, noting that she too has a hundred horrible stories to tell and pointing to the ludicrous overdraft and other charges we all constantly get hit with. And this weekend Vince Cable joined the fray claiming that the banks offer a “very bad deal” to most of us and criticizing the general lack of transparency as well as the ongoing “unacceptable bonus culture.” He talks about this at greater length on tonight’s programme as well and I totally agree with him – the bonus culture has to go. However there was one area of questioning on during my interview that was not quite so straightforward...
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