What if you went out for dinner somewhere rather fancy – you know, all candles and veggies stacked in exact cubes. The sauce is served on the side of the large square plate as if the chef stuck his thumb in it.
It’s lovely. You have wine and pudding and coffee, romance is in the air if you haven’t eaten too much. Then you make that signing in the air gesture.
The bill comes – with fancy mints – and you’re £4.67 short.
You tell the restaurateur: “It’s OK mate. I knew I was cutting it fine. The shortfall’s about the same as one of our lattes, two oatcakes and half the stilton we scoffed. You’ve got plenty more, I can see that, the place is packed and your fridges are full. So, I’ll bring the cash in next week on payday... or maybe the week after...”
Does he bring your coat and give you a cheery wave as you go? Does he say “No problem, and if you can’t manage the other diners’ll happily make it up” or “Come again soon, we’ve got loads of Champagne in the cellar”?
Thought not. Of course, he gets really cross and calls the rozzers. Eventually the full force of the law is thrown at you and you’ll have to stump up a fine worth far more than the last 20 minutes of a gut-busting dinner.
And my point? The world seems to have forgotten the banks are in it for the profit, not to kindly help out if our pay won’t quite stretch this month.
We know now that the banks (boo hiss) won their appeal at the Supreme Court. That means that unauthorised overdraft penalties have been deemed legal and those customers hoping for a refund-plus-interest windfall are out of luck.
And we also know that bankers are not on anyone’s Christmas card lists, what with bringing the economy to its knees by lending to anyone with a wallet, needing to be bailed out like overdrawn students, using the phonebook to pick the amounts to pay in bonuses and, most recently, to have been found sneaking round the back of the fiscal bike shed to pick up a government loan in a brown paper bag.
But, this time, we’re talking about fees for unauthorised overdrafts and whether the fee – maybe £30 each time a payment bounced – was fair. Apparently the business of saying “this punter can’t afford the cheque he wrote” only costs £2.50 a pop.
Since the first customers successfully claimed back their fees, £1bn has been paid out in “goodwill gestures” and many banks have already restructured how they do their overdraft fees.
Meanwhile, a cynical little industry has sprung up among the no-win-no-fee rattlesnakes, the flog grannies jewellery for cash and spend your paycheque a week early merchants.
Nasty little opportunists offered to do the irksome form filling so “deserving” customers could get “their” money back from the banks.
A ruling against the banks, and don’t forget their main function is to make money for shareholders would have cost them £2.6bn a year in lost income.
But as they aren’t a form of social support for the financially feckless, you could bet your last pound on them finding other ways to raise that money.
It would have heralded the end of free banking for those of us who keep tabs on their cash and don’t go into the red without asking.
And as many of the banks are working on handouts of our cash – who do you think would have ended up footing the repayment bill anyway?
Ellen Arnison is a finalist in stv.tv's The Write Factor competition. The views expressed are not necessarily those of STV plc. If you would like to read more from this writer, use our comment system below.
Last updated: 25 November 2009, 13:29
The links provided allow you to bookmark this page into your favourite social media website. For users with JavaScript disabled copy and paste the URL from the address bar into your chosen social bookmarking site.