dieseltaylor Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Which? is the Consumer Association in the UK and they are championing transparency, better products , more choice etc. Anyway I can across this thread and prize!! But you have to Twitter to enter! Win an Amazon Kindle We love a good competition here at Which?, but there is a point to us asking for your ideas – we’ll be using them when we present to the Consumers International World Congress in May. If that isn’t enough motivation, there’s also a Kindle up for grabs. The rule with the greatest number of votes wins the Kindle! To inspire you, I’ve asked my colleagues around the office what their rules would be. Here’s a selection:Financial Services Chief Advocate Doug Taylor said, ‘Bank staff should tell me what commission they get for a sale to me.’Financial Services advocate Lucy Widenka said, ‘Banks should give customers the best deals they can get, not just the deal they are promoting at that time.’Money Editor James Dailey said, ‘All bank charges should be proportionate to the cost – and shouldn’t be used as a way of bolstering profits.’We’d love you to share your ideas here, but please note, if you want to enter the competition you’ll also need to send a tweet to register your entry. 19 Comments Una Farrell, CCCS There are many but I would say treat customers in difficulty fairly Report this comment Posted 15 March 2011 at 3 - 0 Dean Hows about reverting to exactly what banks were supposed to be in the first place? -You save some money, you get a certain percentage return on it. -You want to borrow some money, you pay a certain percentage (which is more than the saving rate) in order for the banks to cover their costs and make a profit. Anything outside of these rules should be run under an “investment bank” arm of the company so as not to jeopardise the stability of the economy. Our countries economies are based on banking stability. If they are allowed (under the high street name) to frivolously invest in risky enterprises, then this should have absolutely no effect on the BAU (business as usual) of the high street arm that we all rely on. Report this comment Posted 15 March 2011 at 6 - 0Charlotte Slayford Thanks for you comments here. We’ve had some great suggestions on Twitter for bank staff to dedicate 4 days per year to charity work and to help, not harass, customers. Great to read your thoughts here, but please remember if you want to formally enter the comp, you’ll need to tweet at @WhichAction with the hashtag #bankrule. Report this comment Posted 15 March 2011 at 0 - 1 Tim Remove targets for packaged accounts. We know what targets did for PPI…..it meant that sellers forgot the boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable sales. There are many cases around where those boundaries are very much being used to push packaged accounts that are, on the whole, a complete waste of money. Furthermore their illustrations of predicted savings should be based on discounted rates rather than on non discounted and bank own policies(generally over priced). Consultation on packaged accounts coming up later in the year…..can you tell I’m preparing for it already? The bonuses should be more tailored towards good customer service rather than the lema of “sales with service”. Report this comment Posted 16 March 2011 at 0 - 0 Ciara Banks shouldn’t charge for becoming overdrawn if you replace the funds within twenty fours. Report this comment Posted 16 March 2011 at 4 - 0 John Ward Why is Which? telling its subscribers that the only way they can participate fully in this exercise is by tweeting on Twitter? Banks are accessible and customer-focussed institutions by comparison! Report this comment Posted 16 March 2011 at 6 - 4 Charlotte Slayford We’re very happy to have feedback for the banks in all shapes and forms. We’ve had some great ideas on here, on facebook and Twitter. We’ll be going along to Consumers International World Congress in May so all your tips will influence our recommendations at Congress. The Twitter part is just the formal way to enter the comp to win the Kindle. We had to limit the remit of the competition in some way in order manage the entries. Plus we thought it would be a nice challenge to limit people to a tweet with 140 characters. Report this comment Posted 17 March 2011 at 3 - 1 wavechange I agree with John. If anything, the Consumers’ Association should be doing more to alert the public to the problems with these and other social networking sites rather than encouraging us to use them. Report this comment Posted 20 March 2011 at 4 - 3 [*] dieseltayl or Don’t you think restricting the prize winner to someone who Tweets is rather an objectionable road for Which to commence on? Is this Which? policy? Report this comment Posted 22 March 2011 at 5 - 2 [*] Charlotte Slayford Thanks wavechange, you raise an interesting point here. We are calling for more transparency from social networking sites as explored here: http://www.which.co.uk/campaigns/technology/online-privacy-who-knows-your-secrets/ And thanks for your comments dieseltaylor. We appreciate Twitter isn’t for everyone. We hope you don’t feel too left out from this one – I’ll bear this in mind when planning future competitions. Report this comment Posted 22 March 2011 at 2 - 3 [*] dieseltayl or Choosing to use Twitter only for for Competition entries whilst simultaneously running a Which? article about people using Facebook and Twitter whilst driving seems a rather beautiful juxtaposition. I am not quite clear what you mean by bearing in mind – does that mean in future platform posting neutrality will be observed? Report this comment Posted 22 March 2011 at 4 - 3 [*] Hugh I would love to give you my ideas, but I do not “Tweet” – I have neither the time nor the inclination to become involved in such trivia. As such you are disciminating against Which? members who do not take part in “social netwroks” (or as I call them “UNsocial networks”). Please desisit form doing this. Report this comment Posted 24 March 2011 at 4 - 1 Patrick Steen Hello Hugh, thanks for your comment. Please do share your ideas here on Which? Conversation – we’ll be using all thoughts for bank rules when we go to the Consumers International World Congress in May. However, you just won’t be able to enter the competition this time around. Thanks. Report this comment Posted 24 March 2011 at 1 - 1 [*] Steve I’d like to see current interest rates shown on the account page of all accounts which pay interest. I don’t use twitter or facebook either. Report this comment Posted 24 March 2011 at 2 - 1 [*] Brendan As holiday season will soon be upon us, I am reminded that the “margin” on exchanging my pounds for Euros is around 20% (ie they sell at 1.20 and but buy at 1.00. Commercial business will get a rate much closer to the REAL EXCHANGE RATE. Why are banks allowed to charge margin, when providing money is their stock trade. FX brokers are generally closer to the mark thatn the high street banks. Is it all something to do with the fact that we get our Euro’s “Commission fee”?????? NOT. Why don’t “Which” take this up as a campaign? Report this comment Posted 24 March 2011 at 3 - 0 [*] dieseltayl or Holding physical currency notes does not earn any interest for the Bank or exchange office. Add the security costs for shipping small packets of money around the country and hedging for currency risks make it a more complcated business than me asking they send £1000 to a foreign account. I would get a much better rate,. I use Travelex for cash and the pre-paid Euro denominated card. As for what we want from Banks – the most popular move would be to stop them diverting finance to fictitious deals with “foreign” subsiduaries. Barclays obtained a writ removing “stolen” details of the scheme from the Guardian’s website in 2009. All UK taxpayers may mourn the multi-millions/billions of tax avoided “legally” each year and wonder if promotion of this knowledge and threatened consumer boycotts might actually be most effective in curtailing Banks behaving in this manner. RBS actually closed down their department who dealt in the same way – after becoming publicly owned. Copies of the original documents are at Wikileaks and a a Google search will bring up the newspaper comments in 2009. For further reading on off-shore banking for avoiding paying tax there is a new book by Shaxson. You will be shocked. In a global context to help those who suffer in looted countries, and taxpayers paying more than their fair share due to artificial banking shenanigans an end to tax havens and the banks who facilitate them would be a great start. So in less than 140 words: “Tax havens rob everyone and banks are the lifelines for the havens. Consumer pressure can work” In case you wonder I think in 2009 the papers said Barclays had 160-260 off-shore companies. Report this comment Posted 24 March 2011 at 3 - 0 [*] Brian I refuse to engage with such inane occupations as tweeting, and am surprised that you would stoop so low. Report this comment Posted 24 March 2011 at 2 - 2 Patrick Steen Thanks for your comment Brian. For fear of going off-topic, it’s worth mentioning the benefits of Twitter and why we’re on it. Which? Conversation too has it’s own Twitter account (@WhichConvo) which, like our other Twitter accounts, not only lets us engage with more people in the UK (to gain further support for our card surcharges super complaint, for example) but also to engage with companies. You’ll find that many of the comments on Which? Conversation made their way here from Twitter, with companies like British Gas also joining us to defend themselves. So that’s how we use it, but as far as yourself getting use out of Twitter, you too could interact with companies, with many using it as a port for their customer services (though it would be nice if they listened more). As for my one rule for the banks? Remove the bonus culture and reinvest this surplus money into stabilising the economy and improving front line services. Report this comment Posted 24 March 2011 at 2 - 1 [*] Chuckwalla h People on low incomes can become overdrawn because their wages have taken an excessively long time to pass through the banking system while their dirct debit payments have not. The difference may be less than one day but the bank nevertheless makes a charge on the overdraft, and sometimes even sends a letter at further cost. This practice takes advantage of the most vulnerable, it is despicable and appears to be deliberate. Banks shoud have a duty to “be reasonable” about when they declare a customer to be overdrawn. I would also like to add my objection to the use of Twitter as an exclusive entry point to the competition. I don’t even have a mobile phone because I find it impossible to make out what people are saying. Which? is surely dedicated to consumer choice, it is worrying that you are jumping on the bandwagon that is gradually forcing everybody into a particular groove to avoid being discriminated against. Report this commentSteve I’m not using bloody twitter, and I also object to your insistence that I should. However – a rule for the banks (assuming that they own the credit card companies). Have one or two addresses that are valid for deliveries of mail-order goods (cardholder not present). One (1) is the cardholder’s billing address. The other (2) maybe their workplace or a relative’s address if goods cannot be safely left on the doorstep. Possibly exempt florists. But everybody else ordering something expensive on a stolen card doesn’t get the benefit, just becomes a nuisance! Implemented as a further input on a PDA machine – delivery address 1 or 2, and the printout specifies where it has to be delivered to. Credit card fraud cut by 99.9% in one simple go. And the banks can get rid of the PCI compliance bulls*it that makes them so much money from small businesses. Report this commentIt is kind of funny that as a Consumer Association they are discriminating against people who do not Twitter. Even more bizarre they want people to sign up to a US based commercial firm to post comment in the UK. http://conversation.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/bank-rules-for-world-consumer-rights-day/ I don't think it is restricted to members and says nothing about where you are located either. Are Twitters universal - I imagine so and therefore your winning slogan could get the prize. Could some overseas see if it works? : ) However bear in mind that anything you contibute becomes their exclusive use*, and you may be required for pictures .... I kid you not the terms here , and I imagine many sites, seem to overreach what is reasonable. *11. All copyright in the rules submitted in response to this competition will be owned by Which? and Which? shall be free to use any of the rules submitted whenever and however it likes. * 3. Other important things you need to know You grant us an exclusive licence to use the content you add to our website whenever and however we like. For example, we may use this information in the Which? magazine or in marketing materials for Which?. While we will usually display your name or username when using your content in this way, you agree that we have no obligation to do so. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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