Innumerate, ill mannered, flow chart following idiots.

8I have about £8000 deposited with them. I have a credit card with them, that I pay off, in full, every month.

Last Autumn, I had a text from them, telling me that they were worried I might struggle to pay off my credit card and that the limit was to be reduced to £500 with immediate effect. There are a few points here:-

1. With £8000 deposited with them, how would I struggle to pay off £2300 (The most I ever paid off was about £1200)? Here we have innumeracy.
2. As I had paid the card off, in full and on time, every month, what gave them cause for alarm?
3. Since this reduction was without warning, how did they know I wasn’t abroad and reliant upon the original limit? I’d call this ill mannered.

When I queried it, I was given some "Male chicken" (Sorry Review Centre's PC brigade won't allow the shortened format)and bull story about credit reference information. I don’t owe anyone anything; even my mortgage has been paid off. I told them I would close my accounts unless the matter was dealt with properly. I followed this up with a letter of complaint, to which I am yet to receive a reply. Here again we have ill mannered.

I know a bit about banking and can say that whereas, at one time, your local branch manager would be an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers, today most of them wouldn’t even know what that was, let alone have passed any of the exams necessary to become an ACIB. Today they rely on flow charts (Possibly computerised ones) to make decisions and one of the assumptions made is that if you have no debt, it’s because nobody will lend to you. They only lend, willingly, to those with a borrowing history, irrespective of whether a person is already over committed. That’s what helps to cause credit crunches.

My savings account was tied up for a year in May of last year, so that is about to expire. It will be coming out from there!! My home insurance policy with them is not going to be renewed. I don’t know that any of the banks are any good, so perhaps I’ll put the savings into NSC and open a current account somewhere else, just to pay my bills. It’s that or put it in the wall safe. I have a business account and if Lloyds had been competent, I would have transferred that to them. There is more in that, than in my personal account, so this little act of idiocy hasn’t been one from which Lloyds Bank will come out ahead.

I think the Ombudsman only exists to give the illusion of scrutiny. If they had teeth, most of our so called banks would be wound up and the spivs, who run them, would be in jail.