Bullying Bankers

I was, as I am sure a lot of people will have been, horrified this morning to read of Byron Fraser who was driven to attempted suicide because the bank, with whom he had taken out payment protection insurance, refused to pay out and as a result of the ensuing dispute have inflated his debt from around £15,000 to £250,000.  This is a bloody disgrace.

And I know better than most because I have been on the receiving end of the bullying tactics of a former bank (former in both senses as they now no longer exist) who sold me PPI on a loan of £3,000 back in the 1990s.  It was the bank's policy to deduct the whole amount of this insurance at the start of the loan and add the repayments on to the capital.  In the course of the loan I fell seriously ill and was unable to work so I did the natural thing in order to protect the loan repayments - I claimed on the insurance. The bank's response was to decline the claim and put me under intolerable pressure, at a time when I was in great pain and distress, to clear the loan. 

I was saved by the fact that General Accident, who were the insuring company, wrote to me directly informing me that there was not, and never had been any insurance in place.  Yet the figure of £900 was clearly showing on my statement as a deduction for the insurance policy.  So I went back to the bank and made a claim for compensation which was I was entitled to in law as they had not provided the insurance for which they had charged.

Then followed several years of constant harrassment and bullying, repeated letters and phone calls, even though the bank was aware I was ill and on my own.  Because I was so ill and worried that I was perhaps not handling the matter objectively I went to a solicitor and asked him to deal with it on my behalf.  Reassuringly he told me there was no problem as the law was clearly on my side and he would write to the bank and settle the matter. 

For six months the bank simply refused to answer his letters.  In the end I had to write to the Managing Director and insist that the bank responded to my solicitor.  Their response was to demand to come to my home so they could bully me in person - three of them against one - but when I responded by saying we could discuss it by all means but in my solicitor's office with him present they suddenly went away. 

Eventually with the threat of Court Action on our side the matter was settled but in the longer term as a result of all the attendant financial difficulties that this dispute caused I did lose my home and in the intervening years my financial position has never really recovered.  But I can sympathize with Mr Fraser because I was nearly driven to suicide by the constant pressure the bank put me under for a total debt of £3,000 which I had taken the trouble to insure.  Obviously I would not have taken on the debt if I had not believed the insurance would cover it.

I hope that Mr Fraser can win his case.  The whole business of payment protection insurance stinks. Not only were the insurance policies sold to people who would never be eligible to claim, those who claimed on quite legitimate grounds of sickness and unemployment have been subjected to outrageous bullying tactics by the banks who are supposed to have a care for their financial concerns.  In my case the insurance was sold but never even put in place with the insurance company.  Had I not claimed I would have paid £900 for nothing at all.  Who was going to get that I wonder?

What was most distressing in my case was the refusal of the bank to discuss the matter sensibly (their letters made no sense to either me or my solicitor) and settle the issue within the law.  The banks seem to have forgotten a basic principle - that banking is based on trust.  In the past two years they have not only lost everyone's money they have lost their one significant asset - the confidence of their customers.  They should remember all their other assets belong to somebody else.