When a Horse is this Sick. They should Shoot it

Lloyd's reports 1.6bn profits.

Would that be Lloyd's that was bailed out to the tune of 17bn in 2008? The bank that has only managed to repay something like 3bn? Yet they are arrogant enough to be basking in a glow of this so called success despite ripping all of it's customers off in every way possible.

It charges it's customers £1 per day for every single day that they are into their AGREED overdraft and something ridiculous like £5 per day if you go outside the agreed overdraft (this can happen when your agreed overdraft charges take you above your agreed overdraft.)

It forced customers onto fixed rate mortgages around 7% when the interest rate was only 0.5% yet offered savers something paltry like 1%.

I recently asked them to turn a credit card balance into a loan. (Always a difficult one for the banks because they have already given you the money so effectively can't say that you don't warrant the credit.) They offered me a loan at 27% interest.

So basically whether your a saver, investor or borrower you are being ripped off. Who says you can't fool all of the people all of the time?

Remember this bank is only in business because the taxpayer (it's customers) bailed it out and still effectively own 41% of it. What I would like to see is some sort of hardship imposed on it the way it imposes hardship on us. It should be paying every taxpayer £1 per day for every single day that it continues to survive on our money. It should be paying 27% interest to the government. Prior to the banking crisis had a bank behaved this way the government would have stepped in to stop its operations all together. There are people actually in jail in this country for a crime called Money Lending. Some of them have not behaved as badly as this bank has. Someone worked out that there was the potential to pay 3650% interest on a ten pound overdraft.

The government is turning a blind eye because they have no answers to this. If the bank went bust then the liquidator would seize all of it's assets to recover money. That would mean millions loosing their houses, their cars etc so that doesn't work. In their current state they aren't turning a worthwhile profit when compared with their debt so no-one in their right mind wants to own them. So they sit there, free to turn the screw because nobody can quite figure out what to do. Protecting the jobs, allowing those who can just about make the repayments to be screwed whilst trying not to mention the ones who cant and lose everything seems the safest way.

To grudgingly give the bastards, (oops meant banks) some credit: Citizens Advice a UK Consumer Group and a number of MPs recently went to parliament to raise this matter. As a result Lloyd's have said that they will be reducing this overdraft rate for all of their customers come December. Why December? Why not now?

We'll wait and see if it happens. I'm sceptical because I remember when this money was being dolled out to the banks and the government were urging the banks to 'boost' the economy by helping businesses and encouraging the housing market. They claimed they were doing this however what they were doing was offering loans and mortgages at a shocking rate. Lloyd's is the parent company but it owns several brand names, Bank of Scotland, TSB, Halifax, etc. When they say they will cut charges to all Lloyd's customers do they mean everyone who has a bank card that says Lloyd's on the front or do they mean all the customers of all the brands of bank that they own?

Watch this space....

T