Jeff Salway: Banking on high street branches getting it badly wrong – again

I RECENTLY found myself explaining to a PR manager at one of our much-loved high street banks that us hacks don’t actively seek out reasons to write negatively of them.

In fact, many of their indiscretions pass without comment because, frankly, no paper is big enough to cover all of them. It’s a rare week when at least one of our biggest banking institutions hasn’t demonstrated for the umpteenth time why we so lack faith in them.

Take this week as a random example.

Last weekend’s Smart Money told of the problems experienced by reader Alexandra McDonald in securing the best child savings deal for her son. On enquiring about the Kids Regular Saver promoted by Lloyds Banking Group-owned Halifax, she found that the product, the market leader with a rate of 6 per cent, was not available north of the Border. Bank of Scotland tends to mirror many of the accounts offered by the Halifax, so HBOS customers have had access to the best deals offered by the bank.

Not now, however, and with no kids savings account matching the Halifax deal, Alexander’s son has effectively lost out on the basis that he lives north of the Border. While it’s understandable that regional building societies can limit products to those in their catchment areas, Lloyds Banking Group is not acting in the interest of its customers in denying parents in Scotland access to better deals available to those elsewhere.

The story sparked a few responses from other readers who also felt they’d been given a raw deal by Bank of Scotland.

One reader with cash in the bank’s Save4It account – moved there when his Kids Regular Saver matured – complained that as part of the discontinuation of the Regular Saver the Save4It account was no longer being offered and that the rate on his cash had dropped to 1 per cent.

Which isn’t a problem in itself, except the bank had omitted to tell him about the changes to the product, in which he was saving on behalf of his granddaughter.

A bank with the interests of its customers at heart – particularly where children are involved – would do more to ensure that those customers are getting the best deal available and not being stranded in accounts that have been abandoned.

And then there’s the case of the Royal Bank of Scotland customer who has spent the last month trying to pin down exactly what the bank has done with £3,130 of her money (a story first covered by my colleague Jane Bradley).

Since setting up a transfer of the money to a business partner on 25 January – a transaction that should take no longer than two days but which has not yet been processed – she has dealt with 13 different people in RBS.

She has spoken with some of them on several occasions (and with a few contradictory statements thrown in for good measure) in a bid to find out what has happened to her money. On Wednesday RBS admitted no one had even spoken with the Australian bank that was supposed to receive the money, despite previous assertions that they had been in touch by phone. A month later, that £3,130 hasn’t been processed, nor has it been returned to its owner, who is highly unlikely to be an RBS customer for much longer.

These are all problems that I’ve come across since Monday. And although the last example exposes a degree of incompetence rare even for a high street bank, readers report similar cases every week.

Little wonder that a fifth of high street bank customers would not recommend their current bank to family and friends, with 40 per cent citing poor service, according to research out yesterday from Triodos Bank.

Service and administration problems are behind the vast majority of complaints I read and hear about. But with banks seemingly hell-bent on finding new ways to mess loyal customers about, I suspect I’ll be hearing about plenty more.

THE buy-to-let market is recovering strongly, thanks to increased demand and a shortage of new affordable housing. For private landlords, the appeal lies not only in the potential for both long-term gains and regular income, but also in the tax opportunities.

However, landlords are the latest target in a series of tax evasion clampdowns by HM Revenue & Customs. It’s a long list now, with plumbers, dentists, doctors, emarketplace traders, electricians and home tutors already the subject of HMRC campaigns.

But it may well feel that private landlords are particularly ripe for picking. During the housing boom there was a suspicion that a large number of landlords were deliberately failing to declare rental income and property sale gains, and that’s why they are in HMRC’s sights now.