pointless bank statements

[Steve]

I went overdrawn last month. Normally my bank issues me a statement every time I fill an A4 sheet, on average monthly. However this time they issued a statement after 6 days, with only 9 transactions on it.

This was because they had to tell me of the charge for going overdrawn last month (which must have to be done in a certain timeframe).

Theres no fee, so its only interest, at 17.9% for £20 for 2 days (IIRC).

One penny.

So, they are going to take 1p out of my bank account, which I dont mind, the overdraft is very handy.

But it must have cost them at least 50p to send me the statement early!!!

 

[joinerjohn]

And I bet the bankers will be after even bigger bonuses next year.

 

[Steve]

Not at my bank.

 

[Diyisfun]

Its an automated process.
Computers arnt good at everything

 

[Micilin]

Mine do paperless by option mow

 

[AssociatedAlarm]

So go electronic and save the world.

Its been proven less trees = more wood to burn instead of nuclear power.

 

[lee2009]

have to admit, i have every statement stopped and do everything online, nothing worse then pages and pages of bank, telephone ,creditcard, mobile phone statements coming through the door then having to burn them.

 

[Steve]

Another thing. My girlfriend banks at the Halifax and im amazed to see her 4 page long statements! One summary page, two transaction sheets (these would all fit on one sheet) and another sheet. My statements from co-op bank are one page and have everything on.

 

[AndrewSchofield]

Banks seem really keen to send out paper statements and letters as often as they can and I don't understand why. A couple of years ago I went into my branch and asked if they HAD to send me statements for an account that I very rarely use - I was getting monthly statements which rarely had any transactions on them at all. The woman said i'll change your statement period to 6monthly. I said that I still didn't feel like I need to see a statement every 6 months as I use online banking and so can see my transactions whenever i want. So she offered to change the statement period to annually. I asked if there was a reason they had to send me a statement at all, to which she finally said, no, i'll opt you out of paper statements. Why didn't she just do that in the first place??

I also have an RBS account. I recently had a letter from them telling me that I would soon be getting a new debit card and they'd write soon to tell me all about it. So they sent me a letter, to tell me that they are going to send me a letter about my new card....??? And its an account that I don't use any more, and the letter stated that if I haven't used the account in the last 12months, they wont be sending me a new card. So they sent me a letter to tell me they're going to send me a letter about a card that they aren't going to send to me... Crazy!

 

[EddieM]

As pointed out, the process is entirely automated, bear in mind that most of the banks have merged with other banks in the last few years and will be having enormous problems integrating their systems. just benign inefficiency rather than anything else.

 

[D_Hailsham]

What's the point of having bank statements if you don't bother to check them?

Kent Council Leader bank account mix-up

 

[Space cat]

-- most of the banks have merged with other banks in the last few years and will be having enormous problems integrating their systems

You're not wrong there. When one large, well-known bank got taken over a few years ago, their computer system was vastly superior to that of their new owner - so of course the new owner decided to ditch it.

But whichever way you try to do it, integrating all the records from one bank into another bank's incompatible system is not a trivial exercise. So how did they propose to do this? Well the initial plan was to move all of the other bank's records off their computer onto paper, just like it used to be in the old days, then enter it all into the new system. You couldn't make it up if you tried.

(The plan was dropped when they found out how much storage space they were going to need for all that paperwork. )

 

[longdogs]

Sometimes I get two statements but in separate envelopes