Bank Insists on Telephone Closure of Account

Just hit that one myself - no email address either.

And I wanted to tell them they seem to have lost the facility to transfer money /into/ one of their accounts!!!! (Used to be able to go direct from specified current a/c to ING, not today though; although it works the other way round. Maybe it's a subtle hint........)

This is likely to be because transfers in are done by means of Direct Debit on your current account, and DD mandates automatically expire after a certain period (13 months, I think) of non-use. This is a precaution against people resurrecting old "zombie" mandates which you've forgotten about. The period is chosen so that DDs remain useful for things which are billed annually.

So it's a feature, not a fault. I'd imagine it's quite common for people to pay in infrequently enough that their DDs expire all the time, and am surprised they don't seem to have an automatic mechanism in place to make it easy for you to re-activate your DD on-line.

I'm wondering just how far the bank could go with this before these kind of terms could be considered so unfair as to be legally unenforceable. For example, what if they required you to attend in person at their head office in order to close accounts? What if they further stipulated that this could only be done by visiting them between 8am and 9am on Wednesday morning?

Chris

If you agreed to those terms then why should they not be leagally binding. No point in having contracts if people can agree then later claim they are unfair.

If you do not like the terms and conditions then do not agree to them.

Don't be stupid. Now that we have laws which protect consumers against unfair contract terms, there is no longer any point in reading them before you sign. You can confidently sign, safe in the knowledge that no matter what the terms actually say, they must be fair and reasonable.

Hands up those who read all the bloody fine print in all this crap.

Face it, reading consumer contracts is so last century.

The only contracts you need to read these days before signing are those which involve you *other than* as a consumer.

You didn't quite answer the question, but I assume you're saying that no matter how unreasonable the contract terms might be, they would always be enforceable on the basis that the party signing the contract should have read them before committing himself.

Is my understanding of what you're saying correct?

Chris

Possibly, it's been a while. But could email to say what's happened (or better, what's about to happen!), or flag it up on the account info pages. Poor service.

But then, they might at least have an email address for customers. Virginmedia charges so much for 0845 numbers, I simply refuse to call them. So ING might well lose the account..... I guess I'd have to leave

Agreed. Or they could offer a different method of letting you make deposits from your current account, like paying with your debit card.

Do they really? How much? Do they also charge for 0800 numbers? Perhaps you need to change your phone company, not your bank. :-)

I hate using the phone so much, I'd refuse to call them even if it were free, if any less inconvenient means of contact is available.

Why not write to them by post? They give a freepost address for existing customers, but oddly enough only an ordinary address for non-customers.

If they are unfair, they are not binding on you anyway, so you can ignore them and agree to the rest of the agreement.

I would write to the managing director, and explain that I have lost my voice and therefore I am unable to use the telephone. If they still insist on my phoning them, then I would threaten with the DDA.

But the terms are fair and reasonable. Are you stating that it is unfair to state the form of communication.

Virign Media charge the standard 10p for 0845 numbers. I fail to see why he thinks they are charging more.

Standard? In the good old days 0845 calls were meant to cost the same as a local call, IIRC. Local calls don't normally cost 10p these days, do they? Do BT charge 10p for 0845?

That's a matter of opinion. Mine is that this particular one is not.

Of course not, it's perfectly OK for them to "state" (i.e. tell you) which forms of communication they are happy to accept. But what is absolutely unacceptable is to exclude from the list the one form of communication which in general business practice is often the only form universally accepted as definitive, namely the written letter. What is even worse is to accept that method for most instructions but not for that of closing an account (which after all it is possible to put into a state of disuse, (i.e. near-as-dammit-closed but not totally closed) without using the phone).

Forcing someone to speak to a call centre is in my view tantamount to torture, and therefore assault, but beyond that there are indisputably disability issues, since many people are too hard of hearing to use a phone effectively at all. That's before we even get onto the subject of accents and dialects - remember, the call centre staff have to be able to understand customers with a weird accent too. I dare say Aberdonian won't fare much better in England than in India.

They fall outside any of the inclusive tariffs for one thing. At

But are they cheaper than non-local rate calls? That was supposed to be the point when they were first introduced. It's disappointing that they're more than local calls, since AIUI they were originally intended to be the same.

Has BT dropped that link? If not, ought not the regulator to require other providers to maintain it too? But if so, then what's the bloody point in having 0845 and similar numbers at all any longer? Why don't companies use ordinary geographic exchange numbers? [OK, I can think of one reason, but I'm not sure it's a particularly good one: It means that companies can relocate their call centres to a different STD code area and get their 0845 calls re-routed to there, so they wouldn't need to advertise a new phone number.]

Yes, unless you are on one of their call plans where it can be free, just as with Virgin it can be free if you are paying for the right call plan.

Telephone charges have become complicated with all the call packages and many people fail to realise that they are paying more for their 'free call' packages then they actually spend in calls.

Not on Virgin, they are covered if you have the local call packages, I know, I ring 0845 quite regularly :(.

Then you must be lucky. Looking at their summary charge plan, they say, "Calls to these numbers, (and personal numbering services beginning

Oh, and it looks as though the 01/02/03 peak rate (both local and non-local) cost is only 6.36p/min, which makes the so-called 'local'