Passbooks .........

[Text interleaved/in conversation order: read to end for all comments] begin quote from Ronald Raygun in uk.finance about: Re: Passbooks .........

[ING DD]

Duh. oops, I hadn't thought of that ;-) I did rather wonder whether such a thing as a negative DD (as opposed to a refund) was actually possible!

David.

[Text interleaved/in conversation order: read to end for all comments] begin quote from james in uk.finance about: Re: Passbooks .........

Indeed. :) I don't know how I ever survived without internet banking, now the only time I have to visit my branch is to pay in cheques, and I can setup and amend bill payments on a whim..

..or: the disease of remaining resolutely stuck in the past for no good reason when *proven* (not gimmicky) better technological advances exist. :-(

Sometimes (see below) we're too stuck in the mud for our own good.

Sure: but There Are Better Ways.

Indeed, I've heard much dodginess about PayPal, which is rather gimmicky.

The question is: why in the UK are we so reluctant to take the route that most of our continental neighbours use - namely direct credits to bank accounts? No gimmicks, it uses the _preexisting_ banking system, provides a means for online payment (no paper cheque needed) and doesn't resort to potentially-dodgy (and costly) third-party methods of payment.

It's just as easy to fire off a secure email at any time of day or night (although, I agree, sometimes the quality of response you get from whichever random droid answers can leave a little to be desired: the solution there is surely to have a consistent account representative for each person, rather than 'next-in-queue').

There is considerably less cost and risk in paying benefit payments into bank accounts than in cash (or cashable cheques), it's the right thing to do. I dare say it also reduces fraud.

This is actually an argument against going into the branch: with online transactions I don't have to worry about queues!

It's ideal for paying bills. I much prefer to pay bills by bill payment rather than having to traipse&queue to a PO/bank with a cheque, or entrust my life to direct debits destined to come out of my account just when I don't have any money :-(

The only need I have for local bank branches is for cash withdrawals (which are usually done by ATM, where finding 'my' branch is pretty irrelevant) or deposits (which could all be done via the Post Office if all banks agreed to adopt that system - this of course also supports the viability of local Post Offices).

Fair point, but that's where the friendly Post Office could come in. On the other hand, it seems that "old jossers" are one of the sectors of the population most enamoured with the internet! :-)

Plenty of people (and accessibility legislation) fighting the 'any browser' battle. Most banks seem pretty good now.

Luckily the form got to you in the post, otherwise you wouldn't have known! I'm not convinced that all of the Government agencies know where you are consistently, if you move relatively frequently.

The UK Govts ain't too good at that. Cluelessness for starters, and then getting duped with IE-only 'solutions' for seconds.. :-(

In message , David Marsh writes

But you were actually right, but for the wrong reason. If you cancel the DD then ING can not be sure as to the continued validity of the Bank Details that they hold and therefore will not send any dosh.

You can send them your cheques by snail-mail, so you don't *have* to visit the branch at all. You might still prefer it, though.

But how would they know you've cancelled it? Unless you want to put more money in, there's no need for the DD ever to be used again, and as we've seen, they do, apparently, take BGCs. They don't put in null requests from time to time, do they, just to check it's still valid? If they did, wouldn't show up on the statement as actual £0.00 debits?

Also, why should they need to "be sure as to the continued validity of the Bank Details that they hold"? Once valid, always valid. Your bank isn't likely to re-issue the same sort code and account number pair to anyone else within living memory, are they?

In message , Ronald Raygun writes

Because when you cancel the mandate or close the account your bank has to tell the originator to stop claiming any more dosh. They used to use a pretty red form that was a bugger to get into a typewriter. Its probably done electronically these days.

Not so. You could close the account.

Did you have to keep rescueing the secretaries after they got their long fingernails and or hair stuck in the roller?

I thought the customer was supposed to tell the originator himself, and that otherwise (or rather in any case) subsequent claims just got rejected.

Quite. Once closed, it's dead and you can't use it as an extraction channel; more to the point neither can anyone else. Any attempt by ING to push the money to a closed account would then bounce right back, wouldn't it? So let me rephrase: Once valid, always vaild while still open. So long as the account number doesn't get recycled on someone else's behalf, what's the problem?

In message , Ronald Raygun writes

How did you know about that?

He should do, so that the originator doesnt start sending loads of those 'youve cancelled your DD, whats going on?" letters.

They will be rejected if there is a DD already in the pipeline, they are pre-loaded into BACS in advance. Once the originator gets the modern equivalent of the pretty red form (its red so as hide the secretary's blood) then he wont issue any more claims.

Failed Automated credits have to be handled manually and its a hassle for all concerned. The manual returning process is a backstop, NOT part of the services offered.

[Text interleaved/in conversation order: read to end for all comments] begin quote from Ronald Raygun in uk.finance about: Re: Passbooks .........

Oh, I didn't realise that all banks (that don't have explicit postal arrangements) would accept deposits in this way.

Unfortunately, not very useful (for me) though, since it costs the price of an envelope and a stamp, takes as long as an online funds transfer from another account (ie, with a branch nearer by [1]), and has the added and not-insignificant risk factor of the Royal Mail losing the envelope somewhere.. :-(

It's just as easy (and quicker) to hop on my bike, cycle to the branch, and stick the deposit into the ATM (or counter if the branch is open).

[1] I wonder how long before conventional banks start to really grumble about the (I'm sure) increasing number of people who only have an account with the conventional bank to make deposits and then transfers to online banks (which usually offer better interest, etc), such that the conventional bank doesn't see our money for very long and doesn't get much use out of it?

Well, bank branches do have postal addresses. So I suppose that must count as an "explicit postal arrangement".

Heh, heh. I remember having an account once (a postal savings account) where the building society kept me well stocked with a supply of pre-paid envelopes for sending in deposits or withdrawal requests.

So the price of envelope and stamp was zero. Those were the days...

The risk of the mail losing the envelope *is* insignificant. It happens, but only when it rains and there is a green moon. The risk is probably of a similar order of magnitude as that of the cheques being lost

*after* you've handed them over the bank counter. The consequences of loss are not particularly dire either, unless you neglect to make sure you keep a note of all the details, so you can request replacements if the "insignificant" should happen.

Well, if the online banks can afford to give competitive terms, so should the "conventional" ones be able to. Then they wouldn't need to grumble. But really, aren't most of the online banks really just the self same conventional banks, trading under a different identity?

What's the point in grumbling about *themselves*?

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

I suspect that most "lost" mail is in fact misdelivered to similar, but wrong addresses, and binned by the mystified recipient, who has no idea where it should have gone. I get a lot of this - mail addressed to 15 Acacia Avenue SE1 gets delivered to 15 Acacia Drive SE1...or to 15 Acacia Avenue NW1...etc.

Sounds highly plausible. The answer, as any fool should know, is not to bin it but just to drop it in the next letter box. It will simply be re-delivered, with luck to the correct destination this time.

Many people don't care. When I lived at a No 20 a letter with a cheque was delivered to 2B in error. The owner there said that he had torn the letter up. He rented out rooms to students and had assumed that it was for one who had left. Derek.

Used to get a lot of letters for 1 Something House, High St, when I lived at

1 High St. (So much for the post code- mine was different to theirs) Once I even had to refuse to sign for a recorded delivery letter - anoyed the postman a bit.

However there was a post box 10ft from the front door, so letters that arrived wrongly delivered at 9am would be reposted by 9:30am - and almost without fail delivered to me again at 11am! Only 4 years ago - post was fast then! Reposted at 11:15am it disappeared for good.

Part of the problem is with the system these days is the computer system that companies use to get addresses. If the road only has numbers fine - but if it has numbers within houses or flats .....

No doubt. When one thinks of the physical space the amount of mail "lost" annually would occupy, it seems likely that most of it is lost into the wrong letter box and then the bin. What's disturbing is that this happens even when the thing is properly addressed.

[Text interleaved/in conversation order: read to end for all comments] begin quote from Ronald Raygun in uk.finance about: Re: Passbooks .........

Nah, that'd be "implicit" ;-) But seriously, it had just never occurred to me that banks would ordinarily accept deposits by post. After all, why maintain a branch network and dozens of cashiers, otherwise? ;-)

That's the "explicit" case.. :)

You must be lucky, then!

I suppose there's probably less chance of the postie failing to correctly find the bank in the High St than there is of them shovelling random envelopes for somebody in the close/street/neighbourhood into our letterbox (which does rather make me wonder how much of my mail ends up somewhere else!!), which isn't exactly uncommon..

I thought the argument was "ah, but they don't have this huge branch network to maintain"?

Yes, most of them are, but not all (eg, ING, not otherwise a branch-based bank in the UK).

But even then, I think they're legally, and therefore presumably operationally, separate?

I've just opened an account with IF, and have had to jump through the whole ID hurdle again, even though I already have an account with HBOS. They don't seem to have a way to recognise that "I'm already a customer" in that sense, so I presume they must be legally separate to some degree?

[Text interleaved/in conversation order: read to end for all comments] begin quote from Rob in uk.finance about: Re: Passbooks .........

Arrgh! *Don't* start me on that. Whoever designed that utterly broken system should be flayed alive, slowly.

The concept of flats is _hardly_ an unusual case, yet that sh*tty system just can't handle it. I don't know where they get the address data from, but even on the rare occasions that it doesn't choke on the concept of a flat, the lookups it gives you to choose from rarely coincide with the numbers that the flats are actually known by.

Royal Mail should sort it out once and for all by giving every flat an official number, making it known to the resident (and to Ye Keeper of Ye Databasse) and saying "You *will* use this flat number from now on, or your mail will get lost").

As it is, they seem to have done the official number bit, but have utterly neglected to tell anybody who might be concerned (ie, the residents) about it.

To try to avoid confusion I always put my address as Flat 4, 36 High Street (13 flats at the address) My council Tax bill comes to 36/4 but BT have me in the phone book as 4/36 and the TV licensing office used to keep on sending me letters asking why I did not have a licence to several variations of the address. As we never seem to have the same Delivery Officer (Postman ) for more than a week at a time, I am never surprised when mail comes days late or in the case of a magazine I subscribe to only arrives one week in past three. Derek.