MY BIOGRAPHY. |
CHAPTER 45. The Bank Again. |
1. Once there is evidence of cash flow problems you can forget the Bank. Despite all their promises and the hype they put out in their advertising, they don't care a damn about anything and that includes protecting their own interests. They will not talk or listen to reason and are quite happy to wipe you out and see you go to the wall as part of their business policy and thereafter representing an insignificant percentage of their loss for that year. 2. Whether thay have no concept of business outside that of banking or they just happen to employ a poor calibre of labour which by natural progression and flow of events end up at the top of their corporate tree, coupled with the fact that no matter how stupid they are, they are making such vast profits that they are well protected against their own idiots and incompetence. There have been some classic, recent, events where some of the brighter employees have really screwed them and a few multinational banks have actually gone to the wall the result of their inability to control things from within. On the other hand they may have banking polices that state, don't prat about with those who are struggling, get rid of them and replace them with some other sucker that we can lend a fortune to and then bleed dry. Or they have a deliberate company policy that states that as soon as someone becomes a nuisance and the cost to them, the bank, becomes disproportionate with the profits that can be made from them, the customer that is, get rid. In other words if they, the customer, are no longer making it and as such are no longer an easy ride for the bank, get rid of them at all costs. Or their is a policy whereby perhaps so many customers and their debts owing to the bank have to be wiped off annually in order to offset embarrassing profits. A theory not denied to me by a retired Bank Manager only a short while ago. 3. One only has to look at third world debt to realise what banks think of these poor people and their countries economies to be able to understand the things they are capable of coming up with. Perhaps all bank executives should add to their prayers or maybe it is already built in by them, 'Oh Lord protect me from those who would tip up the tables of the money lenders as your son Jesus did, in the ancient temples, so many years ago.' It all tends to tell you that these people have not been exactly kosher since way beyond the very beginning. But sufficient sounding off and prevaricating, let's get back to reality. 4. Once they got wind that we were beginning to struggle and were experiencing some cash flow problems they adopted, to say the least, a very funnt attitude. I don't know if we were singled out or the general recession both nationally and in particular locally, prompted them to draw up a list of those to be subject to special treatment or not. All I do know is we were singled out for some unknown reason, to us that is, and in the beginning you could feel it, tried to kid yourself you were wrong and were reading more into it than was there, when there was a distinct change in attitude. At the lower end where you daily came into contact with the tellers, on the cash desks, everything remained the same. It was when you wanted to ask questions or you had a query, that answers were not as easily forthcoming as they had previously been and more and more of your business became committed to letters and appointments that were not easy to make and you were increasingly grilled as to what you wanted and why you wanted it beforehand. Or when you turned up for an appointment the Manager had been called away and a lesser official had been delegated to deal with you and he or she would know little or nothing but would listen and ask and promise to come back to you later. You certainly could not discuss your problems at a personal level with them and they were basically empowered not to arrange anything or make any decisions. This started to sink in when on more than one occasion I came out of an office, having been fobbed off, to find the manager standing, with a cup of tea in his hand, talking to one of the secretaries and another occasion where I walked past his office to look through the open door at him reading a newspaper. 5. The phone calls from them stopped and were replaced by the letter, with a twenty-five pound a time charge attached to them, informing you that you had insufficient funds deposited to cover standing orders and by the time the letter arrived and you had time to do something about it, it was too late and all direct debits had been stopped. This had several different and detrimental effects. First of all you had to go into the Bank and persuade them to reinstate them and pay highly, by way of charges, for the privilege of them doing so. They would then only reinstate them to be paid from the next dates due so you had all the hassle of paying arrears and explaining what had happened and lying through your teeth as you explained to everyone involved and all this inevitably got their knickers in a twist claiming this was not the first time and they would have to review the situation or withdraw their agreements etc. It was from this that we ended up with all the trouble with the Electricity people and them demanding a huge deposit up front. Insurance premiums were another. We had numerous, expensive, insurance policies, including pension schemes and similar and each time the Bank dropped us in it, these people reacted in an extraordinary way. They either cancelled the policies completely and you had all the hassle of having to go somewhere else and explaining, as evasively as possible, why you had to change insurance companies etc or you tried to get them reinstated. But either way the renewal premiums were always way in excess of what you had previously been paying. they saw you, after all, as an increased risk, didn't they? Whether you were or not didn't matter. It was the Bank that made you look as if you were. In the case of pension policies whole chunks of bonuses would be lost and again premiums increased for the same level of cover, none of which helped towards the cash flow situation. It happened so many times that in the end we decided that we had to freeze pension payments to stop loosing what we had but even that became immaterial in the end when we lost everything thanks in no small part to our wonderful, caring, bank. 6. Going back over many years when we first got involved in loans and overdrafts the Banks always insisted on collateral and securities. They were usually fairly happy when they could get their hands on Property Deeds and Life Insurance Policies but when the Pub became involved and the property belonged to someone else they insisted on some heavy insurance policies against just about everything but the main issue was that which covered any outstanding loans from them. To start with the whole thing was arranged and brokered by them, so they not only got their 'pound of flesh' but got the insurance commissions as well and premiums were sky high and the small print said they took the premiums for this before anything else, directly out of your account each month. No problem despite being 'a thorn in the side' at first, but when things got bad they did what I considered to be the biggest 'shit trick' that anyone could have done. They said nothing and stopped taking the premium, using insufficient funds as their later excuse, and rendered the policy null and void. Their people then refused to renegotiate and so I was forced to go to an outside Insurance Company. They assessed the risk and set the premium disproportionately high and as is common practice with commercial insurance companies insisted the monthly premiums were paid by direct debit. Now whether this was simply part of the policy, on the part of the bank, or they simply saw what I had done and did not like what they saw, but you can guess what they did. They whelched on the payments, using the insufficient funds as the excuse on the days when the premiums were due, untill the insurance company said no more and no other company would touch us as we were now on the data base as a high and bad risk. 7. This was to have devastating effects in the end, because now there was no insurance to cover debts, loans, overdrafts or anything and the pack of wolves at the door, led by the bank, was getting bigger and noisier by the week. You might think that the bank could not have been much worse but you would be wrong. 8. Going back over time, loans and different business arrangements had been made and changed, to reflect changing circumstances, and all this time I was becoming a long standing customer with a good record of always having paid their exorbitant loan and bank charges. What choice had I had? If you need money and ninety-nine point nine percent of all businesses do, with very few exeptions, then it requires the small guy, like me, to go to the bank and pay whatever they choose to charge him. 9. One arrangement was that as we were a seasonal business we would be allowed an overdraft, on the business account of up to £10,000 for use during the Winter when income was down and some of the heaviest annual charges fell, Poll Tax and Business Rates and Water Rates in April time, and the heaviest fuel bills from the cold weather and dark nights, to name but a few. The idea was that any overdraft used would be paid off during the summer and the account built up with a surplus that would last as near to Xmas as possible. In the beginning that worked fine and everyone was happy, particularly the Bank as they got their overdraft charges. But when the Summers began to decline and the accumulated surplus lasted less and less and the overdraft got bigger and was extended over a much longer period of time, the Bank, at an annual review claimed they could not allow the situation to continue, so using the ever faithful, ever reliable, small print that said they could change all this to anything they wanted at anytime, by giving notice in writing, did just that. The letter said that with immediate affect the overdraft limit would be reduced to £7,500. Now at the time I was annoyed by this, but having sat down and thought it through I decided in light of the decline, in general, it was perhaps not a bad thing and so I reluctantly accepted it and prepared to 'Tighten my belt.' What I was not prepared for was what was to follow. A bank statement and letter that said that as the current overdraft stood at £9,000 a deposit of £1,500 would have to be made within the next fourteen days or the whole overdraft facility would be withdrawn. That would have floored me completely, so once again by robbing 'Peter to pay Paul' they got their £1,500 and everyone else just had to wait. Things were extremely tight and nerves were shot at, drinking, at times, got a little excessive as it all was so readily available, and sleepless nights were common place, but we would survive. Despite the fact that daily till takings were going down and down, all we had to do was buckle down and ride out the storm, as things could certainly not get worsr. Who are you kidding? Apparently getting £1.500 off us must have been considered, by them, easy and seeing as we had raised that amount fairly quickly, the letter, a few weeks later, stated that a further review had cut the overdraft facility even futher to £5,000 and as it currently stood at around, because I don't recall the exact amount but it was something like, £6,000 a £1,000 had to be paid, blah, blah, blah in the next seven days etc. But if it caused problems I could ring the Area Head Office and they would send an advisor who would be able to help and perhaps come to a compromise. Desperate and with no alternatives I made an appointment and along came this nice young man who would sort everything out if I was prepared to answer his questions and he went away and made his recommendations. A bad, bad mistake but one that I was not to know I was making at the time. He had asked a lot of questions and been given a lot of information about the current state of the business on the understanding that he was there to help. He sent a short note to say that he had informed the bank that he felt that, with effort, we should be able to pay the latest demand and that no further assistance from the bank should be forth coming until such times as business improved. 10. That was it. By no stretch of imagination or financial juggling could we raise something we just did not have and I went into the bank and asked to see the Manager. They said he had left and that the new manager, when he had settled in, would be in touch. I never saw or met that man because within a matter of days I got a letter to say that having failed to make the required deposits and the report received from their advisor, who had been to see me, and had satisfied himself that he doubted if I could keep to any of the original agreements, all facilities had been withdrawn, my account suspended and the whole account passed to the Debt Recovery Department based in Leeds. I should have known why they were so keen to send 'their advisor to help me' and, in hindsight, should have been suspicious but when you are tired, punch drunk, not thinking straight anymore and clutching at straws, that's when the mistakes get made. They wrote, from Leeds, to say I had been allocated a Number, which I had to use at all times and if at anytime I wished to communicate with them I was to use that number to identify myself, and address all correspondence to Recovery Team Member So and So. My current account would be reinstated and under no circumstances would it be allowed to go overdrawn. Enclosed was a separate Paying In Book that had to be used, weekly, to deposit the calculated loan recovery rate of (and here they had calculated an astronomical and impossible amount to raise that would have resulted in the paying off of the outstanding loans in three years.) A nice little rider said that if I failed to make the payments on time then efforts would be made to recover it from the current account and failing that legal action, through the courts, to recover all debts, plus costs, would be taken. 11. Everyone else gathered that things were not going well when cheque payments, from us, dried up, as we could no longer issue them, and offers of cash were either being made as full or part payment and as an alternative to standing orders etc. 12. I thought that throughout all this I was coping fairly well but years later my wife would confess to me that, at times, I was so wound up and so very angry that she was, on more than one occasion, frightened for me. She did not deserve that and I am truly sorry and had I realised I would have tried to do something about it, but not realising, how could I? Perhaps she will forgive me as she has so much that I don't deserve. |
CHAPTER 45. The Bank Again. |
1. Once there is evidence of cash flow problems you can forget the Bank. Despite all their promises and the hype they put out in their advertising, they don't care a damn about anything and that includes protecting their own interests. They will not talk or listen to reason and are quite happy to wipe you out and see you go to the wall as part of their business policy and thereafter representing an insignificant percentage of their loss for that year. 2. Whether thay have no concept of business outside that of banking or they just happen to employ a poor calibre of labour which by natural progression and flow of events end up at the top of their corporate tree, coupled with the fact that no matter how stupid they are, they are making such vast profits that they are well protected against their own idiots and incompetence. There have been some classic, recent, events where some of the brighter employees have really screwed them and a few multinational banks have actually gone to the wall the result of their inability to control things from within. On the other hand they may have banking polices that state, don't prat about with those who are struggling, get rid of them and replace them with some other sucker that we can lend a fortune to and then bleed dry. Or they have a deliberate company policy that states that as soon as someone becomes a nuisance and the cost to them, the bank, becomes disproportionate with the profits that can be made from them, the customer that is, get rid. In other words if they, the customer, are no longer making it and as such are no longer an easy ride for the bank, get rid of them at all costs. Or their is a policy whereby perhaps so many customers and their debts owing to the bank have to be wiped off annually in order to offset embarrassing profits. A theory not denied to me by a retired Bank Manager only a short while ago. 3. One only has to look at third world debt to realise what banks think of these poor people and their countries economies to be able to understand the things they are capable of coming up with. Perhaps all bank executives should add to their prayers or maybe it is already built in by them, 'Oh Lord protect me from those who would tip up the tables of the money lenders as your son Jesus did, in the ancient temples, so many years ago.' It all tends to tell you that these people have not been exactly kosher since way beyond the very beginning. But sufficient sounding off and prevaricating, let's get back to reality. 4. Once they got wind that we were beginning to struggle and were experiencing some cash flow problems they adopted, to say the least, a very funnt attitude. I don't know if we were singled out or the general recession both nationally and in particular locally, prompted them to draw up a list of those to be subject to special treatment or not. All I do know is we were singled out for some unknown reason, to us that is, and in the beginning you could feel it, tried to kid yourself you were wrong and were reading more into it than was there, when there was a distinct change in attitude. At the lower end where you daily came into contact with the tellers, on the cash desks, everything remained the same. It was when you wanted to ask questions or you had a query, that answers were not as easily forthcoming as they had previously been and more and more of your business became committed to letters and appointments that were not easy to make and you were increasingly grilled as to what you wanted and why you wanted it beforehand. Or when you turned up for an appointment the Manager had been called away and a lesser official had been delegated to deal with you and he or she would know little or nothing but would listen and ask and promise to come back to you later. You certainly could not discuss your problems at a personal level with them and they were basically empowered not to arrange anything or make any decisions. This started to sink in when on more than one occasion I came out of an office, having been fobbed off, to find the manager standing, with a cup of tea in his hand, talking to one of the secretaries and another occasion where I walked past his office to look through the open door at him reading a newspaper. 5. The phone calls from them stopped and were replaced by the letter, with a twenty-five pound a time charge attached to them, informing you that you had insufficient funds deposited to cover standing orders and by the time the letter arrived and you had time to do something about it, it was too late and all direct debits had been stopped. This had several different and detrimental effects. First of all you had to go into the Bank and persuade them to reinstate them and pay highly, by way of charges, for the privilege of them doing so. They would then only reinstate them to be paid from the next dates due so you had all the hassle of paying arrears and explaining what had happened and lying through your teeth as you explained to everyone involved and all this inevitably got their knickers in a twist claiming this was not the first time and they would have to review the situation or withdraw their agreements etc. It was from this that we ended up with all the trouble with the Electricity people and them demanding a huge deposit up front. Insurance premiums were another. We had numerous, expensive, insurance policies, including pension schemes and similar and each time the Bank dropped us in it, these people reacted in an extraordinary way. They either cancelled the policies completely and you had all the hassle of having to go somewhere else and explaining, as evasively as possible, why you had to change insurance companies etc or you tried to get them reinstated. But either way the renewal premiums were always way in excess of what you had previously been paying. they saw you, after all, as an increased risk, didn't they? Whether you were or not didn't matter. It was the Bank that made you look as if you were. In the case of pension policies whole chunks of bonuses would be lost and again premiums increased for the same level of cover, none of which helped towards the cash flow situation. It happened so many times that in the end we decided that we had to freeze pension payments to stop loosing what we had but even that became immaterial in the end when we lost everything thanks in no small part to our wonderful, caring, bank. 6. Going back over many years when we first got involved in loans and overdrafts the Banks always insisted on collateral and securities. They were usually fairly happy when they could get their hands on Property Deeds and Life Insurance Policies but when the Pub became involved and the property belonged to someone else they insisted on some heavy insurance policies against just about everything but the main issue was that which covered any outstanding loans from them. To start with the whole thing was arranged and brokered by them, so they not only got their 'pound of flesh' but got the insurance commissions as well and premiums were sky high and the small print said they took the premiums for this before anything else, directly out of your account each month. No problem despite being 'a thorn in the side' at first, but when things got bad they did what I considered to be the biggest 'shit trick' that anyone could have done. They said nothing and stopped taking the premium, using insufficient funds as their later excuse, and rendered the policy null and void. Their people then refused to renegotiate and so I was forced to go to an outside Insurance Company. They assessed the risk and set the premium disproportionately high and as is common practice with commercial insurance companies insisted the monthly premiums were paid by direct debit. Now whether this was simply part of the policy, on the part of the bank, or they simply saw what I had done and did not like what they saw, but you can guess what they did. They whelched on the payments, using the insufficient funds as the excuse on the days when the premiums were due, untill the insurance company said no more and no other company would touch us as we were now on the data base as a high and bad risk. 7. This was to have devastating effects in the end, because now there was no insurance to cover debts, loans, overdrafts or anything and the pack of wolves at the door, led by the bank, was getting bigger and noisier by the week. You might think that the bank could not have been much worse but you would be wrong. 8. Going back over time, loans and different business arrangements had been made and changed, to reflect changing circumstances, and all this time I was becoming a long standing customer with a good record of always having paid their exorbitant loan and bank charges. What choice had I had? If you need money and ninety-nine point nine percent of all businesses do, with very few exeptions, then it requires the small guy, like me, to go to the bank and pay whatever they choose to charge him. 9. One arrangement was that as we were a seasonal business we would be allowed an overdraft, on the business account of up to £10,000 for use during the Winter when income was down and some of the heaviest annual charges fell, Poll Tax and Business Rates and Water Rates in April time, and the heaviest fuel bills from the cold weather and dark nights, to name but a few. The idea was that any overdraft used would be paid off during the summer and the account built up with a surplus that would last as near to Xmas as possible. In the beginning that worked fine and everyone was happy, particularly the Bank as they got their overdraft charges. But when the Summers began to decline and the accumulated surplus lasted less and less and the overdraft got bigger and was extended over a much longer period of time, the Bank, at an annual review claimed they could not allow the situation to continue, so using the ever faithful, ever reliable, small print that said they could change all this to anything they wanted at anytime, by giving notice in writing, did just that. The letter said that with immediate affect the overdraft limit would be reduced to £7,500. Now at the time I was annoyed by this, but having sat down and thought it through I decided in light of the decline, in general, it was perhaps not a bad thing and so I reluctantly accepted it and prepared to 'Tighten my belt.' What I was not prepared for was what was to follow. A bank statement and letter that said that as the current overdraft stood at £9,000 a deposit of £1,500 would have to be made within the next fourteen days or the whole overdraft facility would be withdrawn. That would have floored me completely, so once again by robbing 'Peter to pay Paul' they got their £1,500 and everyone else just had to wait. Things were extremely tight and nerves were shot at, drinking, at times, got a little excessive as it all was so readily available, and sleepless nights were common place, but we would survive. Despite the fact that daily till takings were going down and down, all we had to do was buckle down and ride out the storm, as things could certainly not get worsr. Who are you kidding? Apparently getting £1.500 off us must have been considered, by them, easy and seeing as we had raised that amount fairly quickly, the letter, a few weeks later, stated that a further review had cut the overdraft facility even futher to £5,000 and as it currently stood at around, because I don't recall the exact amount but it was something like, £6,000 a £1,000 had to be paid, blah, blah, blah in the next seven days etc. But if it caused problems I could ring the Area Head Office and they would send an advisor who would be able to help and perhaps come to a compromise. Desperate and with no alternatives I made an appointment and along came this nice young man who would sort everything out if I was prepared to answer his questions and he went away and made his recommendations. A bad, bad mistake but one that I was not to know I was making at the time. He had asked a lot of questions and been given a lot of information about the current state of the business on the understanding that he was there to help. He sent a short note to say that he had informed the bank that he felt that, with effort, we should be able to pay the latest demand and that no further assistance from the bank should be forth coming until such times as business improved. 10. That was it. By no stretch of imagination or financial juggling could we raise something we just did not have and I went into the bank and asked to see the Manager. They said he had left and that the new manager, when he had settled in, would be in touch. I never saw or met that man because within a matter of days I got a letter to say that having failed to make the required deposits and the report received from their advisor, who had been to see me, and had satisfied himself that he doubted if I could keep to any of the original agreements, all facilities had been withdrawn, my account suspended and the whole account passed to the Debt Recovery Department based in Leeds. I should have known why they were so keen to send 'their advisor to help me' and, in hindsight, should have been suspicious but when you are tired, punch drunk, not thinking straight anymore and clutching at straws, that's when the mistakes get made. They wrote, from Leeds, to say I had been allocated a Number, which I had to use at all times and if at anytime I wished to communicate with them I was to use that number to identify myself, and address all correspondence to Recovery Team Member So and So. My current account would be reinstated and under no circumstances would it be allowed to go overdrawn. Enclosed was a separate Paying In Book that had to be used, weekly, to deposit the calculated loan recovery rate of (and here they had calculated an astronomical and impossible amount to raise that would have resulted in the paying off of the outstanding loans in three years.) A nice little rider said that if I failed to make the payments on time then efforts would be made to recover it from the current account and failing that legal action, through the courts, to recover all debts, plus costs, would be taken. 11. Everyone else gathered that things were not going well when cheque payments, from us, dried up, as we could no longer issue them, and offers of cash were either being made as full or part payment and as an alternative to standing orders etc. 12. I thought that throughout all this I was coping fairly well but years later my wife would confess to me that, at times, I was so wound up and so very angry that she was, on more than one occasion, frightened for me. She did not deserve that and I am truly sorry and had I realised I would have tried to do something about it, but not realising, how could I? Perhaps she will forgive me as she has so much that I don't deserve. |
CHAPTER 45. The Bank Again. |
1. Once there is evidence of cash flow problems you can forget the Bank. Despite all their promises and the hype they put out in their advertising, they don't care a damn about anything and that includes protecting their own interests. They will not talk or listen to reason and are quite happy to wipe you out and see you go to the wall as part of their business policy and thereafter representing an insignificant percentage of their loss for that year. 2. Whether thay have no concept of business outside that of banking or they just happen to employ a poor calibre of labour which by natural progression and flow of events end up at the top of their corporate tree, coupled with the fact that no matter how stupid they are, they are making such vast profits that they are well protected against their own idiots and incompetence. There have been some classic, recent, events where some of the brighter employees have really screwed them and a few multinational banks have actually gone to the wall the result of their inability to control things from within. On the other hand they may have banking polices that state, don't prat about with those who are struggling, get rid of them and replace them with some other sucker that we can lend a fortune to and then bleed dry. Or they have a deliberate company policy that states that as soon as someone becomes a nuisance and the cost to them, the bank, becomes disproportionate with the profits that can be made from them, the customer that is, get rid. In other words if they, the customer, are no longer making it and as such are no longer an easy ride for the bank, get rid of them at all costs. Or their is a policy whereby perhaps so many customers and their debts owing to the bank have to be wiped off annually in order to offset embarrassing profits. A theory not denied to me by a retired Bank Manager only a short while ago. 3. One only has to look at third world debt to realise what banks think of these poor people and their countries economies to be able to understand the things they are capable of coming up with. Perhaps all bank executives should add to their prayers or maybe it is already built in by them, 'Oh Lord protect me from those who would tip up the tables of the money lenders as your son Jesus did, in the ancient temples, so many years ago.' It all tends to tell you that these people have not been exactly kosher since way beyond the very beginning. But sufficient sounding off and prevaricating, let's get back to reality. 4. Once they got wind that we were beginning to struggle and were experiencing some cash flow problems they adopted, to say the least, a very funnt attitude. I don't know if we were singled out or the general recession both nationally and in particular locally, prompted them to draw up a list of those to be subject to special treatment or not. All I do know is we were singled out for some unknown reason, to us that is, and in the beginning you could feel it, tried to kid yourself you were wrong and were reading more into it than was there, when there was a distinct change in attitude. At the lower end where you daily came into contact with the tellers, on the cash desks, everything remained the same. It was when you wanted to ask questions or you had a query, that answers were not as easily forthcoming as they had previously been and more and more of your business became committed to letters and appointments that were not easy to make and you were increasingly grilled as to what you wanted and why you wanted it beforehand. Or when you turned up for an appointment the Manager had been called away and a lesser official had been delegated to deal with you and he or she would know little or nothing but would listen and ask and promise to come back to you later. You certainly could not discuss your problems at a personal level with them and they were basically empowered not to arrange anything or make any decisions. This started to sink in when on more than one occasion I came out of an office, having been fobbed off, to find the manager standing, with a cup of tea in his hand, talking to one of the secretaries and another occasion where I walked past his office to look through the open door at him reading a newspaper. 5. The phone calls from them stopped and were replaced by the letter, with a twenty-five pound a time charge attached to them, informing you that you had insufficient funds deposited to cover standing orders and by the time the letter arrived and you had time to do something about it, it was too late and all direct debits had been stopped. This had several different and detrimental effects. First of all you had to go into the Bank and persuade them to reinstate them and pay highly, by way of charges, for the privilege of them doing so. They would then only reinstate them to be paid from the next dates due so you had all the hassle of paying arrears and explaining what had happened and lying through your teeth as you explained to everyone involved and all this inevitably got their knickers in a twist claiming this was not the first time and they would have to review the situation or withdraw their agreements etc. It was from this that we ended up with all the trouble with the Electricity people and them demanding a huge deposit up front. Insurance premiums were another. We had numerous, expensive, insurance policies, including pension schemes and similar and each time the Bank dropped us in it, these people reacted in an extraordinary way. They either cancelled the policies completely and you had all the hassle of having to go somewhere else and explaining, as evasively as possible, why you had to change insurance companies etc or you tried to get them reinstated. But either way the renewal premiums were always way in excess of what you had previously been paying. they saw you, after all, as an increased risk, didn't they? Whether you were or not didn't matter. It was the Bank that made you look as if you were. In the case of pension policies whole chunks of bonuses would be lost and again premiums increased for the same level of cover, none of which helped towards the cash flow situation. It happened so many times that in the end we decided that we had to freeze pension payments to stop loosing what we had but even that became immaterial in the end when we lost everything thanks in no small part to our wonderful, caring, bank. 6. Going back over many years when we first got involved in loans and overdrafts the Banks always insisted on collateral and securities. They were usually fairly happy when they could get their hands on Property Deeds and Life Insurance Policies but when the Pub became involved and the property belonged to someone else they insisted on some heavy insurance policies against just about everything but the main issue was that which covered any outstanding loans from them. To start with the whole thing was arranged and brokered by them, so they not only got their 'pound of flesh' but got the insurance commissions as well and premiums were sky high and the small print said they took the premiums for this before anything else, directly out of your account each month. No problem despite being 'a thorn in the side' at first, but when things got bad they did what I considered to be the biggest 'shit trick' that anyone could have done. They said nothing and stopped taking the premium, using insufficient funds as their later excuse, and rendered the policy null and void. Their people then refused to renegotiate and so I was forced to go to an outside Insurance Company. They assessed the risk and set the premium disproportionately high and as is common practice with commercial insurance companies insisted the monthly premiums were paid by direct debit. Now whether this was simply part of the policy, on the part of the bank, or they simply saw what I had done and did not like what they saw, but you can guess what they did. They whelched on the payments, using the insufficient funds as the excuse on the days when the premiums were due, untill the insurance company said no more and no other company would touch us as we were now on the data base as a high and bad risk. 7. This was to have devastating effects in the end, because now there was no insurance to cover debts, loans, overdrafts or anything and the pack of wolves at the door, led by the bank, was getting bigger and noisier by the week. You might think that the bank could not have been much worse but you would be wrong. 8. Going back over time, loans and different business arrangements had been made and changed, to reflect changing circumstances, and all this time I was becoming a long standing customer with a good record of always having paid their exorbitant loan and bank charges. What choice had I had? If you need money and ninety-nine point nine percent of all businesses do, with very few exeptions, then it requires the small guy, like me, to go to the bank and pay whatever they choose to charge him. 9. One arrangement was that as we were a seasonal business we would be allowed an overdraft, on the business account of up to £10,000 for use during the Winter when income was down and some of the heaviest annual charges fell, Poll Tax and Business Rates and Water Rates in April time, and the heaviest fuel bills from the cold weather and dark nights, to name but a few. The idea was that any overdraft used would be paid off during the summer and the account built up with a surplus that would last as near to Xmas as possible. In the beginning that worked fine and everyone was happy, particularly the Bank as they got their overdraft charges. But when the Summers began to decline and the accumulated surplus lasted less and less and the overdraft got bigger and was extended over a much longer period of time, the Bank, at an annual review claimed they could not allow the situation to continue, so using the ever faithful, ever reliable, small print that said they could change all this to anything they wanted at anytime, by giving notice in writing, did just that. The letter said that with immediate affect the overdraft limit would be reduced to £7,500. Now at the time I was annoyed by this, but having sat down and thought it through I decided in light of the decline, in general, it was perhaps not a bad thing and so I reluctantly accepted it and prepared to 'Tighten my belt.' What I was not prepared for was what was to follow. A bank statement and letter that said that as the current overdraft stood at £9,000 a deposit of £1,500 would have to be made within the next fourteen days or the whole overdraft facility would be withdrawn. That would have floored me completely, so once again by robbing 'Peter to pay Paul' they got their £1,500 and everyone else just had to wait. Things were extremely tight and nerves were shot at, drinking, at times, got a little excessive as it all was so readily available, and sleepless nights were common place, but we would survive. Despite the fact that daily till takings were going down and down, all we had to do was buckle down and ride out the storm, as things could certainly not get worsr. Who are you kidding? Apparently getting £1.500 off us must have been considered, by them, easy and seeing as we had raised that amount fairly quickly, the letter, a few weeks later, stated that a further review had cut the overdraft facility even futher to £5,000 and as it currently stood at around, because I don't recall the exact amount but it was something like, £6,000 a £1,000 had to be paid, blah, blah, blah in the next seven days etc. But if it caused problems I could ring the Area Head Office and they would send an advisor who would be able to help and perhaps come to a compromise. Desperate and with no alternatives I made an appointment and along came this nice young man who would sort everything out if I was prepared to answer his questions and he went away and made his recommendations. A bad, bad mistake but one that I was not to know I was making at the time. He had asked a lot of questions and been given a lot of information about the current state of the business on the understanding that he was there to help. He sent a short note to say that he had informed the bank that he felt that, with effort, we should be able to pay the latest demand and that no further assistance from the bank should be forth coming until such times as business improved. 10. That was it. By no stretch of imagination or financial juggling could we raise something we just did not have and I went into the bank and asked to see the Manager. They said he had left and that the new manager, when he had settled in, would be in touch. I never saw or met that man because within a matter of days I got a letter to say that having failed to make the required deposits and the report received from their advisor, who had been to see me, and had satisfied himself that he doubted if I could keep to any of the original agreements, all facilities had been withdrawn, my account suspended and the whole account passed to the Debt Recovery Department based in Leeds. I should have known why they were so keen to send 'their advisor to help me' and, in hindsight, should have been suspicious but when you are tired, punch drunk, not thinking straight anymore and clutching at straws, that's when the mistakes get made. They wrote, from Leeds, to say I had been allocated a Number, which I had to use at all times and if at anytime I wished to communicate with them I was to use that number to identify myself, and address all correspondence to Recovery Team Member So and So. My current account would be reinstated and under no circumstances would it be allowed to go overdrawn. Enclosed was a separate Paying In Book that had to be used, weekly, to deposit the calculated loan recovery rate of (and here they had calculated an astronomical and impossible amount to raise that would have resulted in the paying off of the outstanding loans in three years.) A nice little rider said that if I failed to make the payments on time then efforts would be made to recover it from the current account and failing that legal action, through the courts, to recover all debts, plus costs, would be taken. 11. Everyone else gathered that things were not going well when cheque payments, from us, dried up, as we could no longer issue them, and offers of cash were either being made as full or part payment and as an alternative to standing orders etc. 12. I thought that throughout all this I was coping fairly well but years later my wife would confess to me that, at times, I was so wound up and so very angry that she was, on more than one occasion, frightened for me. She did not deserve that and I am truly sorry and had I realised I would have tried to do something about it, but not realising, how could I? Perhaps she will forgive me as she has so much that I don't deserve. |
MY BIOGRAPHY. |