Bank want £10k deposit to open account!

[Otters Pool Studio]

I've already got two merchant services accounts with Barclaycard, one for each of my businesses, and have plenty of good trading history on these and my business current accounts. Having come up with an idea for a new web based service which has now been built, I've applied for a third account to allow me to take card payments from the new website. After 3 months of assessment by the risk team, Barclaycard have now come back with me and announced that they require a £10,000 cash deposit to open the account! Unbelievable! This apparently is to cover the 'risk' to them. I'm in shock. Perhaps they haven't realised that the real risk here is that I am now going elsewhere for my banking.

Jon.

[Graysalchemy]

Pitty The Bank of England didn't do a 'risk assessment' on Barclays, RBS and Lloyds TSB et al. Then we perhaps we would be in the Sh*t we are in today.

[Framerpicture]

The banks are just impossible at the moment- despite being the only beneficeries of quantative easing and also having been bailed out for £billions its far more difficult than it should be to raise business finance at the moment. I'm looking to buy a commercial property,and my bank manager tells me it'll take 8 - 10 weeks to get a decision. As its a bargain price I guess it'll be sold and completed before I even get a decision.

Why not try RBS or Lloyds, after all as a taxpayer, you are a major shareholder

[retropic]

Why not try RBS or Lloyds, after all as a taxpayer, you are a major shareholder

Not for long. The European Union has decided in its infinite wisdom that RBS is too unwieldy and has instructed it to sell its high street branches to Santander... the already rather unwieldy company owned by those well known practitioners of financial excellence, the Spanish.

You could go to Lloyds and then find your account has been sold to the Cooperative Bank. Which is probably not a bad place to put your money. Unless you're a dairy farmer.

[Jonny2morsos]

You could go to Lloyds and then find your account has been sold to the Cooperative Bank. Which is probably not a bad place to put your money. Unless you're a dairy farmer.

In fairness to the Co-op I believe they are paying the farmers a better price than any other supermarket chain.

Santander have too much presence here already. In our nearest large town/city last time I looked they had three branches within spitting distance of each other due to take overs of Abbey National, A&L and Bradford and Bingley. Got to be some rationalisation coming up there aka. job losses and more empty high street premises.

[Not your average framer]

You can still have a bank account at your local post office. I've never heard anything bad said about the post office as a bank.

From what I heard Santander is in a particularly weak position and that why they are offering such good rates to get their hands on people's money.

Icelandic banks were also offering very good rates trying to correct their weak position and a lot of people lost everything when the Icelandic banks went bust!

Really sound banks don't need to offer higher interest rates to get customers. Investors who understand these things know that the higher interest offered by overseas banks often represents a different level of risk to lower interest offered by non-overseas banks.

[retropic]

I think I'm right in saying that the Co-op were one of the three supermarkets accused of not paying a fair price for their milk, the other two being Asda and Morrisons. If I'm not, I take it back.

[mikeysaling]

Really do not understand this £10k deposit (cash?) what are the conditions for this - do they take the funds as security with no return to you? doesn't make any sense to me why you would consider such an arrangement.

[Jonny2morsos]

The Co-op have led the way in increasing the amount paid to farmers although this is being termed as " a premium"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18936539

I don't see why the farmers cannot be paid a reasonable price and the general public should be more than happy to pay a reasonable price. At the moment a four pint container of milk sells at around £1.18 in the supermarkets. That has to be a bargain and would we really notice if it went up to £1.50?

Farming is such an integral part of this country and our landscape. Would you want to get up at some ungodly hour every morning 365 days a year only to watch your product go out the door at less than it cost you to produce.

[Graysalchemy]

I take it this is because it is an internet business and therefore risk of fraud is greater?

If that is the case isn't it about time the banks admit they have and a problem with chip and pin and make it more secure.

Oh sorry that isn't their ethos is it no just pass the cost on to the customer.

I think it is about time I switched my banking to the Co-op.

[Framerpicture]

Farming is such an integral part of this country and our landscape. Would you want to get up at some ungodly hour every morning 365 days a year only to watch your product go out the door at less than it cost you to produce.

I totally agree. It seems strange that the government pay literally £millions for some farmers to sit on their butts and let other parts of the industry struggle.

A friend of mine (and there's many more like him) who runs a rented farm on Exmoor gets £250,000 a year for doing very little, other than being in the right place at the right time. He's been getting this for the last 4 years and will continue to do so for at least the next 6 years. Its scandolous, but to be fair its the system thats wrong and, given the same oppurtunity, I would do the same!

[IFGL]

That's more than my annual turn over and I work like a dog.

[Jonny2morsos]

When we lived in Norfolk my wife has a friend who was married to a farmer who didn't like farming so he rented out most of his land to other farmers but kept his sugar beet quoata so he could claim the EU subsidy.

Why is it supermarkets always think we want to pay rock bottom prices for everything. OK cash is tight at the moment but I would far rather pay a little bit more for my milk in the knowledge that the farmers can at least make a living wage.

As a comparison milk is retailing in supermarkets for around £1.18 for a four pint container. I took my older daughter to the pictures the other day and she wanted a drink so she got herself and Ice Blast which was around 500mls of disgustingly coloured slush - price £3.70!!!

[stcstc]

friend of mine whos main customer is tescos. near christmas , they come to him and say

hey we are going to run a half price special on sprouts so we can only pay you half!!

[mikeysaling]

agree with two morsos - milk would still be excellent value at twice or even three times the price - i'd pay it.

[misterdiy]

This is topical because we had a customer in today who has his best friend as an egg producer. He sells free range eggs ( he has 45000 hens!!) and he sells to Tesco. Tesco price for free range eggs? about £1.60 for a half dozen. He gets 80 pence a dozen. he ships direct to Tesco so no middle man. me thinks its time some af these margins were challenged.

On Co-Op bank, do they offer a full range of banking services, because they never used to.

We have just switched to Santander

[little_daz]

On the subject of Merchant Services. We use Barclays Merchant Services for our online transactions and Cardsave for our POS terminal (which is then through streamline)
Barclays faffed around opening the merchant account (about 2-3 months), classed us as high risk and then decided we could have a merchant account but we get paid 14 working days after the transaction.
Cardsave took about 10 working days to get up and running and have been great. The rental is about £16 a month and processing is a cheap as you'd get if you had the federation of small business' rate.
We will be switching to cardsave soon for our online payments, but we use a fussy ecommerce system so we have to make sure that it's compatible.
HTH

[prospero]

14 days to process a transaction? Slip in a few bank holidays and that could stretch out to a month. I use cardsave/streamline and usually it takes a day less than clearing a cheque. Except I don't have to drive 20 miles to bank it.....

There are constant doom and gloom reports about the economy in the news. Yet the banks persist in working practices that have not changed a great deal since the 19thC. Working days? The days have long since passed when businesses can only operate in nice pre-set hours. And banking services need to be available 24/7/365. Why does the banking world not recognise that Saturday and Sunday exist?

I can understand the principle of taking three days the clear a cheque. Sort of.... But why take the same amount of time to clear one that is from the same bank? It could be processed in seconds. I can pay bills by online transfer and the recipient will have the money in their account the next day. Even then, why the wait.? The transaction either is valid or not. Why does it take 24hours to verify?

As far as the economy is concerned, banks are defintely the grit in the gearbox.


Here endeth today's rant. Come the revolution........

[IFGL]

RMS money is in the bank the next day. rental is £22 per month thks includes insurance for tax inspection and some other stuff. debit transactions 15p credit card 1% as with all these companies you have to tell them what your going to pay and not the other way round.

[little_daz]

Sorry, Cardsave is 2 days. Barclays is 14 days. It's ridiculous, it was worse when we first started and didn't have a decent cash flow .

The whole Saturday / Sunday thing is archaic. The entire banking system is computerised, (as Natwest found out the other month when it said no!) and so the delays must have been programmed in. Also branch opening. When people run a shop that's open 9-5 mon-sat when exactly do they think we have time to go?
Useless, the lot of them!