Bank want £10k deposit to open account!

[prospero]

One of the saddest phrases in the English language:

"We have always done it like that"


Banks have always been the proverbial 'law unto themselves'. They know about money. They know little about business.

For two pins I would take cash only payments and shove it all in an OXO tin.

[prospero]

Here's a funny thing......

Just checked my biz account online. Some CC payments that I totalled on Wednesday night have been paid in. They weren't there yesterday, so they must have gone in this morning. It's Saturday today. So Streamline recognise that Saturday exists even if B*rclays don't. And to confirm this, the transaction is dated 13/8. Monday.



Yeah. OK. It wasn't all that funny.

[little_daz]

The problem is that banks are always right, and who can argue with that!
Seems like Streamline have their heads screwed on and are able to transfer money in a reasonable time (including Saturdays LOL!)

Loving the Oxo tin by the way!

Just a quick notice to anyone who uses Paypal as we do:
We phoned yesterday to complain as transfers from Paypal to our bank are taking 7 days. We were informed that towards the end of the year transfers will be within hours from Paypal to bank accounts.
They are also launching a merchant services system, with POS terminals etc.

It seems at the moment more of my money is floating around in transfers than is actually in one account or the other!

[prospero]

It seems at the moment more of my money is floating around in transfers than is actually in one account or the other!

Exactly. A few 100 quid from lots of peeps adds up to a tidy sum. It's like the old saying about if you had a billion pounds in your account for a week you rack up quite a bit of interest. All this limbo cash makes the banks a lot of interest. Basically, the longer they can hang on to it the better.

Things I'd like to do to banks No.1.

Turn up 5 mins before closing with £500K in assorted used notes to pay in.

[IFGL]

You had better empty that oxo tin and get ya self down to the bank then.

[misterdiy]

We too use Streamline/Cardsave for both online and POS sales and have had very little issue. Except when we went Ltd Company. That meant new accounts in both banks and card payments. It took 6 months to sort it all out, but when I pushed Streamline they did react quite quickly.

We too get all of our payments (POS and internet, two different accounts) within 48 hours. Saturday stuff rocks up on Monday with Friday money, so pretty good.

Banks keep the money as long as they can possibly get away with because transactions are instant. Cheque clearing should be no different, but with a caveat that if it bounces it will be removed from the account. Don't do many cheques now though.
I suspect that Banks are going to get well and truly hammered following Libor,(Barclays), money laundering (HSBC) Mis-selling (all of them) so that something decent comes out from it all - like a proper bank that trats customers with respect and actually gives a damn about where the economy is going. After all if banks were lending to Homebuyers now the economy would start to roll again. It's high time that a Banker a day was taken out and strung up on Tower Bridge. They would soon get the point.

[JamesC]

Some farmers have it easy it seems, some very hard. Most have an asset they can easily sell or diversify and now they have a government who will look after them.

Frankly I don't think most people would pay over odds for milk - though many will for free range eggs. Maybe we need a "fairtrade" milk for uk farmers as we can't force high prices on the masses if some farmers are managing a profit at the lower price.

My family/Dad's business is a petrol station and MOT centre. The gross profit on one litre of fuel at £1.40 or so is about 3p (if we sell at a high price). Supermarket sell it at probably a loss to get people to visit their stores and fill up £100 of higher margin products. Not really fair.

Thats why the number of filling stations in the uk has halved over recent years.

Now Jet and others are saying they will in future sell fuel to smaller rural garages, but they will have to arrange their own tanker! More hardship/cost.

Net result is turnover £1million, lots of liability and investment, few holidays, profit/wage about the same as a basic teacher if lucky - not nice. Especially for a 60 year old business. We used to sell new cars when that was viable in a smaller town but had to sell the showroom end of last 80s recession. Which makes it hard to sell the rest of the split site.

Maybe we could say the same about The Range and picture frames. At least I can compete on quality now in this trade.

It shouldn't be so hard for business as it is I think and the banks but also European laws are to blame I think. Both of these we can ultimately lay at the politicians doors. No more boom and bust Gordon?