Banks – perhaps big corporations generally – have got too big for their boots – but banks especially. The idea is, or was, supposed to be that the bank just held your money; it held it but it was still yours, to use as you wished. But no longer. Things haven’t yet got to the point where banks treat our money as their own but they do seem to be heading that way. Banks nowadays – and not just when debanking wrong-thinkers like Nigel Farage – act high-handedly, domineeringly, autocratically, as if the relation between them and us were like that between feudal lord and vassals – the vassals to be ‘helped’, ‘supported’, ‘protected’, even against their own wishes and contrary to their own interests.
If banks do still accept that our money is ours, to use as we see fit, they do so only grudgingly and upon conditions – conditions which they set and we, if we want to bank with them, must accept. (And how do you get by in today’s world without a bank account?) They may not claim that your money is theirs, but they do claim the next best thing – and act upon it – that they are better fitted to control it than you are. (And, of course, if they take enough control, how much does the money remain yours and not theirs?)
A recent experience with Barclays: a couple of days ago, I had a phone call from my elder son asking to be loaned £2000 to placate HMRC (another high-handed potentate). If HMRC didn’t get the money pronto, there’d be unpleasantness and fines and interest to pay. I was particularly keen to lend him the money as it’s only a couple of years since he gave us more than twice the sum towards a builder’s bill.
I sent the money, from my Barclays account – as I thought, until I got a call from the Barclays Fraud Squad. The first thing that struck me was that, whereas I was to take the caller’s word for it that he was who he claimed to be, he demanded (it seemed like a demand though I grant that he probably thought it merely ‘a requirement’) that I prove to him that I was who I claimed to be. And in doing so he seemed to me to be laying down the rules upon which we were to converse, i.e. that this was not to be a conversation – and certainly not one between customer and tradesman – but an interrogation, in which I was obliged to do the satisfying and he would decide whether he was satisfied … or not. (It turned out not.)
The questioning became so (as it seemed to me) unreasonably prolonged – so far past the point that any reasonable person could doubt that I was the account holder and that I did indeed want the sum of £2000 paid to my son – that I lost my patience (but not my temper) and demanded to know (this was a demand) whether Barclays was going to make the payment – in which case, well and good – or not, in which case I would close my account.
The man from the Fraud Squad wouldn’t pay the £2000 to my son but what he did do, I discovered when I tried to switch to another bank, was block my account!
But surely the purpose of the call had been to protect me from what was possibly a scammer? How could my failure (or, if this was what they thought it, my refusal) to prove that the payee wasn’t scamming me, justify their blocking my account? If they still thought him a scammer, why take it out on me? That was a form of ‘protection’ I needed protecting from. (I did later get answers, of a kind – see below – but they amazed me even more than the block they purported to justify.)
And to get my account unblocked? Go online; and learn I’d got to phone. Phone; and learn I’d got to go into my local branch (soon to close but not closed yet). Tell young woman at the door (who looks as if she is there to prevent people getting in) why I want to come in. She suggests I phone. I say I did phone and was told to come. While she ‘looks into it’, a queue builds up behind me. I am allowed in, to wait. Am collected, to tell another young woman why I am there. She suggests I phone. I say I did phone and was told to come. I give her my Barclays debit card. She asks for identification, which, as I have just given her my Barclays debit card and have banked at this branch for forty years or more, surprises me. I have identification but – feeling bolshie and ready to see just how much of her time she is willing to spend on me (I am willing to spend any amount of mine on her) – say I haven’t any. (“You started this,” I think to myself.) She asks, absurdly it seems to me, for my National Insurance number. I can’t give it to her but wish I could so that I could say I couldn’t. After a few more token questions that it seems to me her heart isn’t in, she makes a phone call, and eventually hands me the phone so that I can talk to the Fraud Squad directly.
It asks me more of the questions I have just given her answers to. I don’t mind. I am now spending my time, which is of no monetary value whatsoever, to buy the time of two employees of Barclays Bank which, I hope, is of considerable monetary value to it. (“You started this.”) When we get to the point at which the Fraud Squad says it will unblock my account, it becomes my turn to ask questions.
Why did you block my account, I ask. We had concerns, it says, about the safety of your account. Having concerns, I say, is one of those phrases trotted out to justify anything, everything and nothing. Who had concerns? And the answer to that turns out to be that it wasn’t a who at all but an algorithm! Santander had paid over my £2000 without a flicker of interest (after all, how much is £2000 today?), not because its employees had more sense but because it had a different algorithm! There was no one there in either bank judging whether I could safely send my £2000 or not. Human judgement didn’t enter into it – except as a pretence.
OK. But why, I asked, when you – or your algorithm – were supposedly trying to protect my interests, did you injure them by blocking my account? After all, no one thinks I was trying to scam anyone. And if you wanted to protect me from being scammed for £2000, you had done that by refusing to make the payment. Why go on to cause me all the potential inconvenience – if nothing more – of blocking my account? And the answer to that, amazingly (how much not of feudal Lordship but of veritable Big Brothership is there in this?) was, “Blocking accounts is one of the ways we have of protecting them.”
I felt as if a curtain had been drawn, and I had been given a glimpse of what lay behind the film set or stage scenery, as in that film The Matrix.
Duke Maskell writes a Substack newsletter Reactionary Essays, which you might like to follow here.
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Keep taking the (red) pills ;o)
Another aspect of spreading UK infantilism; Co-operative Bank treats customers as though it has Power of Attorney e.g.s. pushing its own credit cards and then refusing to issue because they decide customer has too many other potential credit sources and might overstretch themselves, also ludicrously long recorded fraud messages before their automated telephone banking service finally kicks in, plus 15 minute waits (or longer) to speak to an operative in person. Former Tesco Bank refusing to accept a small cash savings deposit because new debit card not yet signed despite a wallet full of other identification. Lloyds subjecting customer to 15 minutes of interrogation to agree (reluctantly) to transfer money from own UK account to own overseas account in case customer was being scammed but didn’t know it.
All UK banks attempting to force customers into online banking by closing branches and making telephone banking as slow and outdated as possible. Do not give in!!
“Things haven’t yet got to the point where banks treat our money as their own but they do seem to be heading that way. ”
If you have cash in the bank it is an unsecured loan to the bank. One day, quite soon, we will all learn about this the hard way.
Who are to bank with then? My younger son’s answer is the digital equivalent of putting it under the bed … into Bitcoin.
Bitcoin surely though isn’t the digital equivalent of putting coins, notes or precious metals/gemstones under the bed as these physically exist. I for the life of me cannot understand why anyone would invest in or continue to hold digital currencies as these things do not physically exist and if stolen or lost can’t be traced or recovered like physical assets (although these aren’t necessarily recoverable either now that thought crime trumps robbery). Not that the Banks or Insurers can be trusted either and especially so if CBDCs are forced onto us.