Posts Tagged ‘Expenses scandal’

HERE WE GO AGAIN…..

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Here we go again…..banking: no change. Bonuses are back up, (did they ever go down?), working practises are no different…..everything is rolling along just as before; bankers are carrying on in just the same cavalier fashion.

The usual scams continue unabated. Members of Parliament could have done a lot more about the banking fiasco but they buried their heads and rolled over. They were too wrapped up in their own petty thieving of expenses to visualise the bigger picture and see their responsibilities.

I had a letter from Barclaycard this week telling me if I no longer had my new card I should ring a special number to request a replacement. As I’d never received a new card I dutifully called up. The call cost 5p a minute plus a 9.3p set-up fee. I had to listen to what seemed like hours of sales chat and product placement and unnecessary information before I got to option six and still none of the options applied to me. Then I had to wait ages for an operator while my telephone bill was mounting. I explained my problem to a man in a country far away and in a faint voice he said not to worry Barclaycard hadn’t actually sent out my new card yet so it wasn’t lost after all. Clever bankers…..get the punters to listen to sales chat after implying their card is lost or stolen, (i.e. capitalise on fear of fraud and identity theft to sell things nobody wants while phone companies in this double deal increase their revenue. “Marketing”, (dread word) no doubt designed this clever strategy to engineer a sales opportunity to a captive, nervous audience.

I hope the Conservative Party, if it gets in, is brave enough to look at these annoyances of modern life and makes sure that their Members of Parliament get a grip on all these dodgy practises that are allowed because they are in the rules….but only just.

More about banks next week. In the meantime for up to the minute political opinion order our book “WHAT ARE THEY DOING IN THERE?”

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