Radio 4's Money Box programme has revealed: Quote:Comparisons between banks and so-called payday lenders showed that the annualised percentage rate charged for borrowing £100 over 28 days varied from 969% to 819,100%. No payday loan lender charged an APR of more than 5,000% but two banks - Santander and Lloyds TSB - charged an equivalent APR of more than 300,000%. Quote:Barclays would charge a customer using a personal reserve - a pre-agreed emergency borrowing facility - £22 for every five consecutive working days they were in it. This means customers would pay £88 on top of the £100 capital after 28 days - an equivalent APR of 366,000%. "I'll have £0.01p, Bob" "Sure! That will be - only £73.20" Quote:A customer borrowing £100 for 28 days without the consent of Santander would repay £200, for example. That is the equivalent annualised percentage rate, or APR, of 819,100%. I wondered where the banks would go next, now that obscene pay and bonuses have been reined in, and lending to small businesses maxed out, and find it heartwarming that they can have moved to such levels of public-spiritedness in such a short time.

Radio 4's Money Box programme has revealed: Quote:Comparisons between banks and so-called payday lenders showed that the annualised percentage rate charged for borrowing £100 over 28 days varied from 969% to 819,100%. No payday loan lender charged an APR of more than 5,000% but two banks - Santander and Lloyds TSB - charged an equivalent APR of more than 300,000%. Quote:Barclays would charge a customer using a personal reserve - a pre-agreed emergency borrowing facility - £22 for every five consecutive working days they were in it. This means customers would pay £88 on top of the £100 capital after 28 days - an equivalent APR of 366,000%. "I'll have £0.01p, Bob" "Sure! That will be - only £73.20" Quote:A customer borrowing £100 for 28 days without the consent of Santander would repay £200, for example. That is the equivalent annualised percentage rate, or APR, of 819,100%. I wondered where the banks would go next, now that obscene pay and bonuses have been reined in, and lending to small businesses maxed out, and find it heartwarming that they can have moved to such levels of public-spiritedness in such a short time.

Thanks, i'm teetering on going overdrawn without an agreement, i'm now shitting it, time to quit work and declare bankruptcy

I've thought for a long time that banks (and others) thought "Wall Street" was a mission statement, not a film.

Greed is good is our mantra and Gordon Gekko is our god

APR in meaningless over short periods.

If you can pay back in the short period, yes.

The Barclays figures given above are fair. You have your money, you have an overdraft (the bank/it's customers money) and then if you take the pish even more, then they charge you.
If they didn't have some way of enforcing what is essentially a fine, then at what point do you suggest they stop letting you withdraw money.

FTR I bank with Barclays and have this facility. What the above article forgets is that the payment isn't due if you go back into your overdraft from your emervency reserve within five days.

Is it worth pointing out, Mr FA, that Mr wonga.com payday loanshark Adrian Beecroft is the same individual who came up with a report for David Cameron (as a return on his big donation to the Tories), saying that it would be mega cool to to be able to sack people without reason – something based not on something as mundane as 'research', but on a few 'conversations'.

Except that the article refers to this as a pre-aranged facility, it does NOT refer to taking the pish, or doing anything unauthorised, so back in your box.

Indeed. I've long thought that peasants' rights have come too far. Wouldn't you agree that the abolition of employment rights and the reintroduction of serfdom would restore the country's fortunes?

It is quite extraordinary (or so it seems to me) that so many people really believe that we're regulated up to the hilt.

Clearly that was what caused the financial crisis – there being an over-regulation of financial institutions.

And, as highlighted a few weeks ago by Coddy, there was the situation of the Ellesmere Vauxhall plant, which the company was going to close – because it is easier to close a plant in the UK, and dump workers, than it is anywhere else in Europe.

And yet, if you read the forums at the Telegraph, say, you'll see the feckwittery about too much regulation repeated over and over. I've seen it on the Indy too – together with the ludicrous claim that this country is socialist/communist now. Some people really are so thick they will happily adopt the latest Tea Party stupidity* without even exercising their one remaining brain cell.




* ie, 'anything that isn't rampant, free-market, neo-liberal, fundamentalist capitalism is socialism/communism 'cos we say so'.