D-Rider wrote:HowardQ wrote:Sorry Andy but there are so many bad things going on in the world of finance and banking.
You don't need to apologise to me Howard - I couldn't agree more.
I'm certainly not sticking up for banking and bankers - I have little sympathy for the world of finance in general.
Things have changed a lot (for the worse) since I worked in that sector - after a year of it I knew it was an unsatisfying job and wanted to move on .... just took 4 more years to work out what and how..........................
Then making things worse is the "have now pay later" culture that a large part of the population has rushed into headlong - emphasised by the credit card debt that so many have. Yes, the banks shouldn't make that so easy but then, people need to take a bit of responsibility too.
IMHO
The whole system is wrong, it pushes people into situations of using credit, so they don't pay cash. You get the pay by credit card then swap the balance to a new card interest free scenario and all the others.
You also usually get a discount for buying by finance and don't get one by paying cash, I am old enough tp remember it being the other way around.
Have you ever tried to pay for anything expensive by cash?
My daughter sold her Astra GSI Turbo on Friday, (she really needed something cheaper to run and insure), and the bloke paid in cash, He was a friend of a good friend who works on the oil rigs.
By Saturday I had found her an excellent old type 2004 Civic 3 door, with alloys, A/C and lots of other toys with just 18k on clock and full Honda SH.
Absolutely unmarked and lower price than anyting I'd seen on A/Trader.
It was at our local Car Supermarket, so we thought let's go and buy it cash, as she had not had chance to bank it.
Salesman says I will need a £500 deposit, we say fine, have it here in cash! Sort of funny look from salesman.
How will you pay the balance, got it here you can have the whole lot now in cash (£5K plus).
Salesman by now is in a serious state of such, "can't do that sir, it's against company policy and also illegal, because the goverment want to stop money laundering.
By now we are shocked, will take a while to get it to the bank and cleared, so will delay picking up the car, are you sure we can't pay cash.
Haven't you got a Credit card, you could pay by that and then pay it off.
Er no we don't want to do that.
The nearest bank branch to where my daughter works in Sheffield City Centre doesn't have a cash counter any more, so you can't pay it in discreetly, had to feed 6K into the bloody machine. (Probably cos nobody uses cash any more).
Only good point was it cleared quickly so did not have to wait too long.
Then came the next fun bit, Jo needed to contact the insurance and wait for the new certificate to come through, which could take a week so she could sort out the new certificate needed to get the car taxed.
No problem says the salesman, phone this 0800 number and you get free insurance for a week so we can tax your car and let you drive it away, all big dealers do this now.
So paid for the car a couple of days later by switch and off we went.
The special Insurance was via Norwich Union. (They always did things a bit funny in Norwich).
With all the uninsured drivers on the road, should it be this easy to get a car taxed for a year without having any insurance of your own?
Also if I had a few millions of drug money to launder, would I choose to do this by buying a few thousand 4 yr old Honda Civics and then sell them on again. Nice little car but I don't think so, the government just want the ability to track every transaction we all make whenever they might need to.
This whole (financial) world's gone mad.
