‘The Banking in my Life’ or ‘How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the DDR'
A letter of introduction to Nat West, on deciding to leave Barclays ’95.
Part way in- boring history omitted
Early this year we were informed that Barclays, North Walsham (our branch) had merged with Aylesham, but it wouldn’t affect us. During the summer, we received a letter from one Stephen French, ‘Lending Foficer’ (sic) at Aylesham, advising us to change our overdraft to a structured loan*’which you could make regular payments to’ (more sic). My earning pattern, high in summer, low in winter, was why we had a running DDR facility, 4000 limit, renewable annually and currently in credit. He was aware this pattern might cause difficulties but still thought it was a good idea.
I should bloody-well think he did! According to the accompanying bumf, Barclays not only recouped the loan at their convenience, not mine, i.e. without even getting out of bed sort-of-thing, but they got the customer to insure them against loss!
My reply was ‘Hello, Stephen. No, thank you. Regards, Neil’, and that’s verbatim. I heard nothing, but I knew the nasty little bugger wouldn’t leave it at that; I knew that, come review time, he’d be waiting in the playground with two big kids and a short length of rubber hose pipe (doesn’t leave bruises) and so he was.
I rang first, to ask who we should talk to and where. We were given an appointment in North Walsham with a David Spanton, Customer Services Manager, who, it turns out, is French’s stooge in the field, as it were; a sympathetic ear- ‘…make my recommendations- hrmph- not my decision of course- uptomegladly…’ I bet Barclays think this is a new idea; it was old when Dickens lampooned it in David Copperfield. I digress. The guy started banging on again about the structured loan. I said ‘Look; I take a loan in December. I might not earn again until Easter. By then, you want to have had 3 or 4 repayments. Where do they come from? Out of the loan! So he decided they could give us a DDR of a grand (I haven’t said we’d gone in asking for three)- great! So we repay the loan with the overdraft! No- they’ve got a better idea. We turn the account into a business account; it attracts considerably higher costs, but then our Manager, Ken Horne, can handle it, and give us what he likes.
Now this is the same Ken Horne (you’ve got to take this steady, now) who greeted our arrival by warning us off the business account as being too expensive. Now, suddenly, he and Spanton are like two candy-men pushing the old oofle dust! The account is a personal account, so Ken, our Manager, being the Corporate Manager, is not allowed to deal with it. Got that? Our Manager is ‘not allowed’ (his words) to discuss our affairs, but if we change to a business account, then he deals with it, and the overdraft is not a problem. So, as things are, we are not a good risk, but if we take on considerably more expense, we become an acceptable risk.
You may be surprised to learn that’ at this point, I began to lose confidence in Barclays. I also began to develop a terrible urge to kick somebody in the slats!
I have banked with Barclays for over 30yrs- probably longer than any of our dramatis personae have worked there, and in all that time I have never failed to honour one single commitment in full, on time if not before, and suddenly, I’m banking with Shem, Larry and Moe! Valerie says you might not know they are the Three Stooges. I could never aspire to the banking profession; I’m just a simple picture peddler, but in the distant past, impecunious friends did, from time to time, force me to don the mantle of moneylender, and when an appealing voice tried to touch me for 5 or 10 of the folding green variety, I had only one criterion- what are my chances of recovering what’s due, and on time? And assets are no guide. Just because some fat cat drips joolery all over the seat of his roller, that’s no guarantee that he won’t welsh on his paper bill.
Back to the plot-
Shem said that he would pass on to Larry, the message that we were sticking out for the straight 3 grand personal overdraft, and they would let us know. A week later, Shem wrote to say that Larry had blocked it, and was offering a grand DDR, a structured loan for 2 ‘Gs’- or we could turn ‘business’ and deal with Moe. I wrote back and said we’d chew on it.
Now for a couple of months or so since then, we have just been batting silly letters back and forth. They are pushing for a decision, and threatening to shut down the facility completely, to which we replied that we assumed it shut down automatically when it ran out, but its not like chain-smoking; you don’t have to light the second one before the first one goes out, and as we are still managing to lend them money, then nobody needs to panic. Because, ironically, it would appear that we will get through the winter without the attentions of Foficer French, who willf then be atf libfrty fto go and geft ff- oh I do beg your pardon, your Reverence- one of my little turns crep up on me, there.
I should add that my wife, Valerie, also castigated me (mildly) for not quoting her impeccable track record with Barclays- a few years shorter than mine, but most probably having shoved considerably more money on and off the Barclays trolley, what with house-buying and selling and that lot, teaching- steady pay- good money- all to that effect, and again, never having welshed on a Friday manilla!
So, in spite of the grand irony of finding we can survive without troubling Shem, Larry, or Moe to break the seal on a new deck, Valerie and I feel we could do better without Barclays, or to put it more kindly, perhaps Barclays would fare better without us, or again, in short, nodobby gets two goes at shoving my tits in the mangle.
I purposely haven’t gone into numbers- my turnover, Valerie’s teaching- we’ll do that live, then you get the bits you want. This tale wasn’t intended to replace a meeting, but to give you some form, a bit of previous, the story so far, so that we don’t bend your ears for ten or fifteen minutes with what might need twice as long to digest.
The End- or is it the Beginning?