RICHARD LUTZ explains why today-29th Aug- may be a good day for you and could mean money in your pocket.
We all like good news.. And today for 7 million people in the UK, 7 million letters will go out telling them they are owed money by the double dealing financial world- about £185 each.
It has to do with the latest appalling bank scam that convinced honest folks they had to have either card protection insurance or identity protection. They are simply unneeded because you are usually covered anyway by the banks or card companies. Victims were sold, or bullied or frightened into buying protection that is superfluous.
The Financial Conduct Authority uncovered the grubby fiasco and now is forcing the umbrella company, called CPP, behind the gimmick to write to anyone they sold the protection to. It equates to something like £1.3bn mis-sold policies to the aforesaid 7 million customers who were conned.
If you are found to be a victim you will get the £185 (per mis-sold policy) by Easter 2014. Entitlement to cashbacks run back to policies held since 2005 and there will be an 8% added on for interest.
Banks that participated in the mis-selling include: Barclays, Bank of Scotland, Capital One, HSBC Nationwide, and, of course, Santander UK which can’t do anything right in helping customers.Lloyds, TSB and Halifax did not take part with CPP in the scam.
According to reports, some of the dirty tricks to bilk customers included sticking labels on new cards requesting people to ‘activate’ the account. All it did, shockingly, was to re-direct the cardholder to CPP phone lines.
The FCA said in a statement that people do not really need insurance for fraudulent use of cards. Despite this, the CPP (and by inference) banks and cards companies allowed the devious business to continue and rake in a tidy commission on each sale for doing nothing.
Of course, this is just the latest of cash settlements to customers who have been ripped off by banks. A report this week said the pay outs for scandalous behaviour towards the small saver equals £43bn- that’s for mis-selling of personal pensions, payment protection insurance and the Libor rigging fraud- that’s about £700 for man woman and child in the UK.
And the institutions forced to pay out these billions to customers- why the very banks the taxpayer bailed out when the financial world fell apart in 2008.