CX Media Kit
| Bank Angst: who is worst? |
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| Written by Julius Grafton | |
| Thursday, 07 January 2010 | |
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The GFC is fast receding but the Australian
banks are still squeezing small businesses, especially those they do not
understand. That means Sound, Lighting and Video, or events and promoter firms.
Without bricks and mortar security and sometimes even with, they are tightening
the noose. So now is the time to plot a change. CX can reveal that although
Westpac mis-stepped its retail clients with an ill-timed additional mortgage
rise (and a silly email video belittling everyone about the price of banana's
relative to the cost of their funds), the real culprit in the pile is the
Commonwealth Bank.
CX hears terrible stories about banks in Australia and elsewhere knee jerking and withdrawing overdrafts, ramping up interest and penalties, and generally walking all over their captive borrowers in the name of the supposed GFC.
We can only share what we know: for some years Commonwealth mangled our business relationship (we deal with three different banks) with a series of increasingly incompetent 'relationship managers' - and then when we sold a property, could not give us a payout figure until 48 hours before the day. Then it was seriously wrong with thousands more said to be owed to them, 'oops' they said when we drew their attention to it.
St. George (a Westpac subsidiary) went one better with an incorrect loan offer that required an instant $18,000 in cash to rectify (they were to capitalise mortgage insurance and instead demanded it on settlement), which as of April 2008 makes us reluctant to continue with them. Documented and proven, so St. George PR do not call and pressure us to drop this posting.
But the icing on the cake comes from an industry colleague with a long, long Commonwealth Bank relationship that collapsed in dust before Christmas. Without identifying him (and Commank PR please do not call us either) he had a half million cash account frozen solid because he was late lodging his financials. Not withstanding the bank holding extensive and additional security against almost zero borrowings and some routine equipment finance. More than a decade of great fees and interest gone, since he had millions in borrowings until recently, having repaid millions selling proerty- and will have many more. But at one moment he was down to almost nil with cash in the bank. So they went in hard on a technical issue.And we know he was a rolled gold, dilligent and honest customer of the Commonwealth - he had promoted them to us earlier.
We also know of a major production firm with a similar tale of broken promises and frozen accounts with another big four bank. That one will go public soon.
So CX business readers, let us know how ANZ and NAB along with the smaller banks are treating you. We want to switch all our business soon.
From now on we all need to stick together. Tell us how you have been shafted, and let's find the best of a bad bunch so we can switch our business to them.
Do you agree?
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