Widow fined £800 by Northern Rock

A woman who previously had tens of thousands of pounds worth of savings with ailing bank Northern Rock was outraged when she was hit with an £800 fine from the bank for withdrawing her savings, even though she had followed the procedure required in order to avoid these charges. The elderly widow, Mrs Heather, had savings of £173,000 with Northern Rock, but like many other customers decided that she wanted to withdraw her money when Northern Rock ran into problems in September 2007. Read more

Tags: face financial penalties, savings, error, finance, interest, account mrs, fine, worth

Massive fine for insurance broker over cancelled policies

A well known insurance company has been accused of treating customers unfairly, and as a result has been fined £735,000 by the Financial Services Authority, the UK’s financial regulatory body. The insurance firm, Hastings Insurance Services Ltd, was found to have cancelled the policies of customers after finding that the cover had been sold to the customers too cheaply due to a computer error. Read more

Tags: Hastings Insurance Services Ltd, error, insurance firm, finance, industry watchdog, watchdog

400,000 may not get paid

Hundreds of thousands of people may not receive their wages on March 30th because of a problem with the Bacs payment system.

The entire banking and payments industry is extending a sincere apology to those affected by this, through Apacs, the UK payments association.

As many as 400,000 people are likely to be affected by what is being called a software glitch which has caused the system to work more slowly than usual.

Banks up and down the country have been made aware of the problems and, according to Apacs, are working together with businesses to make sure that payments are made as soon as possible.

Apacs has stated that it expects everyone who has been affected to receive their next set of wages by Monday April 2nd.

Some customers are likely to be unable to withdraw money from their bank accounts over the weekend if they are relying on these wages for cash.

Customers are being told to contact their bank to ensure that any standing orders, direct debits or other payments will be made.

It is also worth contacting your bank to see if charges for going overdrawn as a result of the error will be levied against you.

Tags: finance, BACS, software glitch, UK payments, error, bank accounts, cash customers