HI GOOD PEOPLE,
Let us go to Africa and listen to my story with Barclays bank. I will explain my story mathematically. Perhaps there are people with a similar story.
We will do some mathematics with figures. The local currency is called the shilling.
So you take 800,000 shillings Barclays loan and you get less that amount because there is negotiation fee.
They will be deducting 24000 from your salary every month and you pay them faithfully for 30 months when you get tired of debt and you want to clear the loan.
Now for the 30 months therefore you have paid 30*24000=720,000---not far from the initial 800,000 amount that you took from them as a loan.
But then, you ask for your loan balance and it read you still owe them 500,000 which means your principal has come down by only 300,000 and they have taken an interest of 420,000 from you and this is already more than half of the money they originally gave you.
Well you say fine—all you want is to get the hell out of debt and you run to them with 500,000 to clear your loan but wait---not so fast, they are not done with you. You will get a penalty for paying earlier than the many years you would have continued paying them interest and this penalty is nine month interest---I mean you have cleared their loan and they still have to take 9 month interest yet you will not be owing them anything during these nine months.
Well this interest amount to about 92,000 and well you want the hell to get out of debt so you pay.
Simplified mathematics:
You took------------------800,000 but got slightly less because of negotiation fee.
30 month payment-------720,000(already deducted from your salary) + 92000(penalty) +500,000(the remaining balance)
Total paid in 30 month= 1,312,000
And had you not cleared earlier, the figure would have gone up.
Moral of the story: get the hell from these people and let them keep their money and advice as many people as possible so that when they are taking a loan, however nice the talking initially is, let them know what awaits them.
Currently, I am struggling to close the account because I am asking myself whether there is any reason why one fine day we may not wake up and find there is a nine month fee for closing an account. I have not been able to do so because I am being told there is a technical hitch. In the meantime while I have not closed my account because of a technical hitch which I have not made, they continue to charge me account maintenance fee even when I no longer want their account.
The only way we can help others so that when one takes a loan he/she can know all that is at stake is to take the mathematics I have presented here and send it to as many of ones friends via e-mail as possible and ask them to forward it to their friends too and the cycle continue until the information gets as many people as possible. That way we will have an informed citizenry.
Does anybody salaried hear this even when they start marketing loans through full page advertisements and some good talk?
We should take strength in numbers. Those with complaints let us come together and complain to the central bank, or to the parliamentary committee on finance, or to the ombudsman in the UK who deals with finances.