Darwin man trying to get his affairs in order after death of his wife contacted one of the four pillars of our banking system to arrange necessary change to the joint account. Two months later , after several non-returned calls from the bank, strange requests , being notified that he , a retiree , now had a business account ( never mentioned at any stage , not wanted ) , and a statement that the Sydney office would have to be contacted for instructions about what to do about the piddling amount of $30 , an interview was arranged with the manager.
Not good enough was the mild , if inadequate, verdict by the bank official when the unsatisfactory saga was detailed. It is a wonder the customer, who had been dealing with the bank for 50 years, was not given a complimentary packet or two of Fantales for the stress.
In case you have not noticed, something strange has been going on in banking . Banks have actually been handing money back to customers after it was discovered that they had been illegally , systematically milking the public. The media follow up stories have been few and far between on this subject .
There was a truly bizarre event in Melbourne when a large number of ANZ staff were either sacked or departed after it was alleged some kind of drug distribution had been going on from the premises.
After 10 years of heartbreak and trauma , a Sydney friend recently got settlement of a kind from a bank - one of the four pillars - which enthusiastically urged she and her husband should take a loan against the value of their house and invest it in a recommended property development group which went belly up out west, taking with it the savings of many people. It was subsequently discovered that in filling out the papers for the investment, the bank had given her a bogus occupation - hairdresser . Sounds like the subprime racket in the USA which brought the world to the brink of a depression.
In the attempt to get justice -a hard to obtain commodity when dealing with banks who like to use their money, power and lawyers to crush mere mortals- she went to all the so- called regulators , politicians , and media organisations , the latter tending to quickly drop the matter , apparently because it was a bit involved and involved the Big End of town .
However, one crusader in WA took up the case for many of the people caught up in the smelly affair and kept fighting. During the decade of struggle , the woman and her husband were under constant threat of being evicted from their own house, there was great family tension and the future looked bleak.
In the Storm Finances collapse in Townsville, Queensland, hundreds of millions were lost , people were ruined , marriages broke down when the stockmarket took a dive . Evidence came out at public hearings and TV interviews that false claims were made in documents about the income of people who were advised to borrow more and more money to invest in the stockmarket.
It was claimed that a small Townsville Commonwealth bank was writing amazing amounts of loans and nobody, apparently, at head office or elsewhere thought there was a teensy weensy justification for close examination to see what the hell was going on .
During an early goldrush in nearby Charters Towers it is said a miner who struck it rich rode a horse shod with with golden shoes and a song was written about him and his flash mount . It is not sure which bank thought Townsville's streets were paved with gold during the stockmarket casino run.
The Commonwealth Bank has offered some victims of the Storm collapse a resolution of some kind , secret of course. Others are resorting to class action. America has just passed new legislation to get tough with its outrageous banks which had to be bailed out by the nation to the tune of some $700 billion . There the banks mounted an expensive campaign to try and prevent the government from ending their long running party .
The revealed slick dealings of our own banks and financial industry demands stronger regulations and penalties , more alert regulators with greater powers who react speedily to the complaints of Joe Public , often ruined overnight .
