The Bail-out

Based on some recent events, I’ve decided to change my bank. That sentence alone should be enough to indicate which bank I’m saddled with.

It’s actually something I’ve been considering for a long time; an embarrassingly long time, in fact. Sometime in the mid-noughties I tried to buy some plane tickets for a round-the-world trip I was taking with my then-girlfriend. The tickets were a good deal, such a good deal that the offer time was limited. I needed to purchase the tickets quick-snap, but that was cool: I had the money in my bank account, ready to go. I tried to pay with my debit card, but the payment bounced. The travel agent informed me that I might have the wrong sort of debit card: apparently my Visa Electron still had the training wheels on. This was a little embarrassing, but since I knew I had the money (to accumulate it I had spent the past six months working sixty hour weeks for Odeon Cinemas, and those scars weren’t fading any time soon), I decided to simply go down to the bank and ask for it. It was my money, after all.

Turns out my money had been electronically transmitted... somewhere. Whatever arbitrary force had prevented the cash entering the travel agent’s account, had also deemed not to return it to mine. It now waited in a ‘holding account’, an overnight cell for errant funds. “No problemo, muchacho,” I said to the bank manager (this is how I spoke in my late teens, apparently). “Just transfer the money back across, and we’ll try again.” It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t transfer the money back. It wasn’t his fault that it would take three days. And there probably was a reason why this was standard practice. So I managed to keep a lid on my rising fury.

Until five months later, while I stood at a payphone in an airport in Malaysia, frantically pushing buttons to negotiate with my bank’s telephone service. I seemed to be skint, which is challenging enough at home, but proved to be even more frustrating when you don’t have a house to sleep in, or any clean clothes to wear. Thing is, I was sure I wasn’t skint. A paycheck should have arrived in my account several days previously. Normally a delay wouldn’t be such problem, but the last time I’d eaten was also several days previously.

I was told by the automated voice on the telephone that my account had been frozen. In order to release the money I would need to first pay off the debt I owed on my credit card. The single, minor obstacle to this was fact that I didn’t have a credit card. Never had. So I vented my fury, but I doubt the robot at the end of the line cared.

This litany of small but frustrating fuck-ups continued down the years, and I often considered changing my bank. Two things kept me from ever going through with it. First, my colossal indolence, obviously. Second, well, everyone else seemed to be having the same problem. Everyone seemed to find themselves screwed over by their bank at least once a year, so it seemed like a non-issue. I didn’t want to go through all the hassle of switching accounts only to find that my new service was just as bad (and in the meantime, I’d also started a Santander account. They sucked too).

Since the mid-noughties my financial situation has changed quite significantly. It’s also got a bit more complicated: I know have several accounts with Barclays, all doing (slightly) different things. I have a current account that pays basically no interest, and a savings account that also pays basically no interest, but makes me feel guilty whenever I take money out of it. I have a joint account with my younger brother, that pays no interest, but he makes me feel guilty when I take cash out of it. So the situation is more complex, and it’ll be even more stressful and tedious to change to another bank.

Except that it’s ceased to become a question of functionality and become one of ethics. I’ll accept that another bank might be just as charmingly inefficient with my money as Barclays (hell, I’m basically assuming at this point). But I’d like them to be... well, nicer.

Again, this isn’t a completely recent development. Barclays Bank have been acting like jerks for a long time, and it’s not like I’ve been completely in the dark. When I was at uni I voted to have the university funds handled by a financial institution other than Barclays because of their support of invasive strip mining (as if there were another sort) in areas of natural beauty in Canada. I voted to give the university a big old headache, without being bothered to do the same.

It gets worse, and I’m not proud. I should have done something about this sooner. True, no bank is going to be spotless. But not all of them make money from the arms trade, something that Barclays unapologetically does.

The final straw in this? The final challenge to my disgusting laziness? The fact that Barclays couldn’t play by the established rules. Not only are they smilingly amoral in pursuit of profit, they’ve recently been exposed as immoral too.

Let’s delve into the murky world of analogy for a bit. Say the world works on essentially electronic funds, and I have no place to store said monies. My Uncle Charlie offers to store my money, and even provide some interest on it, on the condition that I occasionally use it to let him play the tables at the local casino. I’ll be able to access my money at any time, so long as he’s doing all right on the craps.

Now, truth be told, Uncle Charlie is a pretty mean gambler, so I’m content to let him hang on to the money. Most of the time he comes up holding aces, and even when he loses, the net take is enough to guarantee that my money is safe. Other people I know have left money with their uncles, and it hasn’t gone so well. Occasionally they wake up to find that their money has been gambled away.

 But Uncle Charlie gambles like a pro, and that’s why I stick with him, even though he occasionally bets my money on stuff I disapprove of. Bear-baiting. Orphan-wrassling. And he sometimes can’t give me my funds straight away. There are administrative issues. I understand.

But then one day Uncle Charlie is caught cheating in the casino. He and a few of the staff have been colluding to fix one of the tables. It’s been a pretty good scam, and he’d actually been doing all right with it, till he got caught.

Now, it could be argued that Uncle Charlie has been doing me a favour. Times have been tough recently, and it’s in my interest for Uncle Charlie to make as much money as he can. This scam has kept him – and therefore my money – out of harm’s way. Except that if he cheated once, he’ll probably cheat again. He could have been cheating this whole time. And if he got caught once, you just know he’ll get sloppy at some point.

Now I have more to worry about than bear-baiting. Now I’m concerned that as soon as Uncle Barclays, I mean Charlie, gets the sticky fingers again, he’s going to do something monumentally stupid. And get caught.

The problem is that Uncle Charlie thinks he can do basically whatever he likes. He knows that I’m not going to take my money from him and give it to someone else’s uncle. It’s too much of a hassle, plus everyone else’s uncle could be on the make too. But the only way I have to protest, to really indicate that his behaviour is unacceptable and that I can react to it... is to take my money back.

It’ll be a gradual process. But I’m planning on starting a joint account with my (now) girlfriend very soon. And I’ll be thinking carefully about who I choose to start that account with. It’ll be based on ethics, rather than smart short-term deals, and if they prove that they can keep their hands out of the cookie jar for five minutes, they’ll get the rest of my money too.

The more I think about it, the more I want to just get it over with. And the more I think about it, the more ashamed I am to realise that it’s the financial aspect, not the strip-mining, or the arms dealing, that has really galvanised my actions. But screw it. I’m doing the right thing, even if I am playing catch-up. Better late than never.