Allied Irish Bank Given a kicking and so they should be...

[GerryT]

So you'll be happy when a UK bank goes bust, other than than is there any Brexit relevance here ?

[johnofgwent]

Revenge is a cheque in the post ...



About nine days before we were supposed to leave the EU last year, Allied Irish Bank decided (but did not if course say brexit was the reason why) to terminate all credit card accounts held by residents on the mainland.



This didn't half piss SAGA off  because THEY swung a deal with AIB (originally with someone else I forget who but AIB bought them out / took them over post crash) to provide credit cards to the geriatrics still in work, and because so few of us had other debts like mortgages, the APR was a mere 11%



Out of the blue I got this really snotty letter saying my card account was being closed in a week and a bit and I had to find someone else to take the balance, or repay it.



The SAGA telephone helpline was swamped for three days at least. The day after the snottygram I got this really grovelling letter from SAGA apologising for the way I'd been treated and that their CEO was trying to sort out alternative arrangements.



I paid off the balance with a 0% balance transfer to someone else for a 2% fee and promptly set about funding other sources of travel insurance and every other deal SAGA had got a kickback for setting up (like my electric and gas, which to be fair SAGAs pimp brokered me a decent enough deal on)



And i was not alone. Saga vanished from the scene as far as I know shortly after.



And I complained like f**k to the ombudsman at the brashness and lack of notice in my treatment.



And when AIB kept sending me junk mail I could not shut down because they shut the server giving me the opt-out, I had both SAGA and AIB hit with a GDPR complaint . Which was upheld and cost them plenty but no kickback to me alas.



Well today it seems AIB have been forced to cough up directly.



Because the abruptness of their closure of our accounts made us all repay the balances (which they sneeringly say now was never their intent) and the lowest rates were far, far above the 11% APR SAGAs card offered, AIB have been forced to hand me 8% of the amount outstanding at the time I got the letter. And also agree to pay more to anyone who can show the place they transferred the debt to charged more than 20%



Good.



But I will still cheer when AIB go bust ...