Is it me? In my dotage I seem to see things far too simple. Life is complicated. British life is complicated – it has to be or we may end up with practical and fair solutions – there I go again.
If someone was murdered, would we revive them and ask them ‘who did this?’. Of course not.
Why then do the Government Ministers (ie normally solicitors) pass rules that remove benefits only to be replaced by a much better deal – that you must apply for. Unfortunately, the application, if you could ever find the form, is written in Hebrew and double speak and stretches to 20 pages. It asks for information that you could not possible know or have and at the end tells you if you make a false statement you will be put in prison forever and beaten on a regular basis? You will probably need a …. solicitor? to work it out. Of course you could get legal aid but then you are back to that form again. In any event your costly solicitor will begin by telling you this is really difficult and in fact it is ‘A GREY AREA’. Ah! I get it? I was being too simple – there – I thought for a minute that was unfair and a way of robbing the poor, the sick and the needy when in fact it is a formula for improvement – Hail our Lords and Master for they are the Truth, the Light and the Goodness.
So on to PPI. Have you had the email, the text, the letter, the note under the door, the phone call, the message trailer in the sky draped from a light aircraft, the voice on the radio, the ad on the tele, the pamphlet in the magazine – Oh! Christ it all comes flooding back. Have you had all of the above? What?, how many times? and when you respond it on takes 2 seconds. Did you know therefor there are only 50 seconds in a day?
Please don’t tell me you are working on the forms and given up your holidays to concentrate because Mrs P of Nantwich got £5,324.67. SHE BLOODY DIDN’T AND YOU DON’T KNOW IF YOU HAD PPI AND YOU IF YOU DID, DON’T KNOW IF IT WAS MIS-SOLD – OH! AND CHANCES ARE YOU ARE GETTING DIDDLY SQUIT!
But guess what? I know who knows? I actually do and you only need to do ABSOLUTELY BLOODY NOTHING.
When the banks did something naughty like mis-selling PPI they got caught out. They were told to sort it. Now you can go back to the beginning of the blog and re-read how that plays out or you could read on?
OK. The banks have computers. They all have computers. What do they put in them? everything. That is including who has PPI – this will be a check box. If there is another check box that says ‘was the customer informed?’ ignore that one – IT’S A LIE.
So, banks, here is the deal. Print out a list of all customers who have ever, ever had PPI, write to ask them to confirm if they agreed to it. If they say they didn’t – send them their money back – because the computer also knows how much you paid. And, hey, you were the guys who got it wrong. Why do we have to do all the work?
so, do you see what I mean – I keep seeing simple solutions where in fact it is really, really complicated – I must work on that?
But here is a strange fact. Let’s say that the banks have taken £10Bn in PPI that was mis-sold to 2 million people. If only 1 million people receive a pay out amounting to £5Bn then the cost to the banks is probably about £8BN to include the legal costs. That means that by not claiming for mis-sold PPI customers are actually subsidising solicitors up and down the country. Of course, the banks will have done this calculation and recognised that in the balance more money will go unclaimed than the legal costs for the actual claims. That is probably the reason banks don’t simply get a printout of all customers who were sold PPI and ask them to qualify where they believe it was mis-sold?
PS. Meant to say, I was a systems developer and I worked on bank’s systems as well – simple old me!