Rip-off Britain!

I am sure you have heard this phrase before; that is if you are from a western nation.

Some may think this should apply to the USA more due to the extortionate health care and other ways of rinsing people out of their money within American society.

I figure corruption and extortion are in all countries, so you could not really equate one for the other. However, the country I was born in has the worst reputation for screwing people over.

If there is a way to add a tax, add interest, add a charge to something be sure that will happen in my country. My government tax almost everything; all governments tax things, but not on the level seen in my country; baby clothes have more taxes than regular clothes, and a variety of things have taxes that other countries don't usually tax; take fruit and vegetables that are exempt from such taxes in Ontario, Canada but not in my country.

I have been to different countries other than my own and lived in Canada, Zuid Holland and China. Though, I have only ever paid bills and undertaken services in Canada and Holland outside my own country.

When I was in Canada, I had a contract phone and wished to end the contract early. It was normally a $200 dollar exit fee, but I did not own one of their devices, and the contract was a rolling contract, so it wasn't really valid beyond the initial contract. In the end, I paid Rogers Wireless around $70 to leave early I had to pay that month's service charge and additional call charges.

Of course, I paid that final bill, and it was hassle-free. That would not be the case for my country, however, where many companies are ruthless and greedy.

I have been screwed over by 3 different phone provider companies in my country (Orange, T-Mobile and Three).

There is this mentality in England that its part of being an adult that you just pay for something when asked without question, and that not paying is a sign of immaturity. Yet, if I don't owe it, why should I pay it? Many people have just come to accept this is how things are, and therefore, become part of a system where they serve the ruthless and greedy companies and just pay them wherever they are demanding because they perceive that as being mature and responsible.

I set up a contract with a phone service provider, Three. Their service was terrible and the phone they sent me malfunctioned; actually, several they sent me malfunctioned. After around a year of putting up with that, I had reached a point where I did not have a steady income and had to cancel. I had also had enough of them anyway.

However, I was locked into an 18-month contract, and they wanted me to pay to exit. I wanted to negotiate a lower amount as I had to resort to using another phone I had purchased as their contract phones were useless and one of them had been returned, the other was replaced after I broke it.

I was willing to pay for the cost of the handset they replaced, just that what they had sent me as a replacement was defective and had been sent back to them. They however wanted me to pay for the cost of both handsets and the cost of the remaining 8 months which was a lot of money.

Now, I had a choice to be a slave and pay like ever other muppet out there being rinsed, or I drop them and never pay what they demanded. Ultimately I choose to pay for the device I had broken and refused to pay anymore; eventually they dropped it and that debt was was written off.

The other two phone service providers did something else. I was with them both for long periods of time spanning several or more years beyond the initial contract period. But, they have this thing called a rolling contract, where the contract just restarts for an unknown period to the customer. Unlike Rogers Wireless in Canada where they call a customer to ask if they wish to renew their contract, in England, they deliberately don't contact the customer and hope they forget to cancel before the renewal date.

In my case, T-Mobile had extended the contract by a further 12 months and tried to force me to pay to leave the contract, two months into the extended period. I refused and after a letter battle for 10 months they closed the account and that was that.

I loved my Orange phone contract, and I was a loyal customer for many years. I however forgot about the renewal date and got confused as to what month it was due to extend. They of course had been taken over several months before by a third party company, yet still paraded around under the brand name Orange. I had not even known the terms and conditions had changed and neither was I aware of any penalties for leaving early during an extended period.

They wanted hundreds of £'s to leave the contract. They had extended for a further 18 months without my confirmation and locked me into a ruthless contract. I had a few phones through them as part of my contract, and they had already been paid for by the monthly fees I had paid to them for many years. Their leverage was a phone they had sent me 3 months before the contract was extended that I had to return as it kept disconnecting during the call. I had to buy a phone myself that was reliable they had no other model to offer me. Even though it was faulty and had been returned, to them that was an agreement of an extension of the contract, which meant that I had a further 15 months on my contract; that's completely ridiculous as that phone was returned.

They wanted an administration fee, plus a cancellation fee, an early contract ending fee, and the total cost for all months of contract fees for the remaining 15 months. Of course, I am too strong-minded to be anybody's subservient slave, so I never ever paid them and after many years the debt was written off.

I have done the same to home internet and phone line provider as well, but for a different reason, such as adding charges to the account for calls that were never made, as well as deliberately losing a ported telephone number and then charging me for a service that I never had and disguising the cost with some obscure reference that I thought was an admin charge; only to be jumped with a high phone bill for numbers that I had never dialed; I argued that one as that phone line was never even connected, so they dropped it. But, the £188 of phone calls when I was not even in the country was hilarious; eventually, after I caught them lying they backed down and that account was closed (with a mark on my credit file and against my name; so corrupt).

The people who I have told about this say I was not being mature or responsible and that it was typical for a man to do this. So sexist and completely inaccurate, I am a justice warrior standing up against a corrupted and broken system that allows these sharks to exist!

We also have something called compound interest and when you first become aware of what this is, you can easily find yourself in a compound interest trap.

Compound interest is where you have goods and services from a catalogue or finance company. They charge you interest for that month, then they add the interest to the debt amount and recalculate further interest on top of that.

If you are like me, and you were busy and never checked, eventually your automatic monthly payment does not cover the new interest. So, you end up paying less than the amount they want, so they add two service fees for an admin charge and a late payment fee plus the monthly interest and then recalculate the interest as a compounded debt.

If you pay a larger sum of money to clear a higher balance on the account, the interest rate goes up a lot, I mean a massive increase as you increased the amount you paid back. You don't realise that this has happened, and then the amount starts to spiral out of control. What they don't tell you is that you have to clear the existing debt that is compounding and that the easy monthly payment option is a lie they push to get you to buy more things to compound the debt further (debt on top of debt), whilst encouraging you to keep spreading the costs.

Yes, I was younger and completely stupid. So many people have been stupid and fallen for this compound interest trap. It's actually very common for people in my country on lower incomes and my country has developed a bad reputation for this as they target people on lower incomes who can't afford to pay the additional compounded interest charges.

I have other horror stories as well. Such as Santander who was formerly Abbey National Building Society (a type of bank).

This is a story of continuous debit or credit card payments. If you have not heard of this, well it's a bank problem. A good bank will close the account and prevent further fraudulent transactions from coming out of the account. But, a bank like Santander are greedy and ruthless, their main concern is not with the customer, more about profit maximisation through fine and fees.

What happens is that you set up a one time card payment with a company. If this company is genuine they will have a system in place where you can stop the re-occurring card payment from your account. In fact, unless there is a standing order in place, they can't continue to use your card after a one-time transaction with them.

In my case, after using what I thought was a business directory for my company, I soon realised what they were offering was not what I wanted. The advertisement was too small and hardly noticeable. Unfortunately, the company vanished soon after, and I was not able to contact them at all to end the services with them. I was not too concerned as I had only paid them once with my debit card.

Oh, how wrong I was. I soon found out, that every month after that they continued to use my debit card to take the same amount each month. They only needed to operate on the first 12 digits of my debit card number.

I closed the account, but not before paying £180 in bank fines for being forced into a negative balance. Except, the bank had already gone ahead and exchanged my account number with that fraudulent company, so they could always take the money from the main account regardless if I changed the card and closed associated accounts (that's confusing. I only had two accounts with them, a credit card account and a bank account. I closed the bank account and reopened another account. Yet, there was a customer account that couldn't be closed; I still can't figure that out?).

I had not yet paid the £190 on my credit card account, and other fines had been added to my account for each time that payment came out. The bank refused to close my account and refused to do anything to stop the fraudulent activity. Eventually, I ended up paying that £180 of my own money, plus other charges for what? So, I never paid the credit card back and did not settle the overdraft either as I was not going to lose any more money for their problem. I was left with the debt of both those accounts for many years, plus interest before they were written off.

What would you do? Be like everybody else and just pay the bank whatever they demand, or be like me and stand tall in opposition to these crooks. I would have settled and taken a loss, but, the bank refused to close the account unless I cleared the overdraft, cleared the credit card, and also paid all the fines they were going to charge me in the next month (£90), plus the cost of that fraudulent card payment before they would do anything; I took that as a threat and that's why I stood my ground and refused to pay; I actually didn't owe them anything in actuality, that was just their greed and incompetence (I had already paid them too much anyway).

I wrote this post, so people outside my country could see a very real truth and injustice from my country; something that affects millions of people on lower incomes, mostly males; let's be honest, women are smarter than men when it comes to these things. They take less risks, and are usually more cautious.

In my experience, I have always known women to read things more carefully; previously I thought it was an annoying habit of them reading a long contract and picking on small details. In actuality, women know not to trust companies and make sure something won't trap them; or does not carry a high risk.

I let my wife handle contracts and make the final decisions regarding higher financial risks. Because of this, I did not get into any more traps and debts. She is very efficient and can find things in the details that I cannot. I trust her and rely on her to navigate this corrupt world of ruthless and greedy companies.

Just before I write off, I wanted to explain that I am a responsible person who pays what I owe. Sometimes I make mistakes, but I always try to correct them. It's only when companies try to steal from me, and cross a line that my structured logic won't allow me to easily ignore. I always counter a threat.