As we await a decision on how much we'll be charged for using an "alien" cash dispenser, Business Editor Ron Godfrey asks: Are banks as grasping as they were in the recession ten years ago?

Millions of bank customers are still shaking their heads at the indecisive outcome of Tuesday's hole-in-the-wall discussions in Harrogate.

Yes, decided Britain's banks, they WOULD universally impose "disloyalty charges" on customers for using each other's cash dispensing machines.... but not yet. We will all have to wait until New Year's Day, 2001 to learn whether our fee will be as much as £1.50 per transaction.

Never mind the uncertainty which in the meanwhile some rural communities will have to endure - the ones whose village banks have been closed in the name of ledger book logic and replaced by bleeping slots whose use will soon be at a premium.

Never mind that the banks seem to have clean forgotten that the dispensing machines were first introduced by them - to ease the queues and the pressure on bank clerks dispensing money.

In short, this delayed decision does nothing to diminish the distinct feeling by many customers, corporate and private, that for years the banks have been ripping them off.

It is a feeling stemming from the bad old days of the recession. Ten years ago the banks were rapped by the Banking Ombudsman for a surge in complaints - for not passing on interest rate cuts, for charging small businesses too much, for billing errors, for taking too long to clear cheques and meanwhile using the limbo money to make more money.

In spite of protests, an analysis two years later by Bankcheck, the auditor for bank interest charges showed that in Yorkshire alone one third of companies surveyed were overcharged with sums involved being more than twice the national average, at £3,858 compared with £1,674.

But that has all changed now, surely? Ask Mark Radin, of Anglia Business Associates, the Norfolk-based bank charge auditor practice which has just been bought by the Consumer Association.

Mr Radin, who temporarily remains as acting managing director, says that at any one time his team of 18 handles 160 complaints, mostly about bank commission charges and interest rates on overdrafts or loans, with another 160 in the queue.

Often these are the result of "keying in" mistakes. He says: "Instead of recording the repayments at four per cent above base rate it goes down as six per cent. An error, perhaps, but out of ten such mistakes, expect nine to result in the customer being overcharged and just one to be undercharged.

"Appropriate safety measures are in place to protect one side of the fence and it's not the customer's. It's a state of affairs that genuinely shocks my colleagues who are mostly ex-bank employees."

He accuses some banks of failing to give all the options to customers seeking advice. "We have had cases of business customers asking for and getting the bank's advice on how best to construct their account to minimise charges. They are offered a solution but are not told of a better option when there is one."

To be fair, he says, many banks do co-operate with his organisation when representing complaints, but not Barclays, which spearheaded the move to charge other bank customers on cash dispensers Mr Radin's recently published statistics allege that over the previous 14 months Barclays had resolved just 23 per cent of claims compared with competitors Lloyds 68 per cent, HSBC 56 per cent and NatWest 44 per cent. And where outstanding complaints from Barclays customers rose 107 per cent in that time, HSBC complaints rose by 29 per cent and NatWest increased by five per cent. Lloyds TSB actually reduced outstanding beefs by 33 per cent.

Wiggington-based economist Dr William Owen does not believe the issues have changed much in the eight years since he championed small businesses in North Yorkshire by arranging for a meeting between them bank managers in York to discuss problems - a meeting which many banks failed to attend.

Mr Owen, a former chairman of a youth boxing club, says he continues to spar with banks: "It is still a power relationship. How do you complain against your bank when tomorrow you might need to borrow money for your business? How do you complain against the organisation that probably holds your mortgage deeds?

"In any event studying your statements is a complex business because a summary of entries doesn't specify the charging period."

Gerry Gray, of independent financial advisers Walsh Lucas of Micklegate, York, believes the problem could worsen. He says: "A recent survey showed that profit margins for banks were 40 per cent higher in the UK than for their counterparts in the US and Europe.

"It confirmed the fear of UK banks that with the increase in electronic banking something had to be done to counter the direct opposition from abroad. One solution suggested was to monitor individual accounts to identify those which were profitable in order to get rid of those which weren't. Even worse, they wanted to identify customers who would tolerate having increased charges as opposed to those who wouldn't.

"Too many poor people would be excluded by this and by increased charges on cash dispensers - and this social division will now accelerate at a rate of knots."

Dave Isbell, northern regional officer for banking union Unifi, agrees, adding that the public and his members had already endured the closure of thousands of branches with hundreds more to come this year from Barclays and NatWest. That, like the plan to levy the cash dispensing fee, was all being done in the name of "customer service".

The speed with which customers' deposits entered the system and the reluctance with which payments leave it was called "processing," he said, and millions of pounds were being transferred into overnight markets in the interim. "It's money making money. Yet banks in Britain are reaping profits at the rate of £100 per second..."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.