FCA: Why we want the cost of calls to financial firms cut

I do not understand why financial companies escaped from the ban on costly calls.

William is right about delaying tactics. I cannot see any need for consultation, but there is need to get on with banning costly calls.

I agree that there is no need for a consultation. The FCA’s Principles 6 and 7 require regulated firms to treat their customers fairly and to communicate with them fairly. It already breaches both of these principles for firms to use surcharged numbers that will be unlawful for every other industry sector from 13th June 2014. Why hasn’t the FCA already taken action to ban this unfair commercial practice?

I am with those other puzzled commentators, who said: ‘I do not understand why financial companies escaped the ban on costly calls.’.

There appears to be NO conceivable reason why the principal villains of our time are those who continue to ‘get off’ most lightly at the hands of ‘the legislators’ and ”enforcers”, which ultimately means, continue to ‘get off’ most lightly at the hands of parliament, where, as one former US president famously said, the buck stops …

Clearly, the newly-formed FCA is absolutely in favour of the new post-June 2014 telephone rules becoming ASAP a universal across all sectors of industry and commerce – including banking and financial services – government, and quasi government; their various press releases on this subject, and their CEO’s letter to the consumer organisation ‘Which?, do, for example, appear to demonstrate this. So why was ‘the regulator’s view’ (i.e. that view now expressed by the FCA, and presumably, that which must also have been previously expressed by the FCA’s immediate predecessor, the now defunct FSA) so completely ignored by the parliamentary legal draftsmen who drew up the terms and clauses of The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013? Why, moreover, considering the fact that these legal draftsmen operated at the bidding of, and under the watching eyes of, parliament (but principally, under the sardonically smiling eyes of numerous ConDem government finance ministers)? A parliament who then glibly proceeded to pass all of these outrageously discriminatory (against all those multitude of other organisations that, unlike banks and financial institutions, and also, strangely, and quite wrongly, unlike gambling companies, those who transact property deals, and certain public transport operators, have, since June 2014, been obliged to scrap their premium-rate customer call centre scams) terms and clauses of the above new Act of Parliament into statute law?

Also, incidentally, but further to the above question, why was it at all necessary to create a new regulatory organisation out of the ashes of the FSA? What was so wrong with the predecessor to the FCA, the FSA, that it had to be ‘swept away’, and the FCA created in its place? Was this act of ‘cleansing’ an analogue, one wonders, of the fact that one is obliged to purchase a new PC or laptop every handful of years when one’s existing digital ‘institution’ becomes utterly corrupted and dysfunctional?

The un-addressed crux of this entire matter remains, however, the massive elephant in the room which to date no FCA press release, no FCA CEO’s letter to the CEO of ‘Which?’, no ‘consumer campaign’ orchestrated by Which?, or it’s like, nor any other ‘official’ advertised interchange, or ‘official opinion’ posted on the internet, or any other like ‘bleating’ about the current state of the (very new) legislation relating to the use of premium-rate telephone numbers, has yet addressed, let alone, it would seem, even noticed. This “unnoticed” giant creature in the room says: ’Why, precisely, were those granted exemption from the new restrictions on – nay, for most organisations and businesses, complete abolition of – the cynical use of premium-rate telephone numbers granted this discriminatory exemption in the first place?’

For surely this extraordinary exemption is a get-out-of-jail-free bankster’s ‘cop-out’ card, since otherwise, all the other firms and governmental departments and organisations which now have to desist from using premium rate phone lines could have been exempted from the new 2014 phone rules as well, couldn’t they? No – something stinks to high heaven here, and this obnoxious and poisonous odour issues jointly from parliament and the ‘Do have another brandy, minister, won’t you?’ City of London!

Another clear, prima facia case then, of the sinister, undemocratic, and grossly discriminatory, self-interests of the (psychopathic) few directly affecting and manipulating the outcome of the so-called democratic enactments of an allegedly “democratically elected” parliament, enactments which are purportedly made on behalf of the “best interests” of the many!

So what’s new in the lobbyist’s lobby then?