Thread by @WingsScotland

So, @firstdirect are a bunch of dickbags. I've banked with them for 25+ years, but last week I was in Sainsbury's buying some milk during a Bear Patrol and my card got declined. I rang them up, and after over an hour on hold, they told me all my accounts had been cancelled.

These were my personal current and savings accounts, not the Wings one, which is with a different bank. It obviously came as something of a shock - this was ALL my money - so I asked why on Earth such a thing would have happened, and they point-blank refused to give any reason.

They claimed to have sent me a letter - normal post, not Recorded Delivery - two months previously (which I'd never seen), and also an email which I didn't get either (I checked my spam filters, nothing) and which they acknowledged was marked on their system as unread.

They'd made no effort to communicate this extremely major decision to me in any verifiable way, nor had they (even claimed to have) sent any sort of reminder as the deadline to open a new account elsewhere - that I didn't know anything about - neared expiry.

This is a bank that regularly phoned me up to whine and check the transaction any time I deposited 20 quid in an online casino for a quick game of poker, but suddenly lost the power of telephony when they were about to take my entire means of paying for anything away.

Explaining to them that I clearly knew nothing about this or I'd have done something about it, and asking them for just one week's grace to get a new account sorted, was met with a flat refusal. Meanwhile I was already starting to get angry messages from service providers.

All my Direct Debits and standing orders had obviously died instantly and their recipients had clearly been alerted, because I was already being flooded with notices that my utilities, subscriptions etc were about to be cut off because my payment method had been killed.

Another extended and quite heated phone call once again failed to produce any sort of explanation for this sudden decision. Nothing weird had happened in my account. My wages get paid into it, my bills go out and I buy shopping and that's about it. I don't even play poker now.

It's staggering to me that in a world increasingly shunning the use of cash, a bank can leave a person completely financially stranded like this, give no reason for it, and not even be legally obliged to MAKE SURE THEY KNOW IT'S HAPPENING.

I've had a massively tedious week of unnecessary admin, clearing up the mess First Direct have dumped me in, and have only now got a new account with a debit card. And when I rang the useless fuckdicks at FD up to transfer my money into it, they put me on hold for an hour.

So stay the hell away from @firstdirect, readers. Once a pretty excellent bank, they'd gone to absolute shit since lockdown anyway and I don't really mind having to move, but the manner in which it happened was an utter disgrace.

I'll obviously be filing a complaint with the Financial Services Authority in the sweariest possible terms, but given the toothless state of most regulators in this country I don't expect there'll be much point. And I doubt I'll ever find out the reason.

Was it political? Was it to do with Wings' very public stance on gender, after the fiasco of PayPal pulling their services from the Free Speech Union and other similar incidents from woke financial service providers? Who knows? But it stinks of weasel cocks. Fuck First Direct.

PS they did send me a copy of the letter they'd supposedly sent in April, and it had no reason either. Just said "We've decided we can no longer offer you banking services, so bye".

PPS and yes, I mean Financial Ombudsman Service, not Financial Services Authority.