AN OFFER YOU CAN'T REFUSE Bancpost is asking a borrower to pay an additional 13,000 lei upon conversion of the loan

You'd think it's a mistake.

But it's not.

Bancpost is asking a borrower in Swiss Francs to pay 13,000 lei more than the amount of the loan at the current exchange rate and hoping to confound them with "an offer they can't refuse".

The customer is dumbfounded and can't even believe what he's reading: "The balance of 43,432 CHF will be converted to 196,371 lei".

The quoted paragraph is part of the offer which the bank made the debtor, according to his statement, and he emphasized the fact that when making the calculations, the exchange rate proposed by the bank is 4.52 lei/CHF, as the bank's exchange rate is currently 4.22 lei/CHF.

As other banks have run conversions with discounts calculated based on the amount of the loan, the Ministry of Public Finance is preparing a law which will stipulate the exact same thing, and the NBR recommends sharing the burden, the Bancpost customer is simply flabbergasted by the proposal that his bank had the audacity to make him and posted the following comment on his Facebook profile: "Bancpost is proposing one of its customers to convert their loan from CHF to LEI, through a conversion which you just can't REFUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Specifically, they have converted the loan from CHF to LEI at an exchange rate of...... get this! - 4.52 lei/CHF. That is while they are claiming that it is a NEGOTIATED exchange rate!!!!!!!!!

In other words, the customer is basically back at square one with their loan, after having paid money on it already for eight years, and has to pay an additional 16,000 Euros!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ESSENTIALLY: the customer paid as follows: 15,000 Euros in advance payment for an apartment which in 2007, cost 43,000 Euros. For the remaining 28,000 Euros, the customer contracted a loan mortgage denominated in CHF - 46,500 CHF (amount of the balance in 2007: 95,059 lei). Up until the present day, the customer paid approximately 96,948 lei. He has basically paid the amount in lei of the initial balance. Now, the bank is offering to convert the 43,432 CHF loan to 196,371 RON. RUN THE NUMBERS AND SEE WHAT YOU GET. The bank now estimates a new total payable amount of 316,796 RON (71,932 for EUROS at the NBR exchange rate) for an apartment which is currently worth 29,800 EUROS, according to the latest evaluation report of the Bank".

Contacted by BURSA, the customer told us that after they received the written offer, they called the bank to ask for explanations, and an employee of the latter told them on the phone that the offer was made taking into account "certain risks" that could appear if the conversion were made at a later date, but that the exchange rate used would be the current one if the debtor signed the new contract right away.

A response that is at least mind-numbing, says the customer, who are asking themselves what guarantee do they have that the terms that the bank's employee mentioned on the phone would apply in an actual conversion process, as opposed to the ones included in the written offer...

Upon our enquiry, the bank's representatives also sent us a similar response to the one that the debtor got, without denying his claims: "Upon converting CHF loans in the national currency, the Bank approves an amount that would protect the customer from potential fluctuations of the CHF, but upon the disbursement of the loan the amount in lei would reflect the financial situation upon the implementation of the conversion".

If this is the language of the bank in their relation with the customers, how would average people understand what they need to sign and what they don't when going to the bank to perform certain operations?

The customer in question told us that following an inquiry he addressed to the National Consumer Protection Agency (ANPC), he received a response that the latter has uncovered abusive clauses in his loan agreement: "A loan agreement that is similar to yours has been reviewed by one of our teams, and following the review clauses which can be considered abusive have been identified which concern the interest, administrative fee and currency exchange risk. (...) This contract has been forwarded to the court for reviewing and issuing a ruling on those clauses".

A team of experts calculated how much the bank would be required to refund to the debtor on account of the amounts the debtor paid the bank on account of the clauses deemed abusive by the ANPC - over 15,000 CHF.

"Instead of being aware that it has robbed its customer with the utmost shamelessness, the bank keeps trying to steal more from them", the CHF borrower angrily concludes.