Alliance & Leicester - Under funding fee
Comments
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Thanks, mleonard. Your interpretation of what I meant is quite correct.
If you are exploiting a money saving type loophole, such as the ones commonly mentioned on this site, you have to dot the i's and cross the t's or you are in danger of losing, rather than saving, money.
If you fail to do so, you can't expect much sympathy from the bank/other institution that you were exploiting. Banks will often waive charges for "genuine" customers who make an innocent mistake (the first time, at least) but they are far less likely to do so for someone who is taking them for a financial ride.0 -
Alliance & Leicester are NOT following their contract they sent me end of 2006 with this £5 monthly charge therefore I am writing to complain to them and ask for a refund.
In the contract that they sent me (and also in the version I downloaded when opening the account) for the Premier Current Account / Premier Direct Current Account, you can see Page 10, paragraph 29.2 “If You fail to regularly fund your Account where We have You that Your Account requires regular funds, We may transfer You to another type of current and will give You no less than 30 days advance written notice of this.”
Clearly Alliance & Leicester has not followed this course of action and is in breach of the contract. I would therefore argue that any £5 monthly under-funding fees are invalid. Even if the version of their website today does mention that £5 monthly fees will charged, this is not valid if it was not in their original contract with me, unless they have given me written reasonable notice that they are going to vary the terms of my contract.
In fact they gave very little notice of this impending charge. I had a letter dated 19th of the month (which arrived several days later) warning that £500 should be paid in before the end of that month. This is not even 2 weeks notice. Definitely not enough if you’re on holiday. 30 days would have been reasonable.
Alliance & Leicester are too quick to charge you an invalid fee in my opinion, so I'm going to argue this one out with them on principle. Banks should really be treating their savers better given the financial climate. Having said that, A&L have been reasonable in the past when I have written to them, so we shall see how they respond.0 -
Clearly Alliance & Leicester has not followed this course of action and is in breach of the contract.Even if the version of their website today does mention that £5 monthly fees will charged, this is not valid if it was not in their original contract with me, unless they have given me written reasonable notice that they are going to vary the terms of my contract....I'm going to argue this one out with them on principle.
PS: Why drag up two old threads to make your point?0 -
Thanks Yorkshireboy for comments.
Can you tell me whereabouts this £5 under-funding fee clause is in the contract? I have a 26 page Adobe Acrobat pdf document entitled tandc.pdf and date modified showing as 14th Aug 2006. I've searched through it on "£5" (also tried "funding") and there is no mention of a monthly under funding fee. Have they varied their contract with other account openings I wonder?
I don't think the word 'may' was so critical. Either they continue with the account as normal, or switch me to another account, but not suddenly charge me £5 monthly.
It may not be perfect netiquette but I posted to the two threads to make sure more people were aware of questioning this monthly fee as a lot of the advice here seems to be to simply give up on it.0 -
I've mentioned this before but I'll mention it again - I've had the top current account with A&L since the day it was introduced (and had an account with A&L for over 20 years now, back in the Girobank days) and have a sporadic income to say the least. I've had periods of nearly 12 months go by when there's been no account funding and they've never once mentioned anything about charging me, however, there has never been any less than £500 in the account so maybe the deciding factor is more what your average balance is as opposed to how much you put through it each month.
Rob0 -
I am sure that there was a clause that your are supposed to check the website regularly for any changes to the terms and conditions.I consider myself to be a male feminist. Is that allowed?0
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Thanks surreysaver for raising that point, yes there is a clause entitled "3. Changes to these Terms and Conditions" and mentions that they can change terms and conditions by "A message on Our website".
However further on it reads "3.4.1 If the change is to Your disadvantage We shall tell You about it personally (at Your address or Your e-mail address procided to Us) at least 30 days before We make the change and at any time up to 60 days from the date of the notice You may; without notice, switch Your Account or close it without having to pay any extra charges or interest for doing this;"
I would say that a £5 fee is to my disadvantage, and that they have not given me 30 days notice and therefore the fees are invalid.
I just get the impression that banks charge fees in the name of quick profits on the assumption that the majority of customers will simply pay them and not question a bank's legal standing.0 -
Finally I've found the clause about the £5 underfunding fee. It does exisit. It's in a seperate document to the main terms and conditions.
The rates-and-charges.pdf under Miscellaneous fees states "Premier Direct Current Account/Premier Account under-funding fee £5.00 per month (failure to pay in the minimum monthly credit of £500)." Well, it's up to them to respond to my letter, and if they insist on charging me then I'll close all my family's A&L funds down.0 -
Received a letter from A&L saying that they would not refund any underfunding fees so I have responded by closing all my family's accounts there and cancelling my credit card. It amazes me that A&L will offer £100 to new account openers, plus a £25 recommend a friend incentive, and yet decide not to waive £15 of underfunding fees to keep 2 existing customers who had over £15k with them. The local High St branch did not want to allow my 80 year old father to close his account in person but made him phone the customer service line from their branch phone. What a crazy customer service business model that is! Cost cutting to the bone. No personal service even if you take the trouble to go in the branch with a passport. Anyway, an 80 year old man trying to do telephone-choose-an-option-whats-your-password type banking wasn't going to work, so eventually after much deliberation a staff member got his finger out to close the account by speaking to A&L customer services himself. At least if you go into Lloyds they don't make you phone some customer service line. This is a policy mess up from the top down by A&L. See if the Spanish takeover fixes anything.0
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Received a letter from A&L saying that they would not refund any underfunding fees so I have responded by closing all my family's accounts there and cancelling my credit card. It amazes me that A&L will offer £100 to new account openers, plus a £25 recommend a friend incentive, and yet decide not to waive £15 of underfunding fees to keep 2 existing customers who had over £15k with them. The local High St branch did not want to allow my 80 year old father to close his account in person but made him phone the customer service line from their branch phone. What a crazy customer service business model that is! Cost cutting to the bone. No personal service even if you take the trouble to go in the branch with a passport. Anyway, an 80 year old man trying to do telephone-choose-an-option-whats-your-password type banking wasn't going to work, so eventually after much deliberation a staff member got his finger out to close the account by speaking to A&L customer services himself. At least if you go into Lloyds they don't make you phone some customer service line. This is a policy mess up from the top down by A&L. See if the Spanish takeover fixes anything.0
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