MSE News: Lloyds and Halifax customers left without 'balance low' text alerts as...

I've had different, but associated, problems with Halifax, since the fee structure changes. I log in every few days to my on-line account and balance that against the spreadsheet I run for the account. I even edited that to allow a column for the daily fees, which then totalled into my usual columns, to keep lots of small amounts more manageable on-screen.

So whilst a bit more work for me (and a bit more expensive), it should work efficiently enough, in principle. But the problem I have experienced several times now is that I struggle getting my own spreadsheet to balance, I'm regularly off somewhere. It is my practice to take a screengrab of the transaction list, then tick these off on-screen as I put them on the spreadsheet.

The problem transpires to be that the list of transactions presented on-screen when logged in to the bank account isn't complete. If there are 25 items listed and I refresh the page or click 'load more transactions', I might get a different 25 transactions. Where in reality, there might be 27 or 28 transactions in the period of time covered. At the suggestion of their on-line banking help people - who struggled to even grasp the problem I described - I have updated my browsers to the latest versions (which made no difference) and this seems to happen regularly in Chrome and Firefox, but not in i.e. But I would prefer to work in my own browser of choice with my screen grab add-ons etc. It makes it hard to balance these additional charges and your spending when the information presented isn't reliable and keeps changing.

They then added a feature to allow you to download or view a pdf of your statements and this is certainly more accurate in terms of the transactions presented (if you download the current month this shows all transactions up to date), but the feature isn't always there, some days the link to do this just vanishes.

So clearly, at the moment, their on-line banking isn't yet working reliably with the new fee structure. Yet all of their letters etc. have said to monitor your on-line account to ensure that you have sufficient funds to cover their charges. I've wasted a lot of time in trying to get my account to balance, returning to check figures and trying to explain to them how it isn't working. Of course, they reckon I have something strange going on on my computer or as one chap repeatedly stated "if you're using a hacked browser" because I said I preferred Firefox because I like it's in-built developer tools.

Any responsible person shouldn't need text alerts to advise them. They should know what they're spending and whether they have the ability pay for that expenditure !

Wheres_My_Cashback wrote: »

Any responsible person shouldn't need text alerts to advise them. They should know what they're spending and whether they have the ability pay for that expenditure !

So you've never had a DD go out on the wrong day, or your salary go in late, or a cheque you've paid in bounce, or some other fault beyond your control (in all fairness, some are my husband using his debit card without telling me, or using the wrong one), that means your account isn't as you think that it should be at a particular point in time. If not, then you've been very lucky.

(I personally don't use the text alerts and keep a very tight rein on my account, but have experienced all of the above making a mess of my balance at some point, despite my best efforts.)