Who's at fault - me, HSBC or A&L ?!?!?!

lou_martin

I recently set up a standing order online with my HSBC account for money to go into my A&L account for when i was on holiday and knew i didn't have enough in there to cover what was coming out so did't want to go over my overdraft limit and be charged.

Unfortunately when i got back off holiday i got 2 letters from Alliance and Leicester for 2 unpaid items for which they are charging me £68 for. I checked my accounts and the money went out of the HSBC account as planned on the date i required it to but it didn't show up in my A&L account until 4 days later. When i set up the standing order it makes no mention of taking 4 days to go into another bank account.

I phoned A&L and explained but they were very unsympathetic and said to take it up with HSBC as it's their fault for not telling me about the 4 days it takes. But i was annoyed with A&L for charging so much so quick, the money was put in the following day and yet by then they'd already charged me.

I've written to both HSBC and Alliance & Leicester although I don't suppose it will get me anywhere. I just feel really hard done by, i'd made all the arrangements in my absence for this not to happen as I cannot afford £68 in charges and as i was out of the country i couldn't even check to see if it had all gone through OK (which it had not!!).

Is it all down to me or do i have reason to feel so hard done by?!

Robert_Sterling_3

Naught for your comfort here.
The fault appears to rest with you.
You seem not to be aware that a Standing Order takes several days to get your money from A to B.
Banks make money by delaying the process.
Banks also make money by charging high fees.
We can seek revenge by moving our accounts elsewhere.
However elsewhere may well be just as bad if not worse.
You will learn from your mistake.
Happier is the person who learns from other peoples mistakes.

IvanOpinion

Unlucky ... however most banks talk about standing orders and direct debits taking anything up to 6 working days to clear - the T&C attached to your accounts should tell you how long.

In this day and age everybody wants everything yesterday and unfortunately this works against us some times. Banks should be able to transfer money much quicker (it is a deliberate ploy not to .. they manage to do it in Scandanavia so why not here?) however with all the computerised systems they just slop on charges as soon as a date/time is reached.

I am surprised however that they would not negotiate over the fees ... I would have thought that you would easily have been able to halve them ... at least.

Ivan

virgin_moneysaver

standing orders are sent via the BACs system & take 3 WORKING days bank to bank & sometime 4 if its going to a Building Society where the account number quoted is the BS holding account & your account number with them is an internal reference number that can included letters, not just figures - this is all in the small print in the T&C when you open an account - so you won't get any sympathy with the powers that be if you don't read the literature they give you - Sorry!

GIRLPOWER_2

Does not matter who did what to who.. matters that you get them charges refunded.. we all make mistakes.

I logged into my A & L acc on sat to see that I had a cheque returned and they had charged me 34.00. This was due to me not moving enough money from the savings acc as I had got confused with the running balance and available balance.

I telephoned them to explain, was very nice and a little "simple sounding" they offered without me even asking to refund the charge in full.

A & L are the ones to keep on at no HSBC, they have done nothing wrong.

Telephone them again, don't mention HSBC as they will use that as a get out, blame yourself for not understanding that the money would have taken so long to get into your acc. How you have never let this happen before, how these charges have really affected your finance.... and so on... they have the power to refund as I did not get put through to anyone else just the customer services person that answered.

Good luck.

realaledrinker

Add cahoot to the list of banks which hang onto money for the extra day.

rio

Even though it can technically take 4 days for funds to transfer between banking organisations, these funds may not be counted as cleared for payments to be made against them. There is a facility wherby the bank may recall funds sent to another organisation if the senders account became overdrawn the day after the funds had been sent. This is a time consuming process and letters have to be sent to the bank/branch the funds have been sent to. For this reason some financial organisations add on a couple of extra days just in case they receive a letter saying the funds have been recalled. If you are paying away from one account to another, always find out exactly how long it will take for the funds to show as cleared in the receiving account. It is a common fraudsters trick to move the same amount of money between several accounts, whilst drawing money against it, leaving a trail of overdrawn accounts. This is another reason why the amount of time to clear funds exists, it is not just the banks being awkward, for once -but no one seems to realise this.