Natwest Overdraft / Charges

Colz

Hi all - new to the website so hope that I make some sense.
I wonder if anyone can give me some advice.

My Wife has been with the Natwest for over ten years and I also was with them until I closed my account after reclaiming my bank charges a couple of years ago.
Since then I was paying my salary into her account and all the Direct Debits and payments were coming out of there. She was also made redundant whilst on maternity leave and has now not worked for 18 months due to our two small children.
My credit rating has always been quite bad and therefore I continued to pay into her account and use it as a joint account despite it being in her name only. The account each month would hit the overdraft limit of 3k.
I have managed to open an Premier Alliance and Leicester Joint Account with her and it is great as we both have access, a card each, etc etc.
My wife has approached Natwest to tell them that my salary and all debits would now be going from our A&L joint account and wanted to start to pay off the Overdraft with the 3k balance. They have refused to help her as she does not have a salary despite the fact that we were wanting to turn the old overdraft into a loan and pay a set amount to them each month they will not help her. In the past two months they have already placed £160 of charges onto this account.
What can we do to persuade Natwest to let us convert this into a Debt Plan loan etc or shall we just tell them that we want to close the account and see what they say to that. Finding this tricky and would really appreciate some advice.

Thanks, Colz

~Beanie~

There is probably nothing you can do to persuade them to turn it into a loan, the account is in your wife's sole name and as you say, she doesn't have any income to repay a loan with. NatWest won't allow the account to be closed until the overdraft is repaid either.

I don't understand why you have suddenly opened a new account with A&L and stopped using the NatWest one?

What are the charges for? You should be paying interest on the overdraft but I don't understand what the other charges are for unless you are exceeding the limit or having DD's and/or SO's bounced?