dont know what to do...

vikki2k1

i had a letter today from barclays about my overdraft, its £1100 and about £900 of that is interest and charges, now they have sent me a letter saying they are closing the account and i have to pay them £1240 within 14 days, i dont know what to do! i can not no way pay that, i have been paying in £50 a month to pay it off but now they want it all in full!
i started a new job 4 weeks ago, but was finished after the 3 weeks training because i didnt meet a sales target! so i have to wait til 28th november for £600 i am owed from them, but i dont want to use it all to pay off the overdraft because then i will have no money til i have another job!

anyone any ideas what i can do! im gonna call the CAB tomorrow about it, im only 21 and i was forced into taking such a high debt from a lazy ex who wouldnt get a job! i wish i had never done it

vikki2k1

can anyone help??

RAS

Hi

First, get yourself a new basic bank account which is not associated with barclays. Get your three weeks incoem paid into that.

Have you signed up for JSA? Council tax benefits and housing benefit?

You cannot pay Barclays, so accept that and make sure your income is safe. Then set up a Stadning order to pay x amount a month towards your debt.

And if it is mainly bank charges, then start reclaiming them NOW, which will reduce your liability.

ideally, ring one of the debt charities

Little_Miss_Uni-Debt

Hi!


It's not fun getting bank charges is it. They just add them whenever for whatever. I got a £50 charge just for going over my overdraft by 6p once.

I was in a similar situation to you recently and I got over £500 back in bank charges thanks to the letters on this site.

Firstly what you need to do is get all your statements from your bank. I know this maybe a lot and time consuming but believe me the more accurate you are the more it shows them you're not messing about. You can only reclaim upto the last 6 years worth of bank charges so don't go beyond 2002ish.

If you've only been getting charges recently then thats ok.

You can request copies of your statements from your bank. I got mine from HSBC free of charge. If they try to charge you for them - don't pay it. The max they can charge is £10 for all of them.

When your statements arrive sit down with a highlighter and go through any over limit charges, direct debit default charges etc. Get an exact figure of how much of your overdraft is charges and write a list of the date the charge was applied, the amount and what your statement said your charge was for.

Then post up another response up on here when you get to that stage. We can guide you through writing a letter to them. Basically you can then state that after they have removed all the charges you will be willing to offer them a final payment of the remaining amount. Which can then come out of your money coming in later on in the month.

I had my HSBC credit card closed but that still didn't stop me getting £242 of charges back before I paid them the remaining amount of £3.62!!!!!

I'd also apply for another bank account. Ideally a basic account that doesn't offer overdraft etc so that you can get your wages paid into this when you start a new job.

Hope this helps!

vikki2k1

oh thats some good news at least, i have a bank account open with another bank which isnt a overdraft account so ill use that for now!

i didnt realise that i could still try and reclaim my charges, i did send for my statements a while back and sent them off to a company who was going to deal with it for me, i never heard back from them and there number is unreachable now!
will i be able to get another set of statements easily?

im going to get this done asap thanks guys :T
its a bit of weight off of my shoulders

RAS

Hi

Read here http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/oft-bank-charges and do a subject Access request.

vikki2k1

ok thanks for that, in regards to the financial hardship thing, do i call them or write to them about that?