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Halifax Overdraft Expired Without Notice
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Posts: 2 Newbie
Hi all,
I recently had a bad experience with Halifax and have lodged a complaint with them in an attempt to retrieve money which they took in charges as a result of the problem. I'll explain what happened below and would be grateful if somebody would advise me on my chances of winning the complaint and getting my money back. Sorry it is so long winded.
I have 2 current accounts with Halifax, both are in overdraft, one account is my personal account - which has no direct debits - into which my salary is paid, the other is a joint account which I share with my wife - all our direct debits go out of this account. My wife and I have standing orders set up to pay money from our personal accounts - My wife has a personal account with HSBC - into our joint account. The amount we pay into the joint account is enough to cover the direct debits and includes a little extra in order to steadily reduce our overdraft amount.
In September we went over the agreed overdraft limit on our joint account due to over spending from the account on material things and we had two charges to pay. I managed to get these charges reversed as it was the first time we had exceeded the limit and Halifax agreed to refund us as an action of good will. Unfortunately we went over the limit again the next month and this time I took action by paying extra money from my personal account in to cover the charges and bring the joint account back within it's limit. I then requested to extend the overdraft by £150 in order to avoid developing a vicious circle of - exceed limit - charges - exceed limit - charges etc. and told Halifax that we would cease using the account for one off payments and explained that the amount we pay into the account has been increased to bring the overdraft requirement down over the following year. Halifax later informed me that they had declined the overdraft request which left that extra £150 security missing. We had to struggle over the next month with less disposable income but by November we were on top of the situation with the account comfortably within it's agreed limit and we were both looking forward to Christmas. _party_
But, on checking my accounts via the internet for the first time in a couple of weeks on the 2nd December I was horrified to see in my paperless documents (I receive all my correspondence from Halifax via the online Paperless Documents link and have no postal mail from them) 13 charge notifications. On checking my account in detail I saw that the Agreed Overdraft Limit was now £0 (instead of £1250 which it had been). 13 direct debit requests had either been paid (with £35 charge) or failed (with £35 charge).:mad:
My only knowledge of the possibility of this happening was on each of my account statements it states that the agreed overdraft review date was 10/11/08 which is the anniversary of the overdraft being set up. I've had overdrafts for years as have most of my family and friends and had no idea that the bank would ever on reviewing the overdraft decide to remove it when it was obviously still required by the customer. I received no confirmation that the overdraft would expire though as the word review does not mean expire.
I have since read the account conditions and see that Halifax have the right to request repayment of the overdraft at any time depending on how the account is maintained and conducted by the customer (it is debatable whether we have conducted the account so poorly as to deserve the overdraft being pulled from under our feet, remember that we had paid all charges as requested, taken action to prevent further charges on the account and set out a method and intent of reducing the overdraft over the following year). I couldn't find anywhere about how much notification they must give if they were to request repayment of an overdraft apart from the statement that they can request repayment at any time. At no time did they request repayment of the overdraft in this case, the agreed limit was simply reverted to zero on the review date without notifying us that it had been done.
Meanwhile on my personal Halifax account I received two separate paperless documents warning that my current overdraft period for that account was to expire in the next month and that they had decided to keep overdraft limit the same, but I never received even one for expiry of the overdraft on the joint account which would have been more necessary, why? Seems like the resultant charges is what they were after.
My wife phoned 24 hour banking as it was 9pm when we noticed the problem and was just frustrated by the operator and eventually spoke to a manager who reckoned that we had been notified that the overdraft was to expire and it was up to us to make necessary arrangements to bring the account within it's resultant limit and to honer any direct debit payments requested on the account, and that we should have contacted them if the overdraft was still required. All I could say is we hadn't been notified, which is the truth of the matter (our on-line paperless document list is testament to this fact), if we had we would have contacted Halifax immediately to voice our concern and of cause the overdraft was still required, no one wants to lose money through charges that's the way the world works you try to get more money not less to make life better for yourself and your family (unless you're playing "Go For Broke", more money = good, less money = bad). But there was no human on the other end of the phone, just a voice.
He lodged a customer complaint on their system saying that we insist we had not been notified about the overdraft being removed and that we wanted the charges repaid and said we would be contacted within 5 bank days (still pending) to follow up the complaint. They would not reinstate the overdraft for us in the mean time in order to avoid further charges accruing and told us we should cancel all direct debits on the account to stop this happening. I then told them - ok I'll also cancel all payments into the account and leave it in limbo until the dispute has been settled to my satisfaction :cool: and he warned me that I had to respond to any request from them that I receive on the account.:(
I later decided to borrow £2000 from a relative to pay into the joint account in order to bring the account well within it's limit and ensure all direct debits and charges can be paid without incurring any more charges. This way I would avoid any embarassment with my direct debit organisations too. I was lucky to have this option available to me and It would have been a very tough Christmas if I had not.
So what I'm left with is a complaint lodged with Halifax stating that my wife and I believe we have been unfairly treated by not being adequately notified about the overdraft expiring and if upheld I expect all £455 worth of charges accrued as a result to be paid back to me.
What are my chances do you think?
I have since been accepted for a Alliance and Leicester account with an overdraft with which I will repay my relative and have requested they transfer all my direct debits from the Halifax account to the new one and close the Halifax account automatically.
Is it a mistake to close to Halifax account while the complaint is under consideration?
After all is done I will still be left with my personal Halifax account with a £1500 overdraft and I am worried that as I have been an awkward customer they may decide to remove that overdraft too leaving me in the lurch again.
Is this a valid worry do you think?
Thanks for any advice and your time in reading,
Merry Christmas all :santa2:
Light_play
I recently had a bad experience with Halifax and have lodged a complaint with them in an attempt to retrieve money which they took in charges as a result of the problem. I'll explain what happened below and would be grateful if somebody would advise me on my chances of winning the complaint and getting my money back. Sorry it is so long winded.
I have 2 current accounts with Halifax, both are in overdraft, one account is my personal account - which has no direct debits - into which my salary is paid, the other is a joint account which I share with my wife - all our direct debits go out of this account. My wife and I have standing orders set up to pay money from our personal accounts - My wife has a personal account with HSBC - into our joint account. The amount we pay into the joint account is enough to cover the direct debits and includes a little extra in order to steadily reduce our overdraft amount.
In September we went over the agreed overdraft limit on our joint account due to over spending from the account on material things and we had two charges to pay. I managed to get these charges reversed as it was the first time we had exceeded the limit and Halifax agreed to refund us as an action of good will. Unfortunately we went over the limit again the next month and this time I took action by paying extra money from my personal account in to cover the charges and bring the joint account back within it's limit. I then requested to extend the overdraft by £150 in order to avoid developing a vicious circle of - exceed limit - charges - exceed limit - charges etc. and told Halifax that we would cease using the account for one off payments and explained that the amount we pay into the account has been increased to bring the overdraft requirement down over the following year. Halifax later informed me that they had declined the overdraft request which left that extra £150 security missing. We had to struggle over the next month with less disposable income but by November we were on top of the situation with the account comfortably within it's agreed limit and we were both looking forward to Christmas. _party_
But, on checking my accounts via the internet for the first time in a couple of weeks on the 2nd December I was horrified to see in my paperless documents (I receive all my correspondence from Halifax via the online Paperless Documents link and have no postal mail from them) 13 charge notifications. On checking my account in detail I saw that the Agreed Overdraft Limit was now £0 (instead of £1250 which it had been). 13 direct debit requests had either been paid (with £35 charge) or failed (with £35 charge).:mad:
My only knowledge of the possibility of this happening was on each of my account statements it states that the agreed overdraft review date was 10/11/08 which is the anniversary of the overdraft being set up. I've had overdrafts for years as have most of my family and friends and had no idea that the bank would ever on reviewing the overdraft decide to remove it when it was obviously still required by the customer. I received no confirmation that the overdraft would expire though as the word review does not mean expire.
I have since read the account conditions and see that Halifax have the right to request repayment of the overdraft at any time depending on how the account is maintained and conducted by the customer (it is debatable whether we have conducted the account so poorly as to deserve the overdraft being pulled from under our feet, remember that we had paid all charges as requested, taken action to prevent further charges on the account and set out a method and intent of reducing the overdraft over the following year). I couldn't find anywhere about how much notification they must give if they were to request repayment of an overdraft apart from the statement that they can request repayment at any time. At no time did they request repayment of the overdraft in this case, the agreed limit was simply reverted to zero on the review date without notifying us that it had been done.
Meanwhile on my personal Halifax account I received two separate paperless documents warning that my current overdraft period for that account was to expire in the next month and that they had decided to keep overdraft limit the same, but I never received even one for expiry of the overdraft on the joint account which would have been more necessary, why? Seems like the resultant charges is what they were after.
My wife phoned 24 hour banking as it was 9pm when we noticed the problem and was just frustrated by the operator and eventually spoke to a manager who reckoned that we had been notified that the overdraft was to expire and it was up to us to make necessary arrangements to bring the account within it's resultant limit and to honer any direct debit payments requested on the account, and that we should have contacted them if the overdraft was still required. All I could say is we hadn't been notified, which is the truth of the matter (our on-line paperless document list is testament to this fact), if we had we would have contacted Halifax immediately to voice our concern and of cause the overdraft was still required, no one wants to lose money through charges that's the way the world works you try to get more money not less to make life better for yourself and your family (unless you're playing "Go For Broke", more money = good, less money = bad). But there was no human on the other end of the phone, just a voice.
He lodged a customer complaint on their system saying that we insist we had not been notified about the overdraft being removed and that we wanted the charges repaid and said we would be contacted within 5 bank days (still pending) to follow up the complaint. They would not reinstate the overdraft for us in the mean time in order to avoid further charges accruing and told us we should cancel all direct debits on the account to stop this happening. I then told them - ok I'll also cancel all payments into the account and leave it in limbo until the dispute has been settled to my satisfaction :cool: and he warned me that I had to respond to any request from them that I receive on the account.:(
I later decided to borrow £2000 from a relative to pay into the joint account in order to bring the account well within it's limit and ensure all direct debits and charges can be paid without incurring any more charges. This way I would avoid any embarassment with my direct debit organisations too. I was lucky to have this option available to me and It would have been a very tough Christmas if I had not.
So what I'm left with is a complaint lodged with Halifax stating that my wife and I believe we have been unfairly treated by not being adequately notified about the overdraft expiring and if upheld I expect all £455 worth of charges accrued as a result to be paid back to me.
What are my chances do you think?
I have since been accepted for a Alliance and Leicester account with an overdraft with which I will repay my relative and have requested they transfer all my direct debits from the Halifax account to the new one and close the Halifax account automatically.
Is it a mistake to close to Halifax account while the complaint is under consideration?
After all is done I will still be left with my personal Halifax account with a £1500 overdraft and I am worried that as I have been an awkward customer they may decide to remove that overdraft too leaving me in the lurch again.
Is this a valid worry do you think?
Thanks for any advice and your time in reading,
Merry Christmas all :santa2:
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Comments
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Your experiences with Halifax mirror my own, it is terrible that they would do this to people.
Briefly, I received a letter last Thursday that told me that my overdraft was being removed on the 22nd February and that they wanted the current overdraft paid up in full, this gave me 10 days to find £1900 or all my direct debits bounce. When i asked them why, they said it was because we had breached our T&Cs, I asked them what they were a. pay in £1000 a month - i pay in £2500 per month or b. have something bounce - i haven't. They wouldn't give me any answer at all. They sent me from pillar to post, I spent 3 hours on the phone, and was told the underwriters had knocked us back.. i have access to my experian file and have an excellent rating, never missed a payment etc. Why should this be. In the end they passed to a women in their Money Manager department, she spent over an hour with me on the phone going through my outgoings incomings etc, this i was led to believe was going to allow the "system" to decide on whether I would get the overdraft back... it turns out that their Money Managers are no part of Halifax, they are just one of these debt consolidation companies.. I have never been so annoyed in my life, they told me that I should get a secured loan of £2000 plus a little extra for home improvements or perhaps a holiday, which i could then pay back over X amount of years. I have NO secured loans or anything of the sort at all... I am incensed that this is the way they are treating people.
I phoned the Financial Ombudsman and lodged a claim with them, stating that when my salary goes into the account, it will cover the overdraft, but as they were giving me only 10 days to repay the full amount evertyhing including my mortgage would bounce, leaving me no only with charges from Halifax.. and we all know how much they love their £35 per item charges, but also charges from the various institutions. They told me that it was a legal requirement from the bank to give me reasonable time to repay the money... Now don't get me wrong, I appreciate that what with the bank losing something like £10bn they are falling on hard times, and need to recoup their money, and I am not adverse to paying it back, I can get the money together for them, but that is not hte point, I can't do it in 10 days, of which this next 5 days are school holidays.. so I'm at home with my kids!
The Ombudsman also told me that they bank cannot knowingly a. give me so little time and b. allow all my direct debits to bounce thereby incurring charges from them the institutions etc and c. allow my credit rating to be shot in one fell swoop. I lodged my complaint but it takes 8 weeks. I have now 8 days.
I spoke to bank again, and said that I can cobble together various savings and things to the tune of £1000 and if they had any decency they would see this as a good will gesture, and allow me at least 4 weeks to come up with the remaining £900 which i can do via various family members. I am holding my breath because I can't see it happening.
I also asked the ombudsman if I pay back the £1900 in this short amount of time through begging, borrowing and stealing (the later only if it comes to it
) do I still have a case for them to answer. And they confirmed that I did, because of the length of time they had given me and the fact that I had to call in money from all over the place.
So I've lodged a complaint with Halifax re their treatment of me; again with Halifax re the manager of the branch who when we discussed our problem with him, wouldn't take us into a side room (which was empty) to discuss privately, but proceeded to announce to the room how much we earned, what benefits we got and how much our mortgage etc was; with the Financial Ombudsman re the shoddy treatment of Halifax and I am waiting to hear from all concerned.. I am not holding my breath... I am leaving this "crap" bank before they do any more damage...
IF WE ALL VOTED WITH OUR FEET, PERHAPS WE COULD BRING THIS DISGRACE OF A FINANCIAL INSTITUTION TO ITS KNEES!0 -
I am experiencing terrible difficulty with the Halifax at the moment. we have an overdraft on our Ultimate Reward Account (which we too pay £12.50 a month to use) and as part of the account have a free overdraft up to £300.00. We also have an overdraft of £3,000 or should I say that we did have an overdraft, that was until when it ws up for its annual review it was reviewed (not expired) and was withdrawn with no notice to us. We then discovered whilst we were actually in the overdraft £2,800.78 that Halifax Head Office put a stop on our account. With our back against the wall, and a young family to think about they lifted the block on the account and forced us to agree a monthly repayment plan of £300.00 per month which I explained to the Retail Banking Team and they were not interested in reducing the payments, they sent us terrible letters threatening action if we default on the payments and chastised us for continuing to use the account. I am absolutely petrified, I just dont know what to do. They have put the overdraft back on to allow it to be reduced each month by the said amount and forced us to agree to pay £150.00 immediatley otherwise they would not enter into the agreement. What we dont understand is why this has happened to us, we have banked with the Halifax for approx 12 years and have run the account reasonably well. Yea, on occasion we have gone over the overdraft, but have paid heavy charges, not to mention the interest charged for using the overdraft. Between the interst charges and monthly charges we pay circa £600 a year to use this account.They have told us that if we cant pay the £300 a month they cannot help us and we need to speak to a Debt Management Counsellor. We have all our wages and CTC and Child Benefit go into our account each month.We are in despair and dont know what to do. We have opened another account and will move our salaries in an effort to protect our income - can anyone help us ..........please...........0
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I am experiencing terrible difficulty with the Halifax at the moment. we have an overdraft on our Ultimate Reward Account (which we too pay £12.50 a month to use) and as part of the account have a free overdraft up to £300.00. We also have an overdraft of £3,000 or should I say that we did have an overdraft, that was until when it ws up for its annual review it was reviewed (not expired) and was withdrawn with no notice to us. We then discovered whilst we were actually in the overdraft £2,800.78 that Halifax Head Office put a stop on our account. With our back against the wall, and a young family to think about they lifted the block on the account and forced us to agree a monthly repayment plan of £300.00 per month which I explained to the Retail Banking Team and they were not interested in reducing the payments, they sent us terrible letters threatening action if we default on the payments and chastised us for continuing to use the account. I am absolutely petrified, I just dont know what to do. They have put the overdraft back on to allow it to be reduced each month by the said amount and forced us to agree to pay £150.00 immediatley otherwise they would not enter into the agreement. What we dont understand is why this has happened to us, we have banked with the Halifax for approx 12 years and have run the account reasonably well. Yea, on occasion we have gone over the overdraft, but have paid heavy charges, not to mention the interest charged for using the overdraft. Between the interst charges and monthly charges we pay circa £600 a year to use this account.They have told us that if we cant pay the £300 a month they cannot help us and we need to speak to a Debt Management Counsellor. We have all our wages and CTC and Child Benefit go into our account each month.We are in despair and dont know what to do. We have opened another account and will move our salaries in an effort to protect our income - can anyone help us ..........please...........:-(0
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Can they take away your overdraft even before the review date???
Just worried as i dont pay in a £1000 as its not my main bank account but i would still like my overdraft just incase i needed it0 -
Yes. Overdrafts are repayable on demand.Can they take away your overdraft even before the review date???
If you don't fund with at least £250 a month they will remove the facility.Just worried as i dont pay in a £1000 as its not my main bank account but i would still like my overdraft just incase i needed it
No guarantees if you exceed this!0 -
I dont have nothing to repay , never used my overdraft but i want it just incase , its £6000 , maybe they think i dont need it though as i dont use it...so might probably be taken away i guess.
I use the bank for quidco and direct debits so i do fund the account with more then £250 so hopefully will be ok0 -
so is there anything that i can do? I am at my wits end and worried that they can do this to us, without notice, and creating a situation where we are now struggling to meet our repayments, all this happened within a week. is there anywhere I can go?0
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so is there anything that i can do? I am at my wits end and worried that they can do this to us, without notice, and creating a situation where we are now struggling to meet our repayments, all this happened within a week. is there anywhere I can go?
switch to another bank. best policy really if this happens0 -
I agree , if you have good credit score then getting another bank account should be easy , i dont really like halifax myself , made a mistake on my account once and it took 2 months to sort out , after making complaints etc
Its always good to have more then one bank account anyway , that way if your unhappy with one you can quickly sod off to the next one lol0 -
so is there anything that i can do? I am at my wits end and worried that they can do this to us, without notice, and creating a situation where we are now struggling to meet our repayments, all this happened within a week. is there anywhere I can go?
Try Citizen's Advice. They will contact Halifax on your behalf and attempt to rationalise how you reduce the overdraft.
.... you're a risk ..... because you're semi-permanently in the overdraft. And suddenly .... just a little late ..... they've discovered the term 'responsible lending'. And are calling in a lot of overdrafts from people such as yourselves.What we dont understand is why this has happened to us, we have banked with the Halifax for approx 12 years and have run the account reasonably well
IF CAB can't persuade Halifax to a more amenable repayment plan? Then look at a personal loan in order to clear it .... as you have some jurisdiction over the terms. But - either way - you have to stop relying on an overdraft as a semi-permanent backstop. It's both expensive and - in the current climate - dangerous.If you want to test the depth of the water .........don't use both feet !0
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