A&L taking money from my account

Trying2beGood_2

This feels like a little bit of a long story but I will try to keep it short, I have two A&L accounts one that I pay my wages into and the other that I use for all my direct debits to come out from, when my wages clear I move the money for my direct debits over to my payment account and then I don't need to worry about over spending on before they go out on the other account.

About 4 months ago I was over charge on one of my direct debits and went over draw, the company did refund the money (not that quickly though and only after a lot of being on hold) but not before A&L had charged me for going over drawn, I did get the company who over charged me to refund the £70 it cost in overdraft fees but ever since then I've been being charged £100 a month in overdraft fees (£5 a day up £100 each month) and haven't been able to get back into credit on that account (I only earn just over £600 a month and am single with only an ad-hoc second income so £100 is a lot to me) because of it.

I have phone and sent emails to A&L about it but they haven't been very helpful, they said they were un-able to look at refunding fees while the court case was going on. Two weeks ago I spent in my forms for claiming under hardship and this is where my real problems have started. Ever since they would have received my completed forms my online statements for both accounts hasn't shown anything since then until yesterday and it is still not showing things correctly now, the available balance is about £50 on my 'spending' account then it should be but they have taken £175.07 out of this account into my other account to cover the overdraft*, they haven't said anything to me about this and I have been talking to them and trying to resolve this problem, it's not like they don't know what's going on. I now don't have enough money to get me through the month and am just going to end up with even more charges. I've emailed them twice now, once last week and again this week asking them to confirm that they have reeived my hardship forms and heard nothing back from them. :mad:

My main question is: can they just take the money they have taken?

I feel so crap, and really just don't know what to do anymore. I'm trying so hard to sort myself out but I just keep getting kicked in the teeth. The only reason I got into debit was because I lost my job and my house and I still don't have anywhere to live over a year later. I just spend all my time sleeping on different friends floors and sofas. I'm so tired I just want to cry.