Banks cancelling overdrafts

Cerisa

the other side to this is that I have a £1600 graduate over draft. I went into it more than usual this year because I was on benefits and was consistently screwed by the benefits agency, to the extent that my part time job - taken to improve my skills and stop me sliding into a deep depression - was put down as a full time job. On the basis of me earning £20 a week they stopped all my benefits, and then it took talking to SIX different people to get them re started. Rather than argue with them about it - their procedures are ridiculously complicated - I opted to just restart my benefits, so now they are demanding £165 from me, because they overpaid my housing benefit. I now have a job. However my rent is £320 a month and y transport is £80 a month. Last month i would have been ok, only we got our winter gas and electric bill, which was £360. And you need to remember that the reason everyone thinks of it as a cheap and easy form of credit is that the banks encouraged them to. As a student, I had store cards, credit cards, extended overdrafts all pushed on me, luckily I used this site and was savvy enough to skip it all, except for the overdraft, which I NEEDED.

This sanctimonious !!!!!!!! really annoys me. Unless you've experienced that hideous feeling where you cannot afford food then you can't judge. :mad:

ShelfStacker_3

*MF* wrote: »

Extract from Banking Code:

Responsible lending is providing credit, based on background checks and professional judgement, to people who can accommodate regular repayments without getting into financial difficulty.

Whilst a Bank may have the "legal right" under its T&C's to request the repayment of an overdraft on demand

- it demonstrates imho a clear denial of responsible lending

The problem is that although someone can score for an overdraft (they're exceptionally easy to get, far more so than credit cards or even structured lending like loans) people are much more likely to misuse them - as ahai neatly said, they get seen as "free money".

The problem also is partly on the bank's side - they still seem to score on the basis that overdraft facilities are for occasional use to maintain cash flow (e.g. drawing against cheques before they're cleared, making payments in advance of funds being deposited) whereas the public perception is that, again, they're free money for use when they're a bit short. Which is why we have so many people up to the hilt in thousands of pounds worth of overdraft facilities.

The other thing is that overdrafts are by their nature very hard to pay off if you haven't got all the funds to hand - it requires an incredible amount of willpower which many people simply don't have. It's all very well to insist on "regular payments", but ODs are meant to be paid off in one fell swoop rather than over a period of months - they're not designed for that.

*MF*

What is responsible lending - according to the Banks themselves?

Extract from Banking Code:

Responsible lending is providing credit, based on background checks and professional judgement, to people who can accommodate regular repayments without getting into financial difficulty.

Does the demand for the immediate repayment of an overdraft match the Banks' own code?

- in that it is open to the Bank to request that the overdraft is repaid by regular payments which can be accomodated without getting into financial difficulty

- the very basis upon which they claim responsible lending should be based.

cobblestones_kid

halifax did it to me just before christmas £500 ,i had to find in two weeks told them what i thought of them ,they said if i didnt like it to move banks ,so i did had a realy bad christmas, the overdraft had just been reveiwed in august and taken away in november

Extant

iscrimger wrote: »

I had mine withdrawn, along with my credit card with the same bank, after I applied for my bank charges back.

Okay...

In my 5 years with the bank I've not a single blemish on my accounts. In the last 12 months I feel I've been 'blacklisted' from the bank.

Wait, if you haven't had a single blemish on your account, how can you possibly have any charges to reclaim?

advantix

I wish my bank would withdraw my overdraft facility. I have asked them 5 times to remove the overdraft from my account. They say they will but the overdraft is still there!!

nzseries1

inmypocketnottheirs wrote: »

Hay que verguenza! No se que ha pasado! Eso es una cosa que mi fastidia mucha.

nzseries1 wrote: »

¡Que pena!

I'm just as annoyed at myself because as you can see I forgot the accent on the e of qu!!
I'm not going to try and write that in Spanish, because when it comes to Spanish, estoy todo labia

EDIT: Funny, MSE forums doesn't allow accents on letters... it changes the letter to a !, how bizarre

sluggy1967

I find posts like "only have yourselves to blame" patronising and unnecessary on a forum such as this. Rising fuel costs, petrol prices that went crazy a few months ago (and are creeping right back up), huge rises in staple goods (have you not noticed how much bread and potatoes cost now?) all mean that people on a small, fixed income are really struggling - better to use an overdraft than credit cards. If you have been fortunate enough to not need your overdraft, well bully for you, some people dont have that luxury, no matter HOW MUCH they cut their cloth.....

Tom_Saunders

I love trolls and some of you are so funny getting wound up.

Thanks :beer:

Paul_Herring

*MF* wrote: »

Does the demand for the immediate repayment of an overdraft match the Banks' own code?

- in that it is open to the Bank to request that the overdraft is repaid by regular payments which can be accomodated without getting into financial difficulty

- the very basis upon which they claim responsible lending should be based.

Well considering an overdraft should be viewed as short term (i.e. less than a month) lending, rather than something that's used 30+ days out of every 31, then either the bank has been negligent in giving excessive credit that cannot be repaid in such a short term, or they should be offering a longer term loan with the removal of the overdraft.