student account OD.......

$tudent$aver

im a bit confused with the idea of a student OD. i am a post grad student(4th yr student) and hav recently opened a student account with barclays. they offered me an OD of £200 and said that it can be easily increased. because i have got to make a tuition fee payment soon and i know i have not gt enough funds to cover the amount, i phone them up to increace the OD amount ( to £500). the person over the phone was very rude and refused point blank!!! i explained i didnt wana be penalised for goin over the limit etc... he was not having it. saying student accounts are not there to pay off fees and that it was my problem. he even went off to say its only a £10 fine :mad: :mad: ..... was wondering whether he is correct and any other views u may have

jr666

Well he sounded worse than useless. I don't bother with call centres anymore. Go into your local branch where you opened the account and don't leave until you have spoken to someone who is going to give you a fair hearing. Branches on campus's have dedicated student advisors that are often very good at dealing with problems; if you have a problem you can bet they've heard it all before.

as for that customer 'assistant' on the phone did you get his name? A letter of complaint is as good for the soul as it is for your chances of getting somewhere with your situation.

EDIT: Is it a regular student account? £200 opening OD sounds very odd. Usually these accounts start at about £1000-£1250 and rise year on year.

The other option is to just close the account and take your business elsewhere. There are loads of accounts that will offer you the same package and will hopefull have better trained staff. Tell them your reason if you do decide to go elsewhere, watch them squirm with embarressment.

zar

Aargh something just happened and I seemed to lose my post.

I agree with jr666. If you want to switch, read Martin's articles on student and graduate accounts (to save you the hassle of switching again if you graduate soon). Don't miss the links to the comparison tables of all the different accounts, very helpful.

I've found HSBC to be very understanding of me as a postgraduate. When you open the new account make sure they'll give the appropriate interest free overdraft for a 4th year student, rather than a 1st year postgrad. Hope you manage to sort it out in time to pay the fees without being charged anything.

[Deleted User]

Natwest gave me a 2 grand overdraft on my student account without any hassle when I started my masters. However, for some reason, they gave me the crummiest limit on my mastercard.. damn them!!

muddled_midget

I think Barclays work a bit differently to most of the other (I'm with HSBC but boyf is with Barclays). He only got £200 to start with but if he wanted anymore he could go into the campus branch and they would extend it for him without any hassle, I think he got up to £1600 by the end of his course

kittiwoz

I am with Barclays. Last time I wanted to extend my overdraft I tried telephone banking and had a very similar experience to yours. The woman asked me what I wanted the money for and I said to pay the bills and eat. She said that I couldn't extend my overdraft because it wasn't for an immediate and specific use. I had a bit of a panic because I owed council tax over the Summer but when I tried in branch they immediately extended it to £1000 for "general living expenses". It is annoying that their telephone service is so awful though.