Has your overdraft been cancelled?

big_gay_kirk

Current account provider Yorkshire Bank
Overdraft limit before change £100
Overdraft balance at time £0
New overdraft limit after change £0
Whether this happened at an official overdraft review no
Any charges £45 approx
Whether you were notified no
I get paid evry four weeks, and most bills go out monthly... as you can imagine, this makes it hard to arrange direct debit payments, as we get paid on different dates each month.. sometimes we get paid twice in one month.... i used the od as a "buffer zone" to cover the times outings overtook innings, as it were..after the overdraft was cancelled, unknown to me, a bill went out before the wages went in, overdrew me, and i got charged.... they did refund the charges, but said they couldn't ever do the same again, and they couldn't reinstate the overdraft, as i have a bank loan... apparently they are responsible lenders, so they daren't let me have an od, in case i keep increasing it.. i pointed out that i'd never done so in the last ten years, pointed out that i only go into it by about 30 quid every five months or so, and that by removing the od i was going to end up losing about 90 quid a year on average.. but they are immoveable.... so now i have had to cancel some of my dds, and have to pay my rent especially at very irregular intervals in order to avoid overdrawing myself... 90 quid a year might not sound very much to some, but when you come home with less than 50 quid a day, its quite a chunk....

Cumbrian_Male

• Current account provider HBOS
• Overdraft limit before change £1300
• Overdraft balance at time Was £1600 but returned to credit Mon 27th
• New overdraft limit after change £0
• Whether this happened at an official overdraft review No
• Any charges Yes
• Whether you were notified Not prior, email after the fact

My son has a student account, he went into the local Halifax on Mon when his maintenance payment went in. The person he spoke to asked him if his current overdraft was sufficient and he said yes. His account was £4-500 in credit and when he got home he instigated a credit transfer to me to repay £600 we lent him, today he finds that his rent £300 has gone out, they cancelled his overdraft, and cancelled the credit transfer "due to insufficient funds" and charged him £20.

Now I am left unable to meet some payments due, and he has £93 to live off until 26th June. 8 weeks and another £300 month's rent due at the end of May, how can they justify this? Yes he stuck his head in the sand and went over his agreed limit without contacting them, but this puts him in severe hardship and to think Martin recommended them as a top pick student account.

How do you complain to the ombudsman?

thriftymomma

Cumbrian_Male wrote: »

• Current account provider HBOS
• Overdraft limit before change £1300
• Overdraft balance at time Was £1600 but returned to credit Mon 27th
• New overdraft limit after change £0
• Whether this happened at an official overdraft review No
• Any charges Yes
• Whether you were notified Not prior, email after the fact

My son has a student account, he went into the local Halifax on Mon when his maintenance payment went in. The person he spoke to asked him if his current overdraft was sufficient and he said yes. His account was £4-500 in credit and when he got home he instigated a credit transfer to me to repay £600 we lent him, today he finds that his rent £300 has gone out, they cancelled his overdraft, and cancelled the credit transfer "due to insufficient funds" and charged him £20.

Now I am left unable to meet some payments due, and he has £93 to live off until 26th June. 8 weeks and another £300 month's rent due at the end of May, how can they justify this? Yes he stuck his head in the sand and went over his agreed limit without contacting them, but this puts him in severe hardship and to think Martin recommended them as a top pick student account.

How do you complain to the ombudsman?

You first of all need to raise the complaint with the bank in question. If the complaint is not resolved to your satisfaction, they will tell you they can no longer deal with it and direct you to the ombudsman. Good luck.

Going_Mad

Halifax Bank - Kill or cure approach - turned out a cure for me :-)

Current account provider: Halifax
Overdraft limit before change: £950
Overdraft balance at time: £1000
New overdraft limit after change: £0
Whether this happened at an official overdraft review: Apparently they just decided to have my first official review and didn't notify me, they just had one and stopped my overdraft.
Any charges: Had regularily been paying £300 charges a month
Whether you were notified: 1 Month

I was regularily over my over draft limit - we got caught in a viscious circle of bank charges - raking up over £300 of charges a month for quite a few months which put us further in debt and got us more charges.

I suppose thats what prompted Halifax to simply cancel our overdraft.

It was a wake up call and a family member stepped in to help us with a cash injection to stop all the bank charges and get us afloat again.

If they hadn't then within a week or so we wouldn't have been able to pay the mortgage, any bills etc and it would have literally put myself, my wife and 2 small kids on the street.

We also attended a debt management and cashflow management course that opened our eyes to a different way of managing our finances (the couse was free and mentioned on MSE).

Anyway - HALIFAX DROPPED US RIGHT IN THE PROVERBIAL - but thanks to some family help to cover the bank charges and the money course we have been on the right side of zero (within £5) for the last 3 months.

We have applied for 'Hardship' consideration and our fees back (Just over £2500) - but Halifax say their rules dictate we need to be registered with a debt management agency before they will consider us under the hardship rulings.

*MF*

To those affected (... and those yet to be affected):

Martin is currently looking for suggestions that he can put forward to politicians and decision makers, you can find his post here:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1657521

I have made a suggestion which applies to the problems many are now experiencing with the recall or reduction of overdrafts, here:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=21133611&postcount=43

I hope it may gain your support, and be an item Martin considers worthy of taking forward.

snailexchange

The whole point of an overdraft facility is to stop unwanted charges and returned direct debits. My sons overdraft facility was totally removed and he was asked to pay over £1000 asap. I contacted the bank, Nationwide, explained he had been made unemployed through no fault of his own and could not pay the £1000.
They were very helpful and agreed to a reducing overdraft, but would not reinstate his original overdraft facility. A little help I suppose But not what was needed, just a capping of his facility would have been better until he was able to get a new job and back on his feet again.
Hope this helps some else in the same position.......
:rolleyes:

looby75

I've had my OD cancelled as of today .

• Current account provider- Halifax
• Overdraft limit before change - £200
• Overdraft balance at time - £135
• New overdraft limit after change - £0 they refused point blank to even give me a smaller OD of £50
• Whether this happened at an official overdraft review- No, my review wasn't due until July
• Any charges- never had a bank charge on any account in my life, but if I hadn't been able to clear my account in time Halifax would have been kind enough to charge £28 a month and 2.13% per month interest on the suddenly unauthorised OD :eek: .
• Whether you were notified- yes, but was only given 10 days notice.

fresia02

Current account provider: Abbey
Overdraft limit before change: £2500
Overdraft balance at time: £2400
New overdraft limit after change: £0
Whether this happened at an official overdraft review: NO
Any charges: Yes, plus all the DDS etc I couldn't move in time left me with £100s charges and then charges on the charges have ended up with me owing them £4k!
Whether you were notified: Yes, 4 wks notice but called them to say you'll cripple me and they didn't want to know. Not even to reduce in stages / my preferred option, I would drop £6k charges claim to write it off. Never replied to my letter...
Collections dept helpful once it went to them, now paying it back £50 a month.Transferred all DDs to hubby's account (with HSBC) and am now using this without my name on it. Funny though, we'd forgotten a joint account we set up with Abbey and have started using that now so I do have an account with them that is healthy.

Shouldbeworkin

This happened to us a couple of years ago. My husband had an overdraft with Lloyds for £3500, and they gave less than a month's notice to take it away, with no reason other than they could. We have 3 kids so I wasn't working, so we were left not being able to buy food, and being charged fees by the week as we had no way of repaying it. He moved to barclays and got an overdarft with them, but we had to get a loan to pay back the lloyds overdraft and fees. We're still paying this back so I'm still really angry about the whole thing. It's ludicrous that banks can plunge you into hardship without no recourse.

plummo_vtec

yeah i have an account with HSBC and 1 year ago they revoked my £650 overdraft without noticed when i had £-510 in at christmas time so i got onto them and they basically said it was tough and i had to pay it back and proceeded to charge me interest on this and got in touch with debt companys for collection