Bank of Scotland online

Stevie1972

I went self employed last month after being made redundant. I have to now transfer money from the account that my customers pay into, to the bills account I have with BoS. I forgot about doing this yesterday completely and ended up doing it really late last night around midnight.

To cut a long story short I transferred £1300 from one BoS account to the other online. I then looked at the bills account to make sure and seen that my "Available" Balance was £1300. The direct debits were taken from my account around 2 hours later totalling 9 of them. I have now been informed I have 9 failed direct debits at £35 each and a £28 unauthorised overdraft charge.

I dont understand how this can be as I could see my "available" balance as £1300. The bank transfer was instant it did not take days to complete it was there as soon as I clicked submit. The bank say the money should be in the account at 5pm the day before direct debits are taken from the account. I can understand this, just in case a company takes the money early but they did not do that. They took there direct debits hours after I transferred the money to the account.

Can someone maybe explain how I can be charged almost £350 for failed direct debits when I could see with my own eyes that the money was there.

Thanks in advance.

Stevie

rb10

It's exactly as you say - the T&Cs state that the money must be there by the end of the day before (i.e. the end of the bank working day).

To stop this happening again, you can switch to the BOS Reward account, where you will have up until late tonight to cover the money for today's direct debits.

Mikeyorks

Stevie1972 wrote: »

The bank say the money should be in the account at 5pm the day before direct debits are taken from the account. I can understand this, just in case a company takes the money early but they did not do that.

It isn't in case the money is taken early ..... it's in order your account is funded prior to them starting the Batch runs late evening. All DDs are taken overnight by virtue of them being bulk transactions.
If this is a first ...... worth pleading ignorance and seeing if they'll waive the charges? Also can't you set up an overdraft to buffer against this happening? If not it's worth considering welding the input / output accounts together? May be less separation of functions ..... but it has some obvious advantages in the light of what happened?

rb10 wrote:

To stop this happening again, you can switch to the BOS Reward account, where you will have up until late tonight to cover the money for today's direct debits.

..... isn't the 'by end of the Bank day' that's mentioned in the Reward account the 1700hrs (or very close to) that's mentioned by the OP? I seem to remember Yorkshireboy dug that up somewhere deep in the Reward T&Cs when it was still novel? Pretty certain it's not 'late evening'.

Laurenbelle

I also wanted to let you know although it isn't much of a consolation, they can only charge you up to 3 charges in one day so your charges will be £105 (and maybe a £28) as opposed to the £350 you quoted. If you switch to the reward account that would only have been £5 (unless you are in your overdraft for part of/most of the month).

rb10

Mikeyorks wrote: »

..... isn't the 'by end of the Bank day' that's mentioned in the Reward account the 1700hrs (or very close to) that's mentioned by the OP? I seem to remember Yorkshireboy dug that up somewhere deep in the Reward T&Cs when it was still novel? Pretty certain it's not 'late evening'.

It's by the end of the same bank day that the DD/SO goes out, not the previous one.

So if the DD was to go out on Friday, in most accounts you would need to have the money in by, say, 5pm on Thursday (as in the OP's case), but with the Reward account you would need to have it in there by the end of the day on Friday - so the OP would have been fine if they had that account.

I don't know what 'the end of the bank day' means in this context (for the Reward account). The T&Cs are not entirely explicit on this ...

1.1 [...] ‘Bank working day’ is any day between 9am and 5pm which is not a Saturday, Sunday or English bank or public holiday.

26.4 If, at the end of any day, your account is overdrawn within your overdraft limit, we will charge you a daily fee that applies to Arranged Overdrafts; please see Section 4.

I think YorkshireBoy's assumption that it means 17.00 is based on these two quotes, but I disagree, because otherwise they would have used 'bank working day' instead of 'end of any day'. As it is not in bold, it therefore does not fit a previously defined statement, so must just be taken at face value - where the end of the day is quite clearly not 5pm. So I believe that they check balances for charging purposes overnight (i.e. in the small hours, when they do their other batch processes).

But all this is off topic anyway ... the OP clearly has an account that is not a Reward one, so their requirements are to have the money in the account the day before the payment is due to leave.

Mikeyorks

rb10 wrote: »

So if the DD was to go out on Friday, in most accounts you would need to have the money in by, say, 5pm on Thursday (as in the OP's case), but with the Reward account you would need to have it in there by the end of the day on Friday - so the OP would have been fine if they had that account.

That does not align with the Reward T&Cs? :-

20.6 If you have requested a payment to be made from your account, for example

by cheque or by an automated payment such as a standing order or Direct Debit, in order to make sure it is paid, you must ensure that there are sufficient available funds in your account by the end of the bank working day before your payment is due to be taken from your account.

I realise the Reward account allows you to rectify an intra day debit (by 'the end of any day') .... but it doesn't give carte blanche to expect Halifax to meet overnight debits which exceed your current balance / agreed overdraft. The normal checks and balances still apply there.

sabretoothtigger

Sounds very unfair but thats how banks work. I'll watch out for this in future myself.

Appeal for clemency as you funded within hours and it was an honest mistake, either that or sue them later :laugh:

rb10

Mikeyorks wrote: »

That does not align with the Reward T&Cs? :-

I realise the Reward account allows you to rectify an intra day debit (by 'the end of any day') .... but it doesn't give carte blanche to expect Halifax to meet overnight debits which exceed your current balance / agreed overdraft. The normal checks and balances still apply there.

Thank you, I hadn't realised that this didn't only apply to debits during the day, where you do have until the end of that day to bring the account into credit.