Argh!!!!

Buddingblonde

I am an HBOS customer - this week I have had a letter saying that my MBNA credit card was not paid as I had insufficient funds in my account to honour the payment.

I have checked my account online and the day that the letter states that my account had insufficient funds in I did in fact have enough money in the account to make the payment. There is no action on my account the following day so I dont think that there was a payment pending that stopped them paying the payment.

So I have a £35 bank charge from HBOS and a £12 late fee from MBNA for the payment not being made. £47 is more than 100% of the amount that I was due to pay on my card!!!!

Any ideas/comments would be appreciated before I ring them tomorrow.

rb10

What was your balance at the end of the previous day? Did you have any other payments go out on the same day as the MBNA card? And did the balance at the end of the previous day include any cheques you'd paid in recently.

Before knowing answers to these, it's hard to comment.

Buddingblonde

The end of buiness the day before I had a balance of £47.
Payment was £40. As this was low I transferred £50 from another HBOS account that went in immediately electronically taking my balance to £97.
The only other payment that came off the day of the refused payment was for £24.55 and another for £9.

No cheques etc to clear or anything on the account.

martafdz

Maybe you had some pending payments going out, like things bought with the debit card which still had not been debited. Your balance could have been 47 pounds, but maybe the "available balance" was less than 40 pounds.
Anyway, you can try to go to the branch and ask them to explain the charge in your account, as you believe you had enough balance to cover the direct debit. If it is their fault, they should refund the charge. Once they have refunded the charge, you can then contact your credit card and ask them about the late payment charge, as you have proof from the bank that says you had funds to take the payment, therefore is not your fault if the payment was not taken when they should have done. But first you have to make sure you did actually have those funds available. Balance and available balance are not the same.
Check your statement and see if the following day you had some transaction going out as POS (point of sale) that you did the previous days, this payment was probably on its way and the funds had been allocated to pay it, so when the direct debit passed through the available was less than the direct debit and it was returned.