HSBC are charging me £25 to review OD

guns4

Hi

I have rechieved today a letter from HSBC saying they have reviewed my overdraft, basically nothing is changing but they want to charge me £25.

My question is is this standard with all banks? Which banks do not charge for such reviews?

Lokolo

They charge £25 if you have changed your overdraft in the past 6 months either formally or informally.

If you have not done either of these 2 you can get a refund if you go into branch and ask.

vet8

My OH banks with First Direct. They cut his overdraft limit from 1500 to 500 then introduced a new system whereby every year they "review" his OD and charge him £25 for the benefit of some bloke spending 30 seconds looking at his bank statement or whatever.

It is just another way for banks to make money. I would not mind if they actually reviewed it and maybe changed the OD, but no it stays the same, we just get charged.

Jim02

If it's the same as the letter I got from HSBC, they tried to charge me £25 for 'reviewing' my account as I had gone over my OD limit (by a few pounds) more than once in the last six months.

I asked them to justify a £25 levy on the following grounds:
1. No way does it cost them £25 for an automated computer system to send out a form letter - and no way did a human 'review' my account;
2. They must have already 'reviewed' my account by the time they sent the letter, therefore this was a retrospective charge about which I hadn't been informed;
3. They told me I could avoid the charge by closing the account, which means that in real terms I didn't owe them anything.

I told them I wasn't going to pay, they sent me one of their standard, "ooh, we'll let you off this time, but consider this a slapped wrist" patronising letters (to which I was tempted to respond in words of four letters - who do these people think they are?) and I didn't pay the charge.

This is transparently a way of rebadging the traditional penalty charge for exceeding one's overdraft limit. HSBC presumably think the banks' appeal to the Lords regarding the on-going test case on penalty charges will fail (although who can tell with the Lords, they're hardly impartial), so they've put a notionally different system in place.

HSBC are widely acknowledged as penalty-happy with their customers; I assume FD, as a subsidiary, are the same. Just tell them to poke their poxy charge - but do it in a professional way!

chambta

Business accounts are generally charged far more for overdraft 'renewals' which is in effect what these are. I suspect we're going to go more this way should the bank charges case go against the banks.

withnell

Switch to Halifax - not only do they pay you a fiver each month, you can see on screen what overdraft limit you're auto approved for before you even apply - and no charges for applying!

Andy_Ches

At the end of the day overdrafts are meant to be used for short term borrowing. If you in it permanently then a credit card or loan should be the answer to clear the O/D and hence no reason for the £25 charge because you wouldn't have an O/D.