Bankinig overdrawn charges

boxa

Hi folks,
just after some advice re charges gained from going overdrawn. In a nutshell i went overdrawn, received a letter to tell me I had been charged £25 and that I will be charged a further £25 every time a transaction is processed (up to a max of £75). Needless to say I checked my account immediately only to find that further transactions had been processed & I had hit my max of £75 !! Wasn't happy, phoned them up & said I accepted the £25 (even tho I think that's steep) but was not happy with the other 2 x £25 as I wasn't even given chance to amend my indescretion !! Surprise surprise I was given the normal patronising "have an overdraft - our letter is a curteous one to let me know I'm o/d & I should try & keep an eye on my a/c to prevent me from going o/d etc etc. The conversation went back & forth & in the end they refunded £25 but would do no more - Now my main point is this, the lass reckons that every time I am charged re o/d they are only passing on the charges that they recieve from the Bk of England !! I questioned this strongly but she was adamant & I had no hard evidence to back my case (apart from the fact that I would assume the BofE have better things to do rather than keep an eye on every Uk citizens personal Bk Account to see if they're going overdrawn !!!) I was just wondering if anyone can back me up or maybe tell me i am wrong & this is a procedure of the BofE. If i am right my Bk have not heard the last of this 'coz I'm gonna be highly p!ss$d off if my Bk can patronize me & feed me BS like that.

Sorry about the rant folks but would appreciate your knowledge.

Thanks heaps, Boxa

Walletwatch

The Bank is not exactly accurate when it tells you that they are 'passing on' charges levied by the Bank of England. While there would be charges for failed transactions levied by the Clearing houses, they would definitely not be of the order of £25 per transaction (anybody pls feel free to correct me / provide more details here)

On the other hand (and this might sound harsh), I think the Bank is fairly justified to levy any such charges as is specified in the T&Cs. The spirit of the policy as I see it, makes some rational assumptions, and these are:

1. The account holder would, in the normal course, take due care of ensuring availability of funds, before entering into a transaction that causes a debit to the account.

2. Even if, as a lapse, there were to be a transaction that would put the account holder into overdraft, this would be an isolated case - more the exception, rather than the norm, for which he would be penalised a charge of £25.

3. If there were a spate of such transactions, there is no real point socking the customer £25 for each transaction on an unlimited basis as the customer might be a fly-by-night operator and doesn't intend to resurface after running up such a large debit balance, so they limit the charge to a max of three transactions.

I don't know what is common Banking practice, but a colleague of mine who banks with Citibank has had such an experience, and he too was socked for two transactions, but then, it turned out to be the Bank's fault for not having given him due credit for some other transaction, and he managed to get the whole charge reversed, as there should have been adequate funds to take care of the debits, so the charge itself, as such was baseless.

Apologies for not being with you on this one, but I think all Banks expect account holders to be responsible enough not to have such situations arise, and if they do, I believe they are well within their rights to charge anything that is applicable. I would consider myself lucky with the £25 refund that you have got in this case.

If on the other hand, the Bank has screwed up, by not crediting your account with funds on time for something, because of which you've incurred these charges, needless to say, it gives you a strong basis to put up a fight, and claim back the whole amount of £75 that has been charged.

Fatboy_NSS

While the charges are probably justified, the cashier in question blatently lied to you by saying they are passing on charges from the BoE as this is clearly not the case. I would suggest you put this in writing to your bank's complaints department, and make the letter so you're complaining about being lied to by the cashier rather than about the charges. If you take this approach the charges should be refunded as the cashier shouldn't have said what they did.

Walletwatch

While you can try extracting something from them, I don't think one has too much of a leg to stand on in this case. The OP has gone into unauthorised overdraft and has erred in the first place, for which charges have been levied, that are presumably in line with the Bank's T&Cs. Don't see why the Bank would agree to refund anything more than they have already done.

MarkyMarkD

I agree with both of the last 2 posters - the bank shouldn't come up with b*****s explanations for the charge - but the charges are in the Ts & Cs and are correctly charged if you go into unauthorised overdraft.

The simple answer to that is to arrange an authorised overdraft and keep within the limit.