MSE news: Abbey hits bank charges victims with huge backdated fees

simon_templar_2

shinkyshonky wrote: »

So that justifys high fee charges....

purlease so many on the moral high ground.....wake up to the real world

You are putting words in my mouth, i did not mention how much the charges were or if they were fair or unfair. You need to wake up to the fact that a bank charges for overspending. Be it 1p or £60 it is still a form of borrowing without permission and a jolly expensive way to do so.

Nathan_Spleen

simon_templar wrote: »

Be it 1p or £60 it is still a form of borrowing without permission

No it isn't. You cannot borrow from your bank without their permissision. It wouldn't be much of a bank if you could would it?

natweststaffmember

simon_templar wrote: »

Kim is right though! You dont just get a bank charge out of thin air, it means the customer has not enough money and has spent or tried to spend beyond their means.

Simon, just so that you are aware, Abbey haven't been making customers aware of this error on their part nor have they allowed for payment plans since those customers may be being hit with 2 months worth of charges so for budgetting purposes, they are hit with the charges without explanation. In fact, I wrote to them in June to get a response with regards to the question(cos I ALWAYS have questions and am only satisfied when I get answers).

simon_templar_2

I know that ex NWSM but the comments need reading without hysterical emotion!

natweststaffmember

Like that will ever happen here(we both know that bit is true, eh?)

EmmaLi

We had a situation with Abbey when a cheque took a day longer to clear than expected and got hit with nearly £200 of charges as a result. of numerous bounced DDs. It was money we didn't have and I tried to arrange to pay it over a couple of months. I explained that if they took the charges in one go, we would then not be able to afford to pay our direct debits the following month, would incur new charges and the cycle would go on. I was told by an Abbey advisor to not pay our direct debits, although she wasn't quite so forthcoming when I asked which ones she didn't think were important - gas, electricity, mortgage, council tax etc

natweststaffmember

EmmaLi wrote: »

We had a situation with Abbey when a cheque took a day longer to clear than expected and got hit with nearly £200 of charges as a result. of numerous bounced DDs. It was money we didn't have and I tried to arrange to pay it over a couple of months. I explained that if they took the charges in one go, we would then not be able to afford to pay our direct debits the following month, would incur new charges and the cycle would go on. I was told by an Abbey advisor to not pay our direct debits, although she wasn't quite so forthcoming when I asked which ones she didn't think were important - gas, electricity, mortgage, council tax etc

Is that recently? Are you reclaiming your charges back?

wee_kais_dad

Just to add my tuppence worth ( well, it's quite a lot more than tuppence worth of charges! ) - I had an Abbey account which was lying dormant but had an outstanding overdraft of approx £700. I made arangements with the collections team to pay this off without any argument or ill will, as, it was my responsibility to pay it off an I never saw it as free money so didn't feel agrieived at being charged for havin an overdraft and any fees that were related to it. What I WAS and still am agrieved about is that when i made the payment to pay off the overdraft and expressely asked if that was everything paid, settled etc and that everything was fine was told that it was, thank you etc. You can imagine my surprise then when i received a statement this month telling me that i was due charges going back to the start of the year for the overdraft whch i had just paid off a couple of weeks prior to this. I went onto the call centre to ask what thes charges related to and not once was it explained that this had been a computer glitch, just that these charges ( they didnt like them being called charges for some (legal) reason ) were for the interest on the overdraft. I asked again and again and again about the legality of these charges being levied postumously and without an indication as to how much they were going to be to be met with either a wall of silence or an indignant "these must be paid" To put this into perspective, I had slightly overpaid when i transferred money to clear the overdraft so there was about £15 in the account, and after these charges, it was over £60 they were looking for!! When i asked if and only if I were to pay this ammount could I close the account, was told that I couldnt as there was ANOTHER £25 charge to be levied for the month of Jan when the account had been lying dormant leaving me with a bill of approx £92 to pay! I work as a business advisor and very rarely lose my patience with people in a call centre environment but was just so disgusted and angry at the lack of care, consideration, empathy or flexibilty that I made it very clear how delighted I would be to reclaim these unfair charges and would look forward to the impact it would have on Santander and their employees when people did it en masse.
The reason I'm posting this is so that other people can make allowances if they think they may be in a similar position not to have a gripe about charges in general, just the underhand and frankly, illegal way in which these ones were levied without any thought for impact on personal finances.
You have been warned!

Absoluutbeginner

I am receiving pension credit after being made redundant in December. I got slapped with a £25 charge for being 30p overdrawn at Abbey, complained in a letter to my local bank manager (claiming financial hardship), and within TWO DAYS it was credited back into my account.

Am I just lucky?

tiredmum3

I have just been reading the abbey story and just wanted to say that we were hit with £200 of charges this month as well dating back to last nov. I called abbey and spoke to someone in mumbai who got short strift from me telling him we could not afford these charges, my husband and I had lost sleep over this and how could they justify charging us all these months later. Anyway the upshot is as being on hold he refunded these back to us. so call and complain as I found it easy to get these back but I did ring as soon as the lines had opened whether that caught him off guard . Not too sure what time it is in mumbai when we are early morning lol. I also did the same with halifax who chatged me £60 for going overdrawn by £2.20 yes 2.20. I called and asked for these back as I rarely incur charges and was a simple mistake. I was warned it ws a gesture of goodwill and future charges would be upheld.
I have just changed my account for a basic one with an electron card so I dont pay stupid extra charges on budget airlines and was told even these cards can still authorise transactions when no funds are available. Why cant banks stop trying to trick us into going overdrawn and decline transactions when we have no money. I have an asda credit card and that is what happens when I have used up to my credit limit.