Nationwide have charged me nearly 200 pounds for being overdrawn once!

edw-online

Hi Forum!
I went overdrawn in October last year and then in the middle of Oct managed to settle the debt by paying online. I thought I had cleared my debt as my balance was 10 pounds in the black. Since then, as it's not my main account, I didn't login to my account and I moved address but stupidly failed to change my address with the bank.

At the end of October I was charged 20 pounds in overdraft fees and then ofcourse the next month now I was -10 pounds in dept, then they charged me again, now -30 pounds etc... until now where I'm almost -180 pounds under.

I called them to say this was not fair as they levied me at the end of them month AFTER i had settled up and they then forced me into this repetitive loop and have made me in debt and now owe them serious cash. Nationwide aren't interested and say I owe them the whole lot. I find this very unfair. Can anyone shed some light on what I can do? I don't mind paying the 20 pounds for that one month but not 180 pounds!

kalaika

This may not be what you want to hear, but I think it's quite fair that the bank wait until the end of the month before applying charges so they can calculate exactly what they need to charge you for the month as a whole. From their perspective, it would appear that your account was active (you didn't close it) so I would think it fairly reasonable to charge fees at the end of the month.

As for not finding out about it, if they had written to you to tell you that you were overdrawn you wouldn't have got it as you had moved but not told them (did they send a monthly or quarterly statement?)

Overall, I can't really see a problem with their methods. Frustrating you didn't find out about it, yes, but I wouldn't say unfair.

I cannot say whether £20 per month for being overdrawn is reasonable or not (don't have enough experience about bank charges - maybe someone else can help here...) I reckon that, unless you can argue that £20pm is unreasonable and get them to reduce it on those grounds, I think your only option is to be as nice as pie to them in the hope one of their customer service reps shows some discretion and reduces the balance.

edw-online

Thanks for your reply. Yes I don't have a problem with their procedure, had I changed my address I would have got the letters and then done something about it. The amount of 20 pounds is not a problem but they forced me into this vicious circle and I'd also hoped that some nice customer rep would understand my arguement and help me out, but alas. Thats why I've turned to the forums to see if there's any advice of a higher power at Nationwide who I can talk to. Even a break of 50% off the fine would be nice!

natweststaffmember

edw-online wrote: »

Thanks for your reply. Yes I don't have a problem with their procedure, had I changed my address I would have got the letters and then done something about it. The amount of 20 pounds is not a problem but they forced me into this vicious circle and I'd also hoped that some nice customer rep would understand my arguement and help me out, but alas. Thats why I've turned to the forums to see if there's any advice of a higher power at Nationwide who I can talk to. Even a break of 50% off the fine would be nice!

I kinda gotta agree with kalaika, ie that the issue of the total amount of the charges is because you as an individual did not change your address. You can off course reclaim the charges back.