Please Help Nationwide Current Account Charges

booklover

Hello everyone


Hope someone can advise me as I plan to go into our Nationwide branch tomorrow and speak to the manager or someone who can give me some answers.


I will try to make this brief.

My 18 year old son seems to be following in older brother's footsteps; ie. being terrible with money.

Anyway he has asked me for help as he is £18.94 overdrawn but his statement says
he is also being charged £20 Unauthorized Overdraft fee and 21p interest.. I phoned to pay this and clear this debt, well I am so annoyed I ended being on the phone for 35 minutes and was put on hold twice for 3 minuets and 5 minutes.

I still don't fully understand the situation, but the adviser wouldn'taccept a payment over the phone and worse still, says my son has to now pay £100!!!

This is because on the 1st December and then on 1st Jan and 1st Feb further amounts £20 Unauthorized overdraft fees will be added.


Can anyone advised please on this issue?


Many thanks in advance :T


Fiona

DarkConvict

A bump and a bit of a guess.

If you pay in the amount before the 1st December i can't see how they can charge 3x £20 of Unauthorized overdraft charges if he isn't in his overdraft.
It maybe worth taking him with you and getting him a £100 authorized overdraft just so its only interest not large fees for going into it.

KarenBB

If an account goes into unauthorized overdraft there is a charge of £20 for being overdrawn at any point in the month, this can be one day or 30 days.

The account is checked at the end of the month and if you have been overdrawn and will be charged you are notified on your next statement and the charge is taken 28 days fater the statement date.
eg. Your statement date is 15th of the month.

2nd September you go overdrawn which you would see on your statement dated 15th September.

At the end of September the system would check the account status for the month, sees you were overdrawn on the 2nd so on your next statement 15th October there will be a note saying you will be charged £20 in 28 days time - 12th November (think that's 28 days)

So being oeverdarwn on 2nd September you're not charged until 15th November so as a previous poster has said it can be a long time after the incident but you are notified.

If the account is still overdrawn in October the cycle contiues. An account being overdrawn will get a charge each month it is overdrawn.

I'd suggest you find out how much the account is overdrawn and pay at least that amount inot the account then your son needs to check any future statements for charges if he's notified of any ore make sure the money is paid into the account before the charges are due to be taken or he will be back at square one. If the account is stilloverdrawn on 1st December that will incur more charges so best to sort it Monday.

The above is how it works to the best of my knowledge and how to make sure he doesn't get any more charges. The other option of course is to ask Nationwide if they will waive the charges for him.

Good luck. HTH.

ps Hope you're going to make him pay it off or work his butt off for you if you pay it.

Poosmate

Whilst it is nice of you to bail your son out this time, maybe if, as you state in your op, he is following in his brother's footsteps, it is maybe not in his best interest for you to bail him out.

As he's less than £20 overdrawn and being charged £20 (which is low - it could have been £35 easily) he is in an excellent position to learn from this mistake and be able to nip his spending in the bud. If there are further charges next month then he must have gone overdrawn in previous months too (see KarenBB's example).

As Karen said, Sept 2nd (overdrawn) you incur the charge, Sept 15th you are informed of the charge (shows on statement), Oct 12th (28 days later?) you pay the charge.

Hope this helps.

Poo

ETA: Just re-read your OP and am guessing that your son has gone overdrawn in September, October and November. Hence the charges due to be paid in December, January and February.

Please don't bail him out with financial assistance it really won't do him any favours. Allow him to learn from his mistakes. Allow him to feel the pain of doing without that extra take away meal or that extra night in the pub or whatever it is he's spending his money on. It may hurt him now but will pay dividends in the future!