What are the grounds for hardship?

oscar52

Premier wrote: »

but would not necessarily agree that each and every charge a bank makes for a customer going into an unauthorised OD situation necessarily implies financial difficulty.

I would agree - just about everyone has received the odd charge - however, there are those where charges have snowballed.

I have previously asked a bank for help - several years ago mind - and was pretty much told "there is nothing we can do"

My previous post was not a critcism of your post or the link (and I did actually mean to click the thanks button) it was simply a statement of what steps do banks take to help customers (look at my employer for instance - they are loathe to help the majority - taken from posts on here and from actually working there)

davidgmmafan

I understand that they can vary the T & C's my point is they have changed the T & Cs yet exactly the same thing occurs as before. Therefore they either deliberatly mis- represented the nature of the charges or made an honest mistake. I think it strains credibility to say every bank with thier vast legal teams made the same innocent mistake.

But that is another argument entirely.

In my experience banks don't really contact people in trouble and even when people do contact the bank as they are supposed to this may do them no good whatsoever. He contacted the bank at the time and got the impression they did not give a ****. I think it was the comment call back when you are three months in arrears (on the mortgage) that did it.

Another thing why do they keep encouraging customers to telephone when every impartial debt advice agency advises customers to deal in writing?

BTW I'm getting the impression retrospectively arguing hardship would be impossible. The only way it could be made out is if he'd taken the steps outlined which, to be honest, would've been done if the bank had shown the slightest interest.

The snowball effect was definately in evidence here, £1000 authorized OD became £4000. Once the initial charge was incured it was impossible to stop.