Advice PLEASE, want to help lil sis

SouthernBellE*

Morning all, MSE NEWBIE, please be gentle!

Younger sister single working parent, working hard & struggling. Account at Halifax and has incurred excessive charges many times (1 £35 charge for 9p overdraft for 1 day). Told her I'd try to help regarding reclaiming but don't want to make her situation worse. My fear is that she doesn't have a good credit history & would therefore not get account elsewhere. If I did all letters etc and claim was made, are they allowed to close her account. I want to help her & hate to see her struggle but I don't want to cause her more trouble.
Works like a dog, low income which greedy bank eats up by charging fees at every opportunity. Tax credits and other benefits that are supposed to help get messed up leaving her in more debt. (the rich get richer & the poor get poorer!)
Doesn't keep paperwork so research to do and no steps taken as yet. Just wanted to check before I made a move on anything.
I know the court ruling has changed things but the hardship thing should apply so it would be worth giving it a go.

Any views? Any Advice? Thanks in advance.

Premier_2

They shouldn't close the account for asking for charges to be reclaimed.

Have a read of the MSE guide to reclaiming bank charges, if you've not already done so.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/bank-charges

Also have a read of the lending code which describes what might be considered as financial hardship
http://www.lendingstandardsboard.org.uk/docs/lendingcode.pdf (page 20)

Normally the bank will simply waive a charge when asked for a first off occurrence, especially when it is for just 9p for 1 day.
But I see your sister has done this "many times". Why not help your sister understand what these charges are costing her and explain how she can avoid them in the first place?
As Martin's article says:

...do remember the best way to avoid bank charges is not to have them in the first place...

If your sister doesn't learn how to avoid bank charges, you may be faced with a continual task of trying to reclaim them for her.

SouthernBellE*

Thanks for the advice, I,ve downloaded and printed relevant info. I'll look into it more now I know the accounts unlikely to be closed. She is kind of all over the place with this sort of thing and doesn't keep track of things mostly because she rarely gets a moment to stop long enough to get started. In her defense though, its not a deliberate thing, she's no shopoholic, its just trying to stay afloat, charges means she borrows because wages were bitten into then has more repayments on what she borrowed leaving less the following week, you know how it goes. At least now I can investigate further. Many thanks