Help - Alliance & Leicester (Santander)

elfen

Mine (Barclays) also does debits before credits, but as far as I know it's all done on the same day so there's no charges. Think it's the way the banks work.

jonnyd281

Hi OP,
I'm with Nat West and they debit then credit.

cabbage73

What can I do then people when I need to pay bills like my rent, gas, electric and need to withdraw the cash to pay for these things? Places do not accept payment for key metre for gas and electric.

Oh yeah 'noh' glad you have the funds to draw on. I've just moved house and every penny went into my new flat. It must be nice to have a job and not have to worry about money and budget like I have to.

noh

cabbage73 wrote: »

What can I do then people when I need to pay bills like my rent, gas, electric and need to withdraw the cash to pay for these things? Places do not accept payment for key metre for gas and electric.

Oh yeah 'noh' glad you have the funds to draw on. I've just moved house and every penny went into my new flat. It must be nice to have a job and not have to worry about money and budget like I have to.

It's one day.
Just draw the money one day later.
Or get an account elsewhere.

blueberrypie

cabbage73 wrote: »

Maybe yuou don't mind being charged as you can afford it, but I can't. If its there its cleared to draw on but they are a rip off bank and hate them. They never used to do this before they were Santander.

I've had accounts with A&L for about 12 years, and I they have always done this.

As noh has said, it is in A&L's terms and conditions that funds must be in the account by close of business on the previous day. It's this, not the order in which transactions are listed, which is causing you to incur fees - and to be honest, I'm surprised that A&L have refunded these fees more than once, as their general policy is that they will only refund fees once every 12 months.

Nobody here is sticking up for A&L, or taking A&L's side - nobody is saying this is a good way to work. What people are saying that this is how A&L work - and as it's in their t&c, they're entitled to do so, regardless of whether it seems fair or reasonable. There's no point in working on what you think they *should* do, rather than what they *actually* do. The fact is that if you continue to bank with A&L, and you continue to withdraw funds on the day they are deposited, you will continue to incur fees. So rather than spend money every month on phone-calls to them, you can either:

a) change how you manage your funds so that you always have the funds in the account overnight before you withdraw them, or
b) move to another bank which doesn't operate the same policy.

Option a doesn't mean you need to have lots of money - it just means you need to understand how your account works and ensure that you always give it that extra day before withdrawing your funds. If you don't think you can do that, then option b is probably the better option for you. I suspect that when the Santander take-over of A&L is complete, the service is *not* going to improve, and so again, option b is probably the best route.