Can I stop the charges?

Big_Mac_3

Hi all,

Not sure if this is the right board to post this in but I am finally trying to get myself sorted and have now taken a positive stance on my whole debt situation. Stupidly, I have gone over my overdraft limit with the bank and the bank charges are crippling me!! I am with Natwest and it is £38 for this every day so all my money is going on these charges. This means I dont have enough money to pay my other debts so the whole cycle starts again :-(

Is there any way I could get natwest to stop charging me until I can get back on my feet? The charges are crippling me and I'm looking at nearly £300 a month in charges.

What can I do?

Thanks everyone.

yummum_3

Hi, well done for posting!!

Try the current accounts board, there are a lot of posts on this subject.

Big_Mac_3

Thanks yummum!! I will post there now.

Thanks again!

sportbeth

First of all open up a basic bank account so that next time you get paid you have the time to use the money rather than have it swallowed up. You can do this with Barclays or Natwest and can go in and do it on the spot in the branch.

Then go to https://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk and read up on it. I spiralled into a situation with the Woolwich when my employer went bust. Got all £821 of it back with a fight. I say a fight, two strongly worded letters!

Good luck

shayshay

The above is a very good idea, standby account which wont attract the charges. Bit of a pain changing debits but if its saving you £38 a time then well worth it. As for the charges, get yourself over to the CAG group, belt up, buckle in and go get your charges back. It looks scary but read the boards, voice your concerns and you will find no end of help as everyone is annoyed at getting charges so all in the same boat and rowing in the same direction.

Dr.Shoe_2

You will "only" be charged £38 per failed transaction plus a one off £28 per month unauthorised borrowing charge. if you use your debit card for groceries say, and the transaction goes through, you will be charged a "paid referral fee" of £25, similarly if they have to pay a cheque for which you've used your guarantee card...

One way to stop these charges is to cancel all your direct debits and stop issuing cheques.

tsharp

My first job out of Uni was at a NatWest Lending Unit. My job was to go thru all the defaulting accounts in the district and deal with them, be it a letter or charges and/or cancellation of SOs & DDs. They came in 4 categories, from good to bad customers, depending on their default history and income rates etc.

If a customer had offended enough, they got charged £38 for each item over their limit etc. But quite often they were going over by about £1 or £2s, but the letter of the law stated that each had to be charged the £38 for each item bounced or transaction that took them over etc. As you can imagine, often this amounted to hundreds of pounds of charges on top of quite low original amounts.

The bank charge figure was defaulted at £38.50 or something in one of the fields in the system. So, when looking at customers who were only just going over, or had a huge amount of charges about to be brought to them, I used to cut this in half, or sometimes putting it to £0.00, and just issue them a letter. I did this for several weeks for all the customers who were about to get clobbered, and who had only just gone over etc.

But then at the end of the month, the boss of the dept called me in and looked thru all the defaulting accounts over the past month and wanted to know why the unit had not made literally hundreds of pounds from these defaulting customers. I told him my reasoning, that basically it was blatantly profiteering at the expense of customers who were loyal customers etc, only to be told he didn't care about my opinion and that i was to apply all charges to all customers who 'qualified' for fines and cancellations of DDs & SOs. Or look for employment elsewhere.

I no longer work for Natwest, nor have an account with them.

GSD4ME

I have just got all my illegal charges back from NatWest, over £700 including the interest and court fees. I sent the letters and when they refused to pay, I did the court stuff and they paid up at once.

Great. For once I have beaten the money grabbing b**t**ds. :j :j :j

tsharp

I would love to tell that Natwest boss to fuuck off! He was hated by all the staff there, and he must have known.

baldelectrician

have had a different experience with RBS (own natwest)

this stems from a little while ago before I was a business customer.

The computer prints out a list of accounts with unauthorised borrowing due to happen that day, first thing in the morning.

It was (and still is) bank policy to call customers in the morning to WARN them they will into the red if they don't get £ x in their account. If I was to put the money in before 3pm then there would be no charges.

They still do this (in my local branch anyway.)