A+L - failed transaction charge

PoorPaul

Well, I WAS happy with A+L.... but not any more !!!

I've just received a letter informing me that I had 'Insufficient funds to cover transaction(s)' and a failed transaction charge of £34.00 has been raised.

Basically the story goes like this.... sorry if its a bit long !

On Wed 20/9 I Deposited a cheque for £16500 (from closing another account).

On Saturday 23/9 while online I saw the deposit and assumed (wrongly) that it was ok to use the bill payment option to shift the money out to a non A+L savings account. It wouldn't let me do more than £10K per day, so I arranged to remaining £6.5K to go out the next day (Sun 24/9).

Received letter today (27/9) .... checked online and it shows the first payment going out as expected on 23/9, then on the 25/9 it shows the next bill payment going out, coming back in again as 'unpaid', and the failed charge. My salary also went in on 25/9 !

I've also got a notification at the top which clicking on it tells me that I've got a £25 'unauthorised overdraft' charge for 1 day due to be applied to my account also !!!!!

So therefore I'm currently looking at £34+£25 = £59 for being a bit mislead by the online banking and thinking that the cheque had cleared.

The less than polite (and far from sympathetic) assistant I spoke to this afternoon told me that I should have remembered to allow 4 working days clearing time for the cheque before making the withdrawals. Apparently the cheque didn't actually clear until Tue 26/9.

So yes, my mistake, should have allowed time for the cheque to clear. I'm more used to Barclays online banking - A+L's is far worse and its not immediately obvious what you are dealing with as cleared funds.
I can't understand how the £10K went through ok, as I hadnt got enough in my account (even including overdraft) to cover that, but £59 is bad enough !

I did get an address to write in to and appeal from her, but am I on a loser here ?

Thanks

Paul

masonic

PoorPaul wrote:

I did get an address to write in to and appeal from her, but am I on a loser here ?

It can't hurt to try. For future reference, your available balance is displayed on the summary page in online banking and at the top of the statement page.

juliejuly4

PoorPaul wrote:

Well, I WAS happy with A+L.... but not any more !!!

I've just received a letter informing me that I had 'Insufficient funds to cover transaction(s)' and a failed transaction charge of £34.00 has been raised.

Basically the story goes like this.... sorry if its a bit long !

On Wed 20/9 I Deposited a cheque for £16500 (from closing another account).

On Saturday 23/9 while online I saw the deposit and assumed (wrongly) that it was ok to use the bill payment option to shift the money out to a non A+L savings account. It wouldn't let me do more than £10K per day, so I arranged to remaining £6.5K to go out the next day (Sun 24/9).

Received letter today (27/9) .... checked online and it shows the first payment going out as expected on 23/9, then on the 25/9 it shows the next bill payment going out, coming back in again as 'unpaid', and the failed charge. My salary also went in on 25/9 !

I've also got a notification at the top which clicking on it tells me that I've got a £25 'unauthorised overdraft' charge for 1 day due to be applied to my account also !!!!!

So therefore I'm currently looking at £34+£25 = £59 for being a bit mislead by the online banking and thinking that the cheque had cleared.

The less than polite (and far from sympathetic) assistant I spoke to this afternoon told me that I should have remembered to allow 4 working days clearing time for the cheque before making the withdrawals. Apparently the cheque didn't actually clear until Tue 26/9.

So yes, my mistake, should have allowed time for the cheque to clear. I'm more used to Barclays online banking - A+L's is far worse and its not immediately obvious what you are dealing with as cleared funds.
I can't understand how the £10K went through ok, as I hadnt got enough in my account (even including overdraft) to cover that, but £59 is bad enough !

I did get an address to write in to and appeal from her, but am I on a loser here ?

Thanks

Paul

Have to say less than impressed with A&L myself, I had a similar experience some time ago now, and I closed the account (although I've opened it again for the £50 for two months) I had salary in and debit out on same day, and got charged for an unpaid transaction. When I rang to speak to someone about it, I got some ridiculous story about debits being dealt with at 7am and credits at 10am, so I was therefore overdrawn for 3 hours! I did get the money back eventually though, but had to be quite forceful about it. Perhaps another phone call and speak to a supervisor might help, as I agree, their Internet banking can be misleading. And although they say 4 working days to clear cheques, you also have to allow a couple of days for the cheque to get there!

PoorPaul

I did call again today, though only spoke to another advisor.

She was much nicer than yesterdays one, and offered to refund HALF of the charges, saying that was all she could do.

I' thanked her very much but asked her to refer it to up the chain... its possible they might reinstate the full charge if the reckon it was 'fair' but I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Got to await written decision now, but I won't hold my breath.

So fed up and disgusted that I'm considering ditching A+L and moving on... who to though I'm not so sure.

Thanks

Paul