£1 loan payments, orangutans and learning it doesn't all happen overnight...

Woowoo

That is a nice surprise Amber, glad to hear your putting it too good use as well x

Kepp

That's good news with the tax Amber.

I really need to get a move on with seeing if I'm due any back - with a second and third job costing me in tax and having not worked six months of the last tax year I am hoping this means they owe me!

**Kat**_2

LittleMoog wrote: »

they wouldn't agree to extend overdrafts to cover them etc :mad: .

Same here - they don't want to loose the ££ from you that's why!! It is defo the first thing to go but saving into a BS account so the savings to pay it off don't get swallowed by the charges!

**Kat**_2

beccie wrote: »

I don't understand what the barclay's reserve is?

It's basically like an overdraft in the sense that it's money you are authorised to spend which you don't have, however, unlike an overdraft which is charged at an APR of X, you get charged £22 per week/5 working days for using it. It's supposed to be for emergancies (which is what we went into ours for originally) but when you can get charged so much for using it, it's impossible to get out of (well, not impossible anymore but may take a while)

Kepp

That's daylight robbery! :eek:

Woowoo

Bloody hell that is robbery! My £2900 o/d costs me £27 a month, although they're adding another fiver to that in Dec the ba*tards!

**Kat**_2

It's so unfair (Kevin like stamp on the floor), if they didn't apply the charges we'd have been out of it months ago - even before LBM. Not much I can do other than save up to pay it off (I'm thinking with a buffer if poss to totally avoid it again) and then complaining (not doing that first incase they remove it and I get hit with even more charges).

LittleMoog

Once you're out of the reserve you can get them to remove the facility. I wish I'd cancelled it as soon as I heard that they'd put it on the accounts. It was only £150 on one and £250 on the other, but once you're in it the charges add up to such a ridiculous level :mad:
Plus they add the charges at a random point the following month, I never knew when they were going to go out, and they always took me waaaay over the limit so I had bounced DD fees and over limit fees etc etc. I think that over the course of the year before I got rid of them it cost us about £2000 minimum. Worst thing Barclays have ever done, it's a debt trap.

Kepp

I think that o/d's a one of the worst debt traps with that reserve sounding even worse.:mad:

The problem is there is no exact way to work out the charge for each month because it is EAR and there is no way of paying them back as such the way there is with CCs and they are so hard to get out of because of this.

That's why I cleared my 2 with the loan, I was only happy to keep one as it is 0% and on an account I don't use so easy to pay back, rather than just trying to spend less each month.

I kept £100 when I reduced them after the loan, just in case I unexpectedly went over as I don't want to be hit with charges either!

I lost £300 in charges the first time I was in Zimbabwe about a week before I came back, cause I was about £20 over (due to Paypal taking money when they shouldn't just to add insult to injury) and I couldn't deal with it from there. Soon as I got back I went in and explained and put money straight in to bring it back up and they still wouldn't refund the charges :mad:

Sorry, bit of a rant there Just makes me so angry. I think that say a £5 fee for messing up or a reasonable APR for borrowing is one thing, but they take the !!!! a lot of the time, especially from the people who can least afford it! :mad:

Sorry, really am done now

If_My_Pennies_Were_Pounds

I've never had an overdraft purely for those reasons, hopefully (touch wood) I won't need one anytime soon!