Overdrawn and charges

ChippyChips_2

I'm wondering if anyone can offer me some advice.

A couple of months ago my Husband withdrew £20 from a cash point without realising there was not £20 in the account. It may have been that the bank did not have any £10 notes in the machine, he cannot remember. But obviously he wouldn't have withdrawn more than was in the account if he had known.

The transaction took the account £9.83 overdrawn.

We were not aware of this until the following month when a statement arrived. We were annoyed that the bank had let us take money we didn't have and had to repay it, but just deposited £10 back into the account to clear the overdraft.

There was nothing in the envelope with the statement detailing any charges, so I assumed that there were no charges being taken as it was either their error or it was under £10 etc

Today we received another envelope from Natwest. The same time of month as the statement comes. This time there is no statement enclosed, but details of charges for being overdrawn after the date the £10 was deposited back.

I can only assume that they charged him for being overdrawn last month but the details of the charges were missing from the envelope, so when we put £10 in the account, it either didn't clear the overdraft or they have then gone and taken another £20 out, making it overdrawn again.

Obviously we are not happy about the charges or missing info from the statements/charges letter for 2 months.

Any advice? Should they have let him take money out of an account, via a cashpoint, when there isn't enough in it to cover it and there is no overdraft facility? We really don't want to have to pay £40 charges for this. Do you think we'll actually get anywhere complaining to the bank or will they force us to pay the charges?

Lokolo

If you are polite they may see it as a one off and withdraw the charge, but this would only be out of politeness rather than forced to.

The bank will accept you can go over your overdraft with most accounts, will let you, and charge you. It is in your Terms and Conditions of the account.

You should also read the T&Cs to see what it says about notice of fees. I don't know anything about Natwests charging structure.

ecoelle

This happened to me this month. My bank are lovely, i went about £10 over my od limit on Wednesday, but i got paid on Thursday, i received a letter from the bank today stating that...'we have noticed you have gone over your overdraft limit today, we recognise this may just be an oversight and think it's only fai that we give you an opportunity to avoid any charges relating to this informal overdraft'

'If you return your account to credit (or within you agreed overdraft limit) by 10th Novermber 2010 w will waive all the informal overdrfaft service charges and unpaid item charges that you will incur'

I think this is brill of my bank and hope that other banks start to follow suit and give us a chance to put things right when it is a rarely occuring problem rather than people who are forever going over their agreed limit.

Lokolo

ecoelle wrote: »

This happened to me this month. My bank are lovely, i went about £10 over my od limit on Wednesday, but i got paid on Thursday, i received a letter from the bank today stating that...'we have noticed you have gone over your overdraft limit today, we recognise this may just be an oversight and think it's only fai that we give you an opportunity to avoid any charges relating to this informal overdraft'

'If you return your account to credit (or within you agreed overdraft limit) by 10th Novermber 2010 w will waive all the informal overdrfaft service charges and unpaid item charges that you will incur'

I think this is brill of my bank and hope that other banks start to follow suit and give us a chance to put things right when it is a rarely occuring problem rather than people who are forever going over their agreed limit.

Which bank is this?

ecoelle

Co-operative bank

ChippyChips_2

I know in the past, Direct Debits or card payments have allowed us to go overdrawn but never have we been able to take money out of a bank account, using a cash point, when the money isn't in there. It wasn't even as if something was clearing and there was money in there at the time of the cash point transaction. It is a very rarely used account which had approx £11 in it that we hardly ever touch. Hubby tried his luck one day to see if there was money in it and thought, great! £20! Normally it would say "insufficient funds". I'm glad he didn't withdraw anymore!!!

ChippyChips_2

ecoelle wrote: »

This happened to me this month. My bank are lovely, i went about £10 over my od limit on Wednesday, but i got paid on Thursday, i received a letter from the bank today stating that...'we have noticed you have gone over your overdraft limit today, we recognise this may just be an oversight and think it's only fai that we give you an opportunity to avoid any charges relating to this informal overdraft'

'If you return your account to credit (or within you agreed overdraft limit) by 10th Novermber 2010 w will waive all the informal overdrfaft service charges and unpaid item charges that you will incur'

I think this is brill of my bank and hope that other banks start to follow suit and give us a chance to put things right when it is a rarely occuring problem rather than people who are forever going over their agreed limit.

Wow! I wish they had done that to us. That's really good.

ecoelle

Yeah, i've found them to be really good.

We went overdrawn when we first moved an old Natwest account into our co-op account, all because Natwest didn't transfer the money over on the day they should have done, and they were really understanding and waived the charges for the next couple of weeks while Natwest got their bums in gear!

Loughton_Monkey

First Direct can be wonderful!

Once, I received the normal Barclaycard Credit Card Statement, and having checked it, did what I normally do. Go onto Internet banking and make a "Forward" payment request to get it paid just before due date.

Out of the blue, a couple of weeks later, I got a phone call from FD asking me if I really wanted to send the transfer. "Only it will make you overdrawn by........".

I had (in a senior moment) set up the payment from my 'second' current account (which I used to use for offsetting the mortgage). I asked him to make the payment from the other account and everything was fine.

On a more recent occasion, I had opened a new Halifax account and sent across £100 from First Direct simply to get some money into the account. Well the Halifax account wasn't opened yet. So payment was returned.

This is a "chargeable" transaction.

One morning, I saw on Internet banking that it had been returned. My first action was to phone Halifax to find WTH was going on. Then I got a phone call from FD. The guy simply asked me if I knew why it might have been returned. I simply told him the truth. "Sorry, I had been given the new account's sort code and number so sent them some money. I've since learned that the account is not officially open yet...."

I never got charged.

Now that's what I call customer service.