Has your bank closed your account?

hunnybunny12

Hi All,

Claiming back bank charges Part I:

I claimed back successfully £200.00 worth of bank charges in April 2006 from First Direct. It was a pretty easy process they responded after my first letter and offered me full compensation. Have banked with them since, no probs until Sept this year.

Claiming back bank charges Part II:

To cut a long story short, I was away from my home for 4 weeks looking after my Grandpa, and I went over my overdraft by £11.02 due to 2 slightly larger direct debits than I expected. This then snowballed over the four weeks and I ended up with £320.00 worth of charges!!! Because I was away from home I obviously did not receive the letters and was not aware of the charges until it was too late. I did try contacting customer services and explaining the situation, but to be honest the customer service asssistant was just plain rude.

So I sent another letter (same as the first, template from the Bank Action Group) with an additional paragraph about the situation I was in. I recieved a letter from First Direct yesterday saying;

• they did not agree that my bank charges are unlawful or excessive (£320 in month month!!!!???), :rolleyes:
• however, they will refund all of my charges :rotfl:
• but as I had not kept to the terms and conditions of my account they were closing my account on Dec 5th and under no circumstances was I to apply to bank with them or any HSBC service again!:mad:

To be honest, I was about to shut the account anyway as they are starting to charge just for having the account and I only use it for Direct Debits. However, I could have been really stuck if this was my only account.

It seems that claiming back your charges once is ok, but twice is not.....

Hunnybunny x

POSSETTE

my friend is stuck..she wants to claim back her charges from Abbey,approx £2000 worth..but she cant get another bank account! she tried natwest but they refused her last month,even though they both get paid into bank,have regular jobs,but thier history 7-9 years ago was a little bad(nothing too bad).where can she go to get an umbrella account just in case??

whywasntIbornrich?

Hello, I am a newbie, I just found your site tonight. I had heard briefly about claiming back excessive bank charges and I have started to read the replies on here, but there are so many,lol.

I need to claim back my charges, I noticed in the letters I have read so far, everybody is good with their money.(such small amounts you all owe,lol).
Our overdraft is £1825, and we have been kept over the limit at around £2000+ by our bank charges for oooo well at least 9 months.. we have paid enough money in and the bank charges have raised us over the amount every month.

We asked if they would raise the limit, but they wont, so we(me and hubby) are going to have claim back our charges, £90 per month, to get our money down on the overdraft limit..
If they close our account, we will not be able to pay the overdraft back in 30....40 days , without getting a loan.. with another bank, company. who may not give us one when they see how awful our current account is.. Please can anyone offer any nice suggestions, to help us to find a way out of this..


Gilly xxx

cazziebo

Okay - about to do the MCOL.

I've since had another £150 in bank charges (hopefully no more - got a lot more organised now since finding this board)

Do I add the new charges onto the MCOL figure?

Caz

cazziebo

POSSETTE wrote:

my friend is stuck..she wants to claim back her charges from Abbey,approx £2000 worth..but she cant get another bank account! she tried natwest but they refused her last month,even though they both get paid into bank,have regular jobs,but thier history 7-9 years ago was a little bad(nothing too bad).where can she go to get an umbrella account just in case??

I just got the card through today for a Co op Cashminder account. Basic account but get an electron card. This is my parachute for when Nationwide close my account. Organised it all over phone and girl was very nice.

(Possette - great signature!)

Geek_2

whywasntIbornrich? wrote:

Hello, I am a newbie, I just found your site tonight. I had heard briefly about claiming back excessive bank charges and I have started to read the replies on here, but there are so many,lol.

I need to claim back my charges, I noticed in the letters I have read so far, everybody is good with their money.(such small amounts you all owe,lol).
Our overdraft is £1825, and we have been kept over the limit at around £2000+ by our bank charges for oooo well at least 9 months.. we have paid enough money in and the bank charges have raised us over the amount every month.

We asked if they would raise the limit, but they wont, so we(me and hubby) are going to have claim back our charges, £90 per month, to get our money down on the overdraft limit..
If they close our account, we will not be able to pay the overdraft back in 30....40 days , without getting a loan.. with another bank, company. who may not give us one when they see how awful our current account is.. Please can anyone offer any nice suggestions, to help us to find a way out of this..


Gilly xxx

Gilly,

Good luck with this. I know how hard it is when you first start trying to look at options!

First I would suggest you look HERE. From here, try working out a plan of action. That is where I started...

Also I would suggest opening a basic account somewhere else (with no overdraft facility - often you also get a payment card).

The way I have done it (since February '06 when I had my "I owe HOW much?!? moment") was to open another account and live from there. My pay still went into old account (to stop them closing it once regular payments stopped). In fact I actually had two new accounts - one which bills and regular payments went out of - the other which I lived out of for food etc.

I worked out a budget (at least a first approximation). After I got paid I transferred the minimal amount I needed over to the new account. The idea was that I reduced the amount owed on the overdraft by a bit each month.

It has taken 10 months, but I have gotten the overdraft paid off - mostly through working stupid hours for overtime.

Now that I do not owe Lloyds any money (although I still owe plenty elsewhere!), I am now adding up the numbers and writing the letter... I will be asking for around £1700, which will make a noticeable dent in my total debts!

What I am trying to say is, in my humble opinion (others may not agree), try to get yourself in control first. So if the bank does say - well we are closing your account - you can say "Who needs you anyway!"

This worked for me, I do not know your circumstances though. For more advice you could try the Debt Free Wannabe forum. But definately the first thing to do is to sit down and work out exactly what you owe and to whom.

Hope that helps,

Geek

Jackiec09

Hi, I'm new at this and have sent some initial letters away.

Nationwide
Barclays
MBNA

I have a few more to send. Can anyone let me know what banks tend to shut down your account just for asking for your own money back? Thanks.
I'll keep you posted on how things are going.

furndire

Definately Nationwide does.

Edna_Bucket_2

Jackiec09 wrote:

...Can anyone let me know what banks tend to shut down your account just for asking for your own money back? Thanks.
I'll keep you posted on how things are going.

As geek has said in the helpful previous post, it is best to get in control yourself first, and perhaps work on the basis that "they all do." Then you can plan ahead and stay in control.

Please also remember that whatever else anyone feels the banks have done wrong, they have a perfect right (as we all do) in a democratic state not to trade with anyone they don't want to any more.

Obviously, any attempt to try and wreck anyone's ability to bank with someone else in future is another matter...

Edinburghlass_2

New thread in Budgeting and Current Accounts concerning Basic Bank Account so its worth looking there for your "parachute" account.