Alliance & Leicester (merged)

tomstickland

No letters.
From what I've read the charges are still unfair since they don't reflect the cost to the bank. I'm going to try and see. Going to close all my A&L accounts anyway.

MarkyMarkD

Unfair charges - schmarges. £5 a month is in no way an unreasonable cost for running a current account.

spider1_2

Hi,

I have just recently changed banks to the Alliance & Leicester and set up a standing order to a joint account (also with alliance & leicester) for the 1st of the month (as i get payed on the last working day of the month) to pay for the mortgage (due out on 1st) and other bills. on my statement the the funds didnt go into the joint account until the 3rd which was the same day as the mortgage came out but on the statement the funds had already been transfered and were available. The mortgage DD was then returned, with the mortgage company charging me the £30. I phoned Alliance & Leicester to ask why the DD had been returned unpaid and got told that the funds need to be in the account and cleared atleast the day before!

Does anyone know if i can get this money back?

Chris.

bushey_2

Hi there AGAIN,

just a quick question...A&L charges its customers £5 a day for every single day your account is overdrawn. For instance I was overdrawn by 15p (!!!) for about 14days and had to pay £120 for their crazy charge. Is there any way to try and reclaim that money or that also includes the case going on at the moment, so that kind of thing is on hold as well?

I would really appreciate your help and advice in that matter.

Many thanks in advance.

Regards,
Jacob

doodlez1612

tomstickland wrote: »

No letters.
From what I've read the charges are still unfair since they don't reflect the cost to the bank. I'm going to try and see. Going to close all my A&L accounts anyway.

Tom - I expect you've got the same situation as me in that you have an online account eg premier direct or something, which A&L claim to not send letters out but warn you on your online statement for 1 month before actually taking the money. It's in the T&Cs so I don't think you'll have much joy from them.

Bushey - I believe the current rule is that they can give you bank error refunds (eg theoretically my situation of charges for exceeding my overdraft when I was well within it - altho no joy yet) but not refunds for charges that weren't a mistake on their part and are just "unfair".In your case it sounds like it is the latter so you will have to submit your case and wait for the courts I'm afraid.
See: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/oft-bank-charges#other

sparky10_uk

I have recently asked the Alliance & Leicester for my bank charge records using Martins template letter, they eventually sent me a returned letter asking for £10 so they can retrieive the data....I presume this is "normal" for banks to ask for this fee, judgin from some of the comments it seems banks will drag their heels on this for as long as they can get awy with it?

Orford

they eventually sent me a returned letter asking for £10 so they can retrieive the data....I presume this is "normal" for banks to ask for this fee,

Under the DPA, they are entitled to charge a maximum of £10 for your data.

See here:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/bank-charges#step2

MarkyMarkD

bushey Claims for charges of this nature are on hold at the moment.

Why on earth could you not pay the 14p into your account rather than incurring this charge? Do you never check your balance? Why on earth didn't you have an authorised overdraft limit of at least a few £100?

doodlez1612 You don't just get an online statement, you get an e-mail telling you that the online statement has been produced at the time that the fees are advance warned. So there's never any reason to go overdrawn because of unexpected charges.

bushey_2

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

bushey Claims for charges of this nature are on hold at the moment.

Why on earth could you not pay the 14p into your account rather than incurring this charge? Do you never check your balance? Why on earth didn't you have an authorised overdraft limit of at least a few £100?

Because I was abroad back then and did not know about £5-a-day-charge from A&L anyway.

Thanks for your help!:j

PROLIANT

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

Unfair charges - schmarges. £5 a month is in no way an unreasonable cost for running a current account.

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I would have to disagree, £5 is allot for a current account, ok charge the wealthy for banking but not "normal" everyday below £25k / year working people, I think it should be an option maybe to say £5 per month would get you low cost mobile phone insurance or whatever, but it should be an option not an enforced policy, your salary should reflect this and higher earners would not miss paying a fee for there banking, I am not just saying this because I am on a lower salary than the above quoted but I think there should be some sort of balance here, we are putting our money in the banks and if it wasn’t for our small investments the bank would not exist.<o:p></o:p>
Sorry if I come across somewhat aggravated but this has always been a bugbear of mine for a while now.<o:p></o:p>
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