Alliance & Leicester (merged)

ostgerman

Hello

I had been with Debt management and alliance & leicester transfer for another deparment of securty and investigation to paid my monthly to get the overdraft off from my premier account of alliance & leicester and after this they closedown.
I would like to know if i can claim any bank charges from this bank???

I wait for your answer.

Butterfliesarepretty

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

I'm assuming that you have a Premier Direct account because you haven't said otherwise. (If you had a normal Premier account you'd get printed statements which definitely state the amount of any charges and the date they will be collected).

If you are not getting monthly e-mails telling you to look at your statement there are two possible reasons:

- the e-mail address you have registered for your account is wrong, or you've since changed e-mail address; or
- you have some sort of spam blocking (or your ISP does) which is blocking the A&L e-mails.

I find it very far-fetched to believe that there is any other reason for you not getting these e-mails; I've had them without fail every month since I've had a Premier Direct account.

Your belief that a bank would stop you withdrawing £10 from an ATM the day before a charge was due is, frankly, ridiculous. If they did this they would get thousands of complaints. It could be that you had a credit hitting the account the same day, ready to meet the cash withdrawal. It could be that you were going to spend your £10 in cash, then go home and transfer £10 online into your current account from your savings account. There are any number of scenarios why you should be allowed to withdraw those funds.

And as I've already said, you would already have been notified that you were due to pay the charges. You've even admitted this yourself - but just claim that the "due date" was blank. Here's a helpful suggestion - if you know £5 in charges is coming out, don't spend your last £5.

Reducing available funds 16 days before a fee is due is the same as charging the fee without notice - not an acceptable way to behave.

Strangely, banks expect their customers to read their e-mails and look at their statements, or to reap the consequences if they don't do so.

The debit card scenario is completely different - the available balance is reduced after you've spent the money to stop you spending it twice, not in anticipation of a future charge which you can legitimately fund the account to meet.

I get charged £5 a day too Last month got charged £25 for being overdrawn for five days. I have the online premier account and it only tells me my charges when I login. I get no emails, my profile is set up correctly. The online account balance is always different to what the cash machine says. Eg I took £10 out of the cash machine yesterday (sunday) - its still not showing as debited yet (which it should be) eg one of my debits from a cash machine was made after 12 noon (£40) and after my months wages went in. Yet when I checked it online the wage had gone in AFTER my debit was made. When I queried it they said its the way the online system shows the balance but I WILL NOT BE CHARGED for being over my overdraft - when I clearly wasn't because wages go in before 12noon every month.:rolleyes:

Its so confusing and thats why people find it hard to watch their balance and stop it from being overdrawn.

doodlez1612

moneysavingchicken wrote: »

By the way, does A&L subsidize you in some way to compensate you for spending so much time and energy defending them and trying to make their customers beleive that any faults are due to themselves or their internet providors? Are you an evangelist for A&L?

Well said.

borgbaiter

hi

unless your claim is approaching 6 years it is advisable to wait for the court case to conclude.

however if the claim is going to go beyond 6 years you will need to make a court claim to protect your claim as it will become time barred under statue if you dont. unfortunately this will involve additional cost and should the case go in favour of the banks this will be lost.



Borgbaiter

Amethyst30

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

And as I've already said, you would already have been notified that you were due to pay the charges. You've even admitted this yourself - but just claim that the "due date" was blank. Here's a helpful suggestion - if you know £5 in charges is coming out, don't spend your last £5.

I'm so glad you live in a perfect world, but if you do ever fancy a trip to the real world try being a single mum, full time working btw before I get any snipey remarks, where I count every penny and a mistake on their part, plus their horrendously ineffective business processes that allow them to take out money whenever (for the record I have learnt that when companies claim for payments actually the bank can take up to three weeks to release it should they choose), which means you cant properly plan based on their "balance", resulting in charges that take you over your limit, then charges for being over your limit, then charges for continuing to be over your limit, then charges for failed DD, then charges for payments they decide to pay even though you have no money now, oh and of course that payment now contributes to your dire overdraft...........I fail to see how I can recover from that at the rate they charge, I have no spare money to make up for their insensitive incompetence. And I doubt that I am the only one in this position. When I have a last £5, sometimes my choice is food for my kids or petrol to get to work........now try telling me I should give it to the bank.

Perhaps it would help your arguement if you werent the only one on here who can actually claim to receive an email with regards to statements/charges. Instead of practically accusing people of lying, I would consider the fact it is probably another failed business process compounded by inadequate training to unmotivated staff resulting in poor customer service.

MarkyMarkD

Moneysavingchicken I'm not paid to be an evangelist for A&L; I'm a satisfied A&L current account customer having banked with them for over 10 years. Threads like this need some balance - there's no value in lots of "I've been treated badly" repetition.

borgbaiter I'm glad you understand e-mail filtering. A huge proportion of people rely on hotmail or similar, and their mail is filtered without them even realising. They don't bother to "white list" e-mails from their banks or other people they actually should want to hear from. And then they claim to never receive e-mails.

Or they change e-mail address and fail to notify their bank.

I don't see why you think either of those don't apply to many people who claim not to have received e-mails - it's far more likely than a systemic failure leading random individual customers not to receive e-mails.

The order of transactions within a day is irrelevant so it's irrelevant if they change during the course of a day. Funds need to be there by the close of business the previous day or they are too late to meet a payment out - so why are you worried about the order within a day?

shawtj2 I've already discussed the e-mail issue. But your charges show online for 16 days before they are debited to the account - plenty of time to notice them. Not checking your account online at least weekly is pretty silly tbh.

Your available balance online should match your ATM available balance.

As I've said before the order of transactions on a day doesn't matter. And whilst funds should be in the account by the business day before money goes out, this doesn't seem to apply to salary credits - A&L must process these before anything else. (Presumably the same applies to other inbound BACS credits, but I'm not as sure about that).

Amethyst I'd never snipe at anyone for being a single parent - please point me to one of my >6,000 posts where I've done so. Don't judge people when you are trying to complain about them judging you!

I don't understand your comment about "allowing them to take money out whenever" - you should keep a record of payments you have made, or are due to make, and tick them off when they go through your statement.

Whilst I feel for your financial situation, it isn't banks' role in life to provide free loans to people. I haven't told you to "give your last £5 to the bank"; I've suggested that spending £5 when you know £5 in charges is to be debited tomorrow isn't a prudent way to conduct your finances.

All I'm doing in this thread is to suggest reasons why (for example) people may not have got their e-mails. Blaming the bank is an easy cop-out; checking whether other factors may involved may achieve a better outcome.

My advice boils down to:

- check that you are not, inadvertently, filtering e-mails from your bank;
- check that you have given your bank your up-to-date e-mail address;
- check your online statementing at least weekly which will give you at least 9 days' notice of impending charges;
- as far as you are able make sure money is there to meet charges, so you don't get into a vicious circle of charges leading to charges.

Frankly, I think those are all useful pieces of advice, irrespective of which bank you use and what level of charges that bank imposes.

I hope you agree.

dawn0510

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?

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.

i have internet banking, do not receive paper statements and i have NEVER received an email from alliance and leicester...

i got hit this month with a very small charge that i had no knowledge of because i hadnt checked my online account for a little while - only bank ministatement and updated MS money using that as it allows for bills blah blah.. as a result 5 days overdrawn, and have just looked online and by some miracle noticed i am due a £30 charge - to be fair i dont usually even look at the "charges due to be applied" as its usually 7p intrest or something...

phoned them up... theyve removed the charges instantly...

but as far as the email goes.. never ever recieved one in five years
and no.. im not inadvertantly filtering there emails...

MarkyMarkD

On the first page when you log into internet banking, it says "Your email address is xxxxxx@xxxxxx.co.uk. Would you like to update your email address?"

Without wishing to repeat myself, can you humour me by checking that this shows your correct, current, e-mail address? And then tell me whether you use hotmail or an ISP which filters e-mails before you even see them? And then tell me whether you have checked your junk mail folder on hotmail, or wherever your ISP puts junk mails?

And if none of those apply, I suggest that you contact A&L asap and complain that you haven't had your statement reminders each month.

If there is a problem, telling people on here about it (as lots of people seem to be doing) isn't going to resolve it - telling A&L might!

I think your £30 must have been 6 days overdrawn as 6 x £5 = £30.

doodlez1612

dim wrote: »

phoned them up... theyve removed the charges instantly...

Lucky !!!!!!. They've been messing me around with this for months, all the time more and more charges have been accumulating. Bloody £150 now they owe me.

snugglemunchkin

Hi, i was hoping that someone can please help me with my A&L bank recharges.
I had the details of all my charges as i had only had the account 6 mths,so i did not need to use letter template 1 to request them.
So my 1st letter i sent off was requesting them to pay me back all the charges,but i think i done a mistake by sending it to the address below-

Customer Contact Centre
Bootle
Merseyside
GIR 0AA

Is that address only to be used to request statements? if so,should i resend this letter (as iv heard nothing within 14 days?)to the other address shown??
Or just send my 2nd letter to the other address?

ALLIANCE & LEICESTER PLC
CARLTON PARK
NARBOROUGH
LEICESTER
LE19 0AL

Please can someone show me the right way to be reclaiming as im getting confused on what to do now.(and with being 8 mths pregnant,this is quite easily done)thank you.