Alliance & Leicester (merged)

kirstle99

I was wondering the same thing, I have just sent of my 1st letter to A & L asking for the charges on 2 accounts, but from what i have read in this thread you have to fight tooth & nail every step of the way! Is there anyone who has been successful with A & L that could give us some positive cheer?

luscious_peach

Hi,
My husband opened a Premier Direct account with Alliance & Leicester last year. Unfortunately as we were transferring direct debits etc mistakes were made and we ended up getting massive charges. They refused to even discuss them with us and just sent us a standard letter basically saying that they would wait to see what the test case would say.

Anyway, we decided not to continue using the account as we felt that they were unreasonable, but decided not to close the account because we thought that we wouldn't have a case if we did so (is this right or not??)

They wrote to us and told us that they were closing our overdraft limit down (reasonable as we weren't paying anything in) but as we are broke we had to get another credit card account to pay it (£1000). Anyway, they also said that there was a £5 charge for not paying enough in to the account.

We moved in October and I have just found out today that my husband has not updated our address (I'll speak to him later!). Therefore, we've had no correspondence since December (had mail forwarded til then).

I was getting all our statements together for a claim for housing benefit (we are that broke we don't have enough to live on) and saw that alliance & leicester have been charging us £5 a month (which to be fair I don't think is unreasonable) but they have also been charging us £5 A DAY for being past our overdraft limit! We wouldn't be past our overdraft but for their charges! Anyway, it now stands at £277 pounds overdrawn and they are going to charge us again making it up to £499 overdrawn on 8th June.

What are we going to do?? We have no money to pay the charges! We would have to draw on credit cards to do so. We can't even afford new shoes for the kids. I feel sick just looking at it, I just don't know what to do. Are they being unreasonable in their charges - do we even have a case?

Please would someone give us some advice?
Thanks in advance.
Sam

luscious_peach

Doesn't anybody have any advice for us? We are really desperate - we don't know what our best course of action is...
Regards

littleredevil

Hi, I have been with Alliance & Leicester since late last year. Because they will not allow me to have a small overdraft I have gone overdrawn occasionally by a few pounds. This has resulted in charges. I recently incurred some charges for being overdrawn by £0.25 - they have told me from the website that I have incurred a £5 charge every day for being overdrawn. I have received a notification of the total by a message at the top of my online statement which I have to click through to see. I then investigated from looking at previous statements online and I know that I have paid charges before but these do not seem to be registered on the online statements. I emailed A&L who tell me that I have to pay £10 for a copy of statements which will list charges but surely these charges should appear on the online statements? Has anyone heard of this before? Thanks

TheGrump

My wife had an account with Alliance and Leicester ..
She got into overdraft, close to her £100 limit.
She cancelled all but one of her dds and sos, but one was quarterly so she forgot it.
Then that dd came out, sending her to about £125 overdrawn.
The building society then charged her £25 for a letter, to inform her, and then started adding overdrawn charges of £5 per day. So in the first week she was charged £60 for going £25 over her agreed limit.

Now my wife has an ostrich policy when it comes to debts, and doesn't tell me because I will get mad at her.

The question to fellow posters is are they right and just to charge £150 per month for an original debt of £125. They have sent her a letter detailing some claptrap about test cases to do with charges, but they also appear to have blocked her internet access to her account, so she cannot check her current position. They are also threatening a CCJ against her. Whilst I appreciate that she should not have gone over her limit, and should have remembered the dd, I feel their charges are scandalous and totally out of proportion.

The Grump

redmel1621

I think A&L have a disgraceful fees and charges policy (as do some other banks) This is what the court case is all about, establishing whether these kinds of fees are legitimate.
The best thing to do is to phone them asap and see if there is anything they can do with regards freezing, so they don't accrue and possibly getting some, or all, of it refunded....maybe you could come to an arrangement whereby you pay the £125 and possibly the £25 initial fee but ask them to withdraw everything else
Although they are scum (i'm referring to the policies here not the employees) so I wouldn't hold my breath but it'd worth a try

Mel x

PS I have just left them as a result of their arrange OD fees......

vij1366

ask your wife to call them ad ask her to stay calm and not to get angry,explain the situaTion and advise this is causing hardship and it was a genuine mistake .
within reason the account chrges may be dropped ,but if she goes in with a battle axe you stand no chance
also write in to
group customer relations
at their hq in narborough to look into it
majority of the times the cgrges are waived as the employees see
that it was an error
if you get no joy from the advisor insuist on a callback from thier tmanager
good luck
as for the internet blocked it could be other reasons unless they have quite clearly said they will close her access down

Pr3ppy87

Hey all , Just wondering if any of you can help me out . In march i went to france with my girlfriend. Over in france i had to make a withdrawl using my A&L visa card.

I came home from my holiday and checked my balance in an ATM and i still had money in my account (i dont check my balance very often something i need to change) , All of my banking is registered to my home address , so it wasnt until i returned home a few weeks a go that i found out that my A&L bank account was £25 overdrawn , i checked online and the transaction from france had taken a while to go through and thus leaving me overdrawn.

To my horror i had been charged at £3 a day for exceeding my overdraft as i dont have an overdraft on that account. EXCEEDING OVERDRAFT LIMIT FEE 18MAR-16APR 23 DAYS AT £3.00 a total of £69.00. On the 29th of may i put my last £100 into my account to clear off the overdraft and fees.

Thinking that would be the end of it and i would be able to come on MSE to see if i could get the money i had been charged back. However i checked my alliance and leicster just down and it appears that i have been charged a further EXCEEDING OVERDRAFT LIMIT FEE 17APR-18MAY 32 DAYS AT £3.00 totalling £96 leaving me over drawn again.

Im starting to panic now as the charges have made me overdrawn again and no doubt i will be getting charged the £3 a day overdraft fee. I have only just started a new job working all the hours that i can however i get paid at the end of july , which means i have no money to pay off the fees untill that point and no doubt the Exceeding overdraft fee will keep on ticking away , so my first pay cheque may not even break me even.

I was just wondering if anybody could advise me on what to do.
A) can i claim this exceeding overdraft fee back from Alliance and Leicster .
What can i do , if anything at the moment with no money to prevent the charges growing.

Any help would be appreciated.
Pr3ppy

Jay_Trotter

I have a current account with A&L. It's not my main current account. In March they wrote to me telling me that if I didn't deposit £500 into it each month they would be charging me a fiver a month, so I sent them a secure message asking to close the account . I also drained the account down to a zero balance.

They've recently contacted me saying the account has gone overdrawn due to this £5 fee, which has kicked in further £5 a day penalty fees. I've phoned them re-affirming my wish to close the account. They refuse, saying they can't close the account until the balance is cleared. I asked them to freeze the charges at least - again no. I asked to speak to a manager - none available but they would get one to call me back in 48 hours - they haven't.

My question is what to do now. Should I pay off the balance and close the account and then go through the process of reclaiming charges or should I do something else?

I've tried the FAQs here and can't seem to find one that covers this and the ombudsman said they couldn't do anything until the court case was resolved.

Conor_3

Pay off the balance and close the account. You have to go to a branch to close accounts as you have to hand over your cheque book and ATM card. Until they receive the chequebook and card, they can't close the account.