Alliance & Leicester (merged)

Princess_Jane

radish_radish wrote: »

A and L said they would refund my account but haven't. Has anyone else experienced this?

Yeah I spoke to someone on the 17th who agreed fees would be refunded as I was being charged due to a disputed transaction but they are still showing on my account.

Not sure how long it should take to remove them..

evilgiraf

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MarkyMarkD

A&L do not levy under-funding charges for a LONG time after you stop funding. And they notify you before they start charging as well, giving you chance to start funding again.

I would suggest that you did more than just forget about closing the account.

I don't believe that A&L did not contact you before charging you £5 in the first place, and I don't expect them to refund their charges.

evilgiraf

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

A&L do not levy under-funding charges for a LONG time after you stop funding. And they notify you before they start charging as well, giving you chance to start funding again.

I would suggest that you did more than just forget about closing the account.

I don't believe that A&L did not contact you before charging you £5 in the first place, and I don't expect them to refund their charges.

There were no official notes stating that there would be any impending charges applied to my account.
Can I just reiterate that it was a charge applied by A&L that caused me to become overdrawn in the first place.

MarkyMarkD

A&L notify all charges before they take them, by including an "impending charges" line on your online statement.

If you don't bother to log onto your internet banking, then obviously you won't know about that. But that's how you are pre-notified of charges.

The standard "advertisements" as you call them are notices to read your online statements; if you did so, you'd have known about charges around 10 days BEFORE they were debited to your account - ample time to have cleared the first £5 charge and closed your account.

When I say "you did more than just forget about closing the account", I mean that you didn't just forget about closing the account, you also ignored a series of monthly e-mails from A&L telling you to read your statement.

It's irrelevant whether a charge causes you to go overdrawn. You went overdrawn because you failed to fund the account in accordance with the account's terms and conditions for a number of consecutive months.

Princess_Jane

Princess_Jane wrote: »

Yeah I spoke to someone on the 17th who agreed fees would be refunded as I was being charged due to a disputed transaction but they are still showing on my account.

Not sure how long it should take to remove them..

spoke to someone today and apparently the right form hadn't been filled in.

Have to say the last few times I've rang A&L the call centre staff have been really nice.

I don't know if this is just me hitting lucky or something more formal within the company as I've had some horrible run ins with them, though having worked in call centres I know there are always bad apples.

evilgiraf

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

A&L notify all charges before they take them, by including an "impending charges" line on your online statement.
If you don't bother to log onto your internet banking, then obviously you won't know about that. But that's how you are pre-notified of charges.

The standard "advertisements" as you call them are notices to read your online statements; if you did so, you'd have known about charges around 10 days BEFORE they were debited to your account - ample time to have cleared the first £5 charge and closed your account.

When I say "you did more than just forget about closing the account", I mean that you didn't just forget about closing the account, you also ignored a series of monthly e-mails from A&L telling you to read your statement.

It's irrelevant whether a charge causes you to go overdrawn. You went overdrawn because you failed to fund the account in accordance with the account's terms and conditions for a number of consecutive months.

You're right - I may not have logged onto my online banking for a period of time, however, as the account had no balance and no s/o's, I had no reason to do so. But yes, I see your point about the terms and conditions.

Surely at £5 per day per customer, the bank could have implemented a system of chekcing that they are not cause of their customer's woes?
I don't think that I am being unreasonable.

MarkyMarkD

I'm not sure how applying a £5 under-funding charge to an account with a zero balance would lead to an 18p overdraft, but that's probably academic.

It's irrelevant to express a fixed charge as a percentage rate on the overdraft balance. The charge is for being in breach of the overdraft limit (in your case, zero), not an interest charge.

No test has been applied to whether £5 is "fair" or "unfair". All I am trying to point out is that you would have not incurred it, had you checked your statement when advised to - just once a month.

evilgiraf

Well, let's agree to disagree. Also, the remaining balance after interest was £4.82.

maintenanceman

Evilgraft I would you ignore MarkymarkD and he/she seems to have the answers to everything but knows nothing about the details of your case or any others for that matter, which renders MarkymarkDs' comments irrelevant.
I don't think you will get a usefull post that will help you, from MarkyMarkD, regarding your issue so don't be swayed or put off complaining and requesting a refund of the charges.
I have had a very similar issue as you. I have had a zero balance statement only to find an overdraught fee on a following statement. The A&L paper statements and online statements do not reflect actual account information accurately per date. They seem to give you a paper statement with one amount, but your online account will be different. it seems like the paper statement is behind the actual account statement by one month. So your paper account reads zero but they have applied fees from one month previous. Log in one month later and you have accumlated account overdraght fees or non funding fees.
There have been some successfull challenges to A&L so go for it Evilgraft. Like I said every circumstance has its own individual and sometimes personal issues, which cannot be fully explained on a forum, so assuming, ignorant and unhelpful replies should be ignored