HSBC Overdraft Charges - HELP PLEASE

FarForest

My 'darling' daughter has gone overdrawn, unauthorised, on numerous occasions during the September/October statement period and not been charged anything for the privilege. At the end of the period she was still overdrawn.

On her October/November statement period she continued overdrawing on the basis that she wasn't being charged and she knew that she would be able to clear the £240 overdrawn before the statement was generated, which she has done.

HOWEVER, HSBC have now charged £150 plus interest for this one month and will remove it from her account on 3rd December. She has got a weekly paid job that would now enable her to stay in the black, but this will force her to go overdrawn again.

Yes she knows she was foolish, but I think HSBC contributed to her downfall in three respects:
1 - They allowed her to continue to use her cash card in ATM's even though she had an authorised overdraft.
2 - They didn't charge anything for going overdrawn on the September/October statement, which led her to believe it was OK.
3 - They didn't notify her that charges were liable until after the event.

The help we need is to formulate a reasoned argument to the try to get them to reduce/cancel the charges, maximum of £240 overdrawn attracts a charge of £150. That's worse than a payday loan!

If they won't reduce/cancel the charge can we reasonably expect to get them to consider repayment over a period of time instead taking the money in one lot?

Cheers
Steve

Tixy

Hi

If this is a first 'offence' then HSBC they will often agree to a refund (or cancelling) of charges or a partial refund just by popping in branch. You might want to try that as an option first. I usually find the staff pretty good - and would imagine you'd get at least a 50% reduction by this method from my past experiance.

If that doesn't work then it might be worth a written complaint. The only way they'd be likey to agree a repayment plan is if she is no longer using that as her main account - and has a new bank account elsewhere instead. Then she could offer a monthly repayment plan. This could affect her credit file though (although it will probably already have been affected by the unauthorised od for 2 months).