First Direct unauthorised overdraft £25 fee

JuicyJesus

glock339 wrote: »

Now Ive just received my Annual Summary from first direct & I have a "Formal overdraft arrangement" fee of £25 . I can't for the life of me remember how these charges work, so looks like I'm going to have to waste the sunny afternoon reading up & checking my old statements. I'm seriously considering just ditching FD for a more simple straight forward account.

Other banks will have similar fees. Some a lot less straightforward than "you exceed your overdraft or bounce stuff, you get charged xyz fee".

Or, if you don't understand the fee, you could just call them.

meer53

A formal overdraft arrangement fee is just that. It's a fee charged for renewing your overdraft.

glock339

I've just been through all last years statements & I only used my £250 overdraft once for 3 days and went £173 into it, so I did not exceed the limit at all. The Annual Summary definitely says this fee is for a "Formal Overdraft Arrangement" so dose this mean they are going to charge me this every year???

I just found another letter from them dated 12 April 2012 informing me they will be formally arranging another years overdraft for me, but it also states: "As you have not requested a formal or informal overdraft facility in the last six months, you wont have to pay an arrangement fee for your facility". What on earth is going on here??? I no other banks have their own charges but I feel that I've never had the same kind of problems understanding what I'm being charged for the way I seem to with FD. I've messaged them to try & find out what is going on. If they are going to charge me £25 a year for an overdraft I use about 3 days a year I'll be leaving them.

meer53

Fees are pre notified every month. How often do you check your account ? If you've only just found a letter from April, then i would suggest you keep a closer eye on any communication from them.

Gromitt

To be honest, they do state in the T&Cs that they may charge to renew an overdraft at the end of a term in which you have used your overdraft. You can then either accept the charge, or reject the charge. If you reject, your account will not have an overdraft.

So if you don't want the charge, tell them you no longer want the overdraft. However, it'll cost you about £35 each time if you don't have it, and it sounds like you do use it.

TheEffect

First Direct are amazing.

I've had a few very bad months financially being a university student, but have just managed to get myself back on the straight and narrow.

I did however manage to bounce one more further direct debit and received £25 fees, as well as First Direct reporting to the CRA that I missed a payment.

After sending a message yesterday via secure message regarding the CRA, I received a phone call from a lovely man today who spoke about my finances and as a gesture of good will, amended the missed payment sent to the CRA.

They truly are a great bank.

Loopgames

Something similar happened to me a few months ago with Santander except I had no overdraft agreement with them and a company charged me for something I wanted cancelled. I just thought That since there was no money in the account then they couldn't take the money for it. So forgot about it only to find that the account got overdrawn and I was charged a penalty for it by the bank.

I was horrified that the bank would allow someone to access money when I didn't have it in the account so complained to them and asked them why they did it when I never agreed on an overdraft. They apologised and I got a £15 for the pain! As well as the company refunding 3 months worth of costs and Santander removing the fine. I was pleasantly surprised.

katejo

glock339 wrote: »

I've just been through all last years statements & I only used my £250 overdraft once for 3 days and went £173 into it, so I did not exceed the limit at all. The Annual Summary definitely says this fee is for a "Formal Overdraft Arrangement" so dose this mean they are going to charge me this every year???

I just found another letter from them dated 12 April 2012 informing me they will be formally arranging another years overdraft for me, but it also states: "As you have not requested a formal or informal overdraft facility in the last six months, you wont have to pay an arrangement fee for your facility". What on earth is going on here??? I no other banks have their own charges but I feel that I've never had the same kind of problems understanding what I'm being charged for the way I seem to with FD. I've messaged them to try & find out what is going on. If they are going to charge me £25 a year for an overdraft I use about 3 days a year I'll be leaving them.

Ring them to check the position. I have had the 250 fee free overdraft for several years and it gets reviewed annually. I always use it very sensibly and rarely go over £100 but it is very useful. I suspect that they would withdraw it if I regularly came close to the 250 or exceeded it. I have never been charged anything.

glock339

Fees are pre notified every month. How often do you check your account ? If you've only just found a letter from April, then i would suggest you keep a closer eye on any communication from them.

Actually I did read the letter in April, but because it said: "As you have not requested a formal or informal overdraft facility in the last six months, you wont have to pay an arrangement fee for your facility" I just put it in the filing cabinet & forgot all about it. I was in the final few months of my 3 year house renovating project working crazy hours day & night so sitting down for a few hours & taking the time to work out complex bank charging procedures wasn't exactly high on the agenda. Basically if I got any letters saying that I WASN'T being charged anything it got put in the filing cabinet for future reference.

Anyway I secure messaged them yesterday to hopefully get to the bottom of it, still waiting on a reply though.

glock339

Well F.D got back to me & basically sent me a copy & paste of their T&Cs and also said that I used my overdraft in March 2011. So I replied back to them pointing out to them that this was more than 6 ago & asked more importantly, why dose the Overdraft Arrangement letter from them dated 12 April 2012 read:

In the "YOUR OVERDRAFT SECTION": "As you have not requested a formal or informal overdraft facility in the last six months, you wont have to pay an arrangement fee for your facility"

In the "OVERDRAFT ARRANGEMENT FEES SECTION": "we charge fees for arranging formally or informally if we do this more than once in a six month period. The terms quoted show that you won't have to pay an arrangement fee for your facility"

They replied saying they would get back to me before the 1st of next month so I'm still waiting.