I'm so upset - Bank have left us screwed

lil_me

I have known DSS offices to call banks and insist that they do not take charges/debts from any means tested benefit, but not any others that I know of, but it's worth calling anyway if they may be able to do something, even if it's sorting counter payments/payment into another accont, maybe a relatives etc for the rest

katecheshire

gilly1964 wrote:

I can explain a bit how it works as I used to work in this environment.

Your account says current balance 200, available balance 200.

The amount for you is £200, but during the day you use your debit card for £30 in one shop, £22 in another and then take £20 from the cashpoint.

The cashpoint receipt will now show current balance 180, available balance 180. The cashpoint does not yet know that you have spent £52 in the shops.

Overnight the computer system updates your available balance to remove the £52, so your available balance is now £128, but your current balance will still show as £180. This is because what has come off your account available balance is a Visa (Debit Card) Authorisation. The funds have not yet left your account as the physical withdrawal takes two days, therefore two days after you have spent in the shops your current and available balance should both say £128, presuming you have spent nothing else and no direct debits etc have come out.

To summarise, if you use cash machines as your most up to date source of information always check the available balance as that is what you really have.

HTH and does not sound like a lecture as it wan't meant to be.

Gill

I've had this happen where I have made a payment over the phone, checked my online balance, transferred money to cover the payment and then had something else bounced and charged for that - even though the money showed as being in my account. No-one from Nationwide could explain how or why or where 'my' money was in between leaving one account and going into the other, and despite writing to them I got no joy - just the stock blah blah letter. That was my 'final straw moment' which made me start the reclaiming process.:mad:

Toto

I just filed the court papers on saturday, reclaiming 1200 worth of charges which all came out within a year. Abbey are the worst for this. They wrote to me offering me £600 as a goodwill gesture (goodwill would have been not kicking me when I was down and charging £300+ in a month for things which should have been paid if they hadn't taken the money).

It felt great filing those papers with the court, for once it wasn't me on the receiving end). In your case, I would pop into the bank and ask why they have charged you the old £30+ when their new charges are now £12. These charges are unlawful and they know it. Tell them if they wish to avoid the agro of you taking them to court (costing them fees and interest too) they should remove all charges and refund your money today. Get tough and tell them you know the law. I am doing just that today with cahoot who have just charged me a total of £90 for going 3p over my overdraft limit.

shameless-about-money

You need to quote this too -

Social Security Administration Act 1992
Miscellaneous
Certain benefit to be inalienable **

187- Subject to the provisions of this Act, every assignment of, or charge on-
(a) benefit as defined in section 122 of the Contributions and Benefits Act;
(b) any income-related benefit; or
(c) child benefit,
and every agreement to assign or charge such benefit shall be void; and, on the bankruptcy of the beneficiary, such benefit shall not pass to any trustee or other person acting on behalf of his creditors

this should hlep you get your benefits back if swallowed up in bank charges

misspoppy

Good Luck this morning with the bank and DSS etc.

Make sure you open a second account for all your benefits to go into and that way they can't do this to you again, also try to move your wages to a new account and ask to make arrangements with the Abbey to pay what you owe.

dollydoodah

I have posted this before but here it is again, to stop benefit money being swallowed up in charges.

This is from the CAG website, written by one of the mods, but I am sure they won't mind me posting here:


RIGHT OF APPROPRIATION



Dear Sir/Madam,

ACCOUNT NUMBER: xxxxxxxxx

I am writing to inform you that I am due to have a Tax Credit payment of £xxx paid into my account on xx/xx/xx, and I wish to use my first right of appropriation for this money, for the following purposes;

Rent £xx
Utilities bills £xx
Housekeeping money £xx

I will withdraw the money on the day that it is deposited for the above use, and I would be grateful if you would ensure that any other payments out of my account do not interfere with this withdrawal.


Yours faithfully,


[signature]


[print name]

Change the bits in red to fit your circumstances. Ideally you should give them 7 days notice.

Hope that helps someone.

*Sparkle*_3

gilly1964 wrote:

I can explain a bit how it works as I used to work in this environment.

Your account says current balance 200, available balance 200.

The amount for you is £200, but during the day you use your debit card for £30 in one shop, £22 in another and then take £20 from the cashpoint.

The cashpoint receipt will now show current balance 180, available balance 180. The cashpoint does not yet know that you have spent £52 in the shops.

Overnight the computer system updates your available balance to remove the £52, so your available balance is now £128, but your current balance will still show as £180. This is because what has come off your account available balance is a Visa (Debit Card) Authorisation. The funds have not yet left your account as the physical withdrawal takes two days, therefore two days after you have spent in the shops your current and available balance should both say £128, presuming you have spent nothing else and no direct debits etc have come out.

To summarise, if you use cash machines as your most up to date source of information always check the available balance as that is what you really have.

HTH and does not sound like a lecture as it wan't meant to be.

Gill

thanks gill,

but i mostly use online banking to check my balance, and as soon as i've made a payment it reduces the available balance, i never take the figures from the current balance i always take figures from the available balance.
Like last week on a saturday i checked my balance on line, then i checked again on sunday and it said £30 more than sunday but nothing was paid in?? how is that?
very confused

raq

joeblack066 wrote:

In the immediate meantime, do you have anything that you could sell quickly to raise some cash to live on? I have been in this absolutely broke state a fair few times, and when you sit down with a clear head you may find that there are things you can do;
Food...........Plan all the meals you can with whatever is in the cupboard/ fridge/ freezer. Check out whats lurking at the back!
Cash..........Any DVD's, CD's that you don't need anymore that you can take to a secondhand shop? Unwanted Jewellery? Midweek car boot sales that you can stand?
I really sympathise, and I hope that with the advice you've been given on this forum, you get this sorted.

I agree joeblack.

We where absolutely broke first week of december and decided to do a boot sale which I walked away with £77 for 2 hours work. I am now also on e-bay and cannot believe the amount of items I have on there to sell. We are now planning our money each week a whole lot better than it use to be and YES I am enjoying BUDGETING. We have got a little debt but it's a lot to pay out each month especially when you are watching every penny.

raq

have this helped anyone in the past.. ???

I wish I knew about this last year when I had charges taken out the day I have my wftc paid in. Really screwed us up for the whole week

Bakeybadoo

Thanks everyone, well 8:30am we were on the phone to the Debt Centre at Abbey and we asked them to hold the charges until my husbands wages came in on Friday (with no intention of leaving anything in the account by then for it to be swiped by the charges we disagree with) and they said that they could hold the charges but would only let us withdraw £111 out of the £190 that we expected today, at the branch, as that was taking off what went out today (from before and during the weekend) that we'd spent.

We called back after sitting on it and realising that something is seriously amiss on our account. Let me explain - it relates to the example I used here, reply #21....

Ok, my husband got paid £290 on Friday. We had a Standing Order taken out the same day for £100 which left us with £190.

We withdrew £90 from the cashpoint over the weekend and we spent £82.45 in Tescos on the card.

So, out of his wages, we should have been left with £17.55 from his wages. Correct?

Now our balance today showed the cash taken out and the card payment from Friday and the weekend, was taken from MY money that went in today! So, it appears we are paying twice for stuff!

The remainder of my money (minus the charges) and the bit of his wages, the £17.55, left us with £32.55 in our account.

So, after getting onto them, explaining it, without ANY arguing, they told us we could withdraw the entire amount of my benefit out over the counter.

The thing is, it appears we are paying twice for transactions, we've long suspected something was amiss.

We don't quite understand how this keeps happening.

Now to top it off, instead of making us overdrawn with the charges only - £205, they have added the £190 that they gave us today and we now show as £395 over the overdraft limit.

We just called the Debt Management back and they won't do anything, infact I don't think they get it.

Please help, we have money in tomorrow and Wednesday. I didn't cancel tomorrow's because when we left the branch, we understood the charges were being waived until Friday and my money would be safe. It's too late to call and cancel it but they've said we can withdraw over the counter. Trouble is, we have payments going out, they will bounce as we are over our overdraft and we'll get MORE charges on that.

I'm about to cry.