Do I complain about bank or what?

Workingthroughitslowly

Hi I have posted a few times about my situation but don't know what to do about this particular issue.

I have a big OD with my bank and for reasons best known to them they decided they wanted it repaid immediately and sent the account to the recovery unit. Whilst there the recovery unit, without prior or subsequent notice cancelled a DD to a loan.

This was only discovered after the payment had been missed when the loan company called me and I !made the payment manually. I contacted the bank and they said they reserved the right to cancel DD's and they we concerned that there were insufficient funds in the account. This is true at the time they cancelled the DD but their were sufficient funds in a linked account that would have been transferred. I was a bit annoyed but didn't know if there was anything to be done.

I wrote to the bank and asked them if any other DDs had been cancelled, explaining that it was difficult to keep on top of payments if I was not aware they had been cancelled. I received the response that no other DDs had been cancelled.

Yesterday I discovered that a DD to my CC had been cancelled 3 mths :eek: ago so I have three months of late payment charges and missed payments on my credit file :mad: I spoke to the CC company and they have resolved things at their end, refunded the fees and say they will remove the missed payment flags but what do I do about the bank?

I am furious that they have done this and then told me they hadn't but equally I feel if I annoy the recovery manager who told me that nothing had been cancelled then my life could be made really difficult so should I just suck this up knowing that he could cancel anything else on a whim?

Obviously the overall solution is to pay the OD off in full ASAP but this is going to take a few months.

Tixy

As soon as your overdraft is recalled then they are likely to stop all use of the account and to cancel any DDs.
As soon as they notified you it had been recalled, and assuming you couldn't clear the overdraft then the best option would be to open a new bank account with a different bank and have your salary/income paid to that account. If you haven't done this yet I would consider doing so and moving all your DDs to the new bank account.

If you do that I would write to them with a proposal for repaying the overdraft. You could also put a complaint it about the fact that they told you no other DDs had been cancelled - assuming that the cc DD was cancelled by them and as a result of them having recalled the overdraft.

mellonicoley

I don't think there's much you can do about this... HSBC did a similar thing to me last year, but fortunately I check my statements and banking all the time, and didn't miss any payments...

I don't want to offend you, but how come you didn't notice the cc payment wasn't coming out of our account? I think you're lucky that the CC company were so generous!

If you really want to complain, you need to find out what your bank's formal complaints procedure is, but I would also check the terms and conditions of your account. You might find that there is a clause in there for cancelling direct debits without notice.

Workingthroughitslowly

But they haven't ever informed me that it is their intention to stop all use of the account, despite the fact that it was sent to recovery unit begining of December.

They have told me that it can no longer be a premier account and have "downgraded" it to a regular account but I have been able to withdraw cash from the ATM and continue to be able to transfer money between accounts online.

They have only cancelled these two DD's out of many and I am doing my best to keep everything up to date but this sort of thing makes it really hard.

mellonicoley

HSBC never informed me either. I was able to use the account as normal but they cancelled my direct debits and I couldn't set new ones up. I think it's because they kept taking me over the limit.

In the end I opened an account with Co-op and used that as my main account.

Workingthroughitslowly

Simple answer re not noticing is that I have not been paying enough attention to my account - I have always relied on the fact that there is enough money going in to cover all the outgoings so it hasn't been an issue (this is a UK account we use for UK expenses although we live overseas so it is not used for day to day expenses)

I realise this is not an excuse and lesson learnt I will now be checking more regularly but I thought I could at least rely on the bank to act honestly as to what they have and haven't done.

Workingthroughitslowly

Mellinicoly

I never go over my OD limit I have just done very little about reducing it. Not that they ever asked me too it just went to recovery.

God they make things hard.

Workingthroughitslowly

Oh and I think there is a clause re canceling DDs without notice which is why I didn't kick up a fuss first time round but to tell me they hadn't when they had is just :mad: :mad: :mad:

mellonicoley

Yep it's bad that they didn't advise you of that properly. Definitely see if you can complain about that.

Hanky_Panky

I find it surprising they sent you a letter recalling the OD that didn't include some reference to the facilities (dd's so's etc) being withdrawn as well.

Do you still have the letter ?

Workingthroughitslowly

Yes I still have the letter. It is about three pages long and the last paragraph contains the statement "we reserve the right to cancel direct debits as we see fit" or some such (not got it in front of me). There was NO mention that they had already done so in to two (out of about 15) DD's.

My real issue is that when explicitly asked if any DD other than the first had been cancelled I was told, in writing, no nothing else had been cancelled. Which was incorrect.