Reclaim Unfair Bank Charges article discussion Part II

louise0910

Ok, if it's just down to people managing their finances what about my husband. He is self employed and really struggling to keep afloat due to the recession. We applied for a bank loan to help us keep our heads above water for a bit longer but were refused.

We barely make ends meet even though i work all hours available and my husband is out there trying to get extra work constantly. We have two young children to take care of aswell.

Last month my husband managed to find some extra work, which should have paid him £300. He was paid by cheque, which cleared in the bank and bills were paid with it. We were then told by the bank that the cheque was fraudulant and the money was taken back out of our bank and we went overdrawn. We have now been chrged for going overdrawn and have had charges for each day we were overdrawn till we received the letter from the bank a week later.

We can't afford to pay this now.

So my question is, do we come under the catagory of people who should manage their finances better? I am very careful with our money but at the end of the day we can't all control our circumstances so people should think about this before blaming us hard working people who can't do anything else about it.

Rant over

jasper33_2

louise0910 wrote: »

Ok, if it's just down to people managing their finances what about my husband. He is self employed and really struggling to keep afloat due to the recession. We applied for a bank loan to help us keep our heads above water for a bit longer but were refused.

We barely make ends meet even though i work all hours available and my husband is out there trying to get extra work constantly. We have two young children to take care of aswell.

Last month my husband managed to find some extra work, which should have paid him £300. He was paid by cheque, which cleared in the bank and bills were paid with it. We were then told by the bank that the cheque was fraudulant and the money was taken back out of our bank and we went overdrawn. We have now been chrged for going overdrawn and have had charges for each day we were overdrawn till we received the letter from the bank a week later.

We can't afford to pay this now.

So my question is, do we come under the catagory of people who should manage their finances better? I am very careful with our money but at the end of the day we can't all control our circumstances so people should think about this before blaming us hard working people who can't do anything else about it.

Rant over

I'm very sorry to hear of plight. You can talk to the idiots who say we should manage our finances better but they have no idea what there on about. If we didn't pay these unfair charges they would not have free banking.

lky2k23

Shocking decision.....Pirates!!!!!

jasper33_2

mramra wrote: »

Some good news for a change. At least those of us who budget, plan, take care of our finances aren't going to be shafted again by the introduction of current account annual fees to cover payouts to those who are less so. :beer:

I bet your gutted to see and hear the reclaiming isn't over and we may get our money via another clause.

mramra

jasper33 wrote: »

I bet your gutted to see and hear the reclaiming isn't over and we may get our money via another clause.

We'll see if this phoenix is just a load of hot air in time. I think it's terrible that people (not all, but a significant majority) think it's OK to borrow unauthorised money from their bank without becoming eligible for the charges that they were told about at the time they opened their account (or later via post if T&Cs were subsequently changed). This culture of people feeling they deserve something for nothing is endemic, and the ones who lose out are the prudent and careful.

dbilsborough

I worked for NatWest for 11 years, and charging was rife back in the 80s / 90s, what was different than now? People these days jump on the bandwaggon of campaigns about how unfair the world is and how they should not have to pay for X/Y/Z or how "they" should sort everything out for us.

In the vast majority of cases, the people that were charged for unauthorised overdrafts when I worked in banking knew full well what they were doing, knew they would be charged for it and accepted it. There are of course circumstances as above where someone has got a fraudulent cheque, but let's be honest how often has that happened to you?

Another point was that a large percentage of people that incurred unauthorised overdraft fees could have saved the expense by bothering to ask the bank for an overdraft facility. If someone was turned down for an overdraft it was never to punish the person but rather a decision made using the information given by the customer and their history looking as to whether they could afford to pay the money back.

People have to make choices in life, you choose to spend money, you choose to save money. I suspect for every 100 people that say we really needed to take the money they didn't actually have from the bank 99 of them didn't really need to, they might have wanted to, they might have spent the money they actually had unwisely, but that's a different thing all together.

pie81

louise0910 wrote: »

Ok, if it's just down to people managing their finances what about my husband. He is self employed and really struggling to keep afloat due to the recession. We applied for a bank loan to help us keep our heads above water for a bit longer but were refused.

We barely make ends meet even though i work all hours available and my husband is out there trying to get extra work constantly. We have two young children to take care of aswell.

Last month my husband managed to find some extra work, which should have paid him £300. He was paid by cheque, which cleared in the bank and bills were paid with it. We were then told by the bank that the cheque was fraudulant and the money was taken back out of our bank and we went overdrawn. We have now been chrged for going overdrawn and have had charges for each day we were overdrawn till we received the letter from the bank a week later.

We can't afford to pay this now.

So my question is, do we come under the catagory of people who should manage their finances better? I am very careful with our money but at the end of the day we can't all control our circumstances so people should think about this before blaming us hard working people who can't do anything else about it.

Rant over

Ouch. I would definitely call your bank's customers complaints department and explain this. If you have a decent record of not incurring charges, and it's clear this was not your fault, then they may agree to waive these charges.

If necessary keep asking to speak to a supervisor till you get someone with the authority to waive the charges.

pie81

jasper33 wrote: »

I bet your gutted to see and hear the reclaiming isn't over and we may get our money via another clause.

My feeling is that if this other clause was any good then someone would have argued it a long time ago.

Captain_Cautious

pie81 wrote: »

My feeling is that if this other clause was any good then someone would have argued it a long time ago.

Perhaps. The OFT may just have been badly advised on which course of action to proceed on. Whatever happens, the fact the Court felt the need to mention this is significant.

Lee_Jeffries

Lee_Jeffries wrote: »

I know many people like me have charges of £28, £30 or £35.

I have (or had now !!), quite a few £139, and £150 charges. Is this quite common. Can anything be done about those.

I think it's time to give up on banks alltogether, after all they are now owned (some) by the government themselves.

Thats £6k i'll never see again !!

Sorry to moan a bit, like many of other people, we are now having a bad day !!

How long will we have to wait until we hear anything about this clause??

It's gone from very a very bad day to just a bad day.