Halifax charge for unpaid direct debit

julie237

Hi
would first of all like to say i claimed £600 back from hsbc last year thanks to this great site.
I now have an account with halifax. I had a direct debit that got returned as they tried to take it out a day later than arranged.
Now halifax are charging me £39 for it! i told them this is more than half of my weekly money ( i receive carers allowance), and because theyve already waived a returned dd before ( for a measley £1 ), they say ill have to pay it.
I asked to know exactly what im paying for with this £39 and was told something about data protection and sensitive information as the reason they couldnt tell me, so basically im paying just because they think they can make me! .Im so annoyed.
What do i do? the money is meant to come out next thursday, should i just take all the money out of the account before they have the chance to?
Thanks for you help

Kurt_Hamster

If you do that it will just take you into overdraft as they will still take the charge from your account.

Write to your branch manager requesting that it be refunded, be apologetic rather than demanding. If that doesn't work you'll have to pay the charge, but follow it up with another letter to the manager again requesting that they refund it and if they don't then you will have no choice but to write to the financial ombudsman for their view of things.

Basically what you need to do is show them that you know what the rules are and aren't likely to be put off. Obviously it would be overkill to go to court for £39 but the FO is pretty good at sorting these things out.

julie237

Hi,

I have an easycash account with halifax, which has no overdraft facility, although it sometimes goes up to about -£5.
In the past few weeks they have tried to charge me £39 for unpaid direct debits twice. First time i got them to reverse it as a gesture of goodwill ( DD was only for £1!), and second time i went into the branch and they reversed it.
Now only a few days later i have another one. Another £1 was supposed to come out, and i actually went and put just £1 in my account thinking it would cover it , my account was at 0.00 with nothing appearing to be waiting to come out, but there was my account is now at -£1.92 and the charge is meant to come out on friday.
Do you think they would reverse it again? i am currently on income support and live on £75 a week, so this charge is more than half of my weekly income.
Thanks for any advice
Julie

Kurt_Hamster

The only people who can stop it coming out of your account are the banks I'm afraid.

You can either get them to refund it (if they will for a third time, which is doubtful) or you can claim it back.

If they won't refund it then you will need to be more forceful in your request.

By law they cannot take your benefit to pay a debt (or a charge). What you need to do is next benefit payment day show up at the bank with a letter of appropriation and get them to hand over the entirety of your benefit. You can't do anything about the charges they will levy (other than claiming them back afterwards) but at least they won't be able to deprive you of your benefit.