Overdraft help/advice needed

harrison8

Hello, I moved from the UK to live with my girlfriend in Paris a couple of months ago.
I have an overdraft in my HSBC account of £1600. When I left the UK my balance was pretty much set at £0.00 (bad I know!) I have two ongoing UK payments which are paid via monthly standing orders. This is my Vodafone bill which is roughly £40 per month and my Santander loan which is approx £120 per month.
My intention was (and I know this is not the best way!) when I left for Paris, to let those two standing orders eat into my overdraft of £1600 and about 8 months, my intention was to then 'top-up' my UK account with around £160 per month to cover the costs.
However, I have received a letter from HSBC saying that they have noticed no money is coming in to my account (I was having monthly UK wages coming in before but not now). I am currently -£350.00 in to my overdraft. HSBC has requested I make a minimum deposit of £160 per month in to my account.
I do not have a lot of spare money at the moment and I know the simple solution would be to pay the £350 overdraft off..

What I would like to know is where do I stand here? What would the bank do if I did nothing? Do I have any option to contact them and say.. I can only afford to deposit say £10 per month? Would this get them off my back?
Until I have enough savings in my French bank account I'm not going to be able to afford the simple expensive route, so any advice on how I could avoid making a big pay-out in one hit would be really appreciated - many thanks!

John1993_2

They have the right to withdraw the overdraft facility at any time, with appropriate notice, which they seem to have given you.

You can always ask that they give you longer, but they are under no obligation to do so. If you just do nothiing then they'll likely pull the overdraft immediately, stop making payments, and you'll then in pretty short order default on your phone and your loan, doing immense damage to your credit rating.

If you were planning on paying £160 a month into the account at some point anyway, then it's probably best to start doing it now. The bank, quite understandably, is not going to be keen to keep paying money out now that you are overseas, and look, to them, to be in the process of running up debts with no means to pay them back.