Bank Account charges - Horrified - way ahead

kennyruss72

I was thinking of this approach.. anyone?

[FONT=&quot]I believe the fact that I have been incurring bank charges goes contrary to the aims of the Lending Code (Section 9) and [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Banking Conduct of Business Sourcebook (section [/FONT][FONT=&quot]5.1.4 ‘in particular, a firm should deal fairly with a banking customer whom it has reason to believe is in financial difficulty’). My personal situation has been affected by the charges leaving me in financial hardship [/FONT][FONT=&quot]and I am writing to request that you take the following grounds into consideration:[/FONT]

kennyruss72

Moderator, I am happy to move this thread to another part of the forum if more suitable..

eskbanker

kennyruss72 wrote: »

xylophone- we are pretty much down to the bones as it is. I use quidco and topcashback etc any time we change phone or insurance etc..

It's possibly inappropriate to jump to conclusions without sight of your finances in more detail but you might want to consider not changing phones? I'd agree with the sound advice above to post over on the debt-free wannabe board - regardless of whether or not you can construct some sort of claim for historical charges, it seems clear that you need a radical overhaul of your finances to stop things getting any worse.

kennyruss72

eskbanker..

We have 4 mobile contracts in the house, 2 adults 2 kids - We pay circa £60 for these 4 accounts, mostly sim only contracts..

kennyruss72

moved to debtfreewannaebe

System

You need to get real, you can approach them but repaying the overdrafts are the only real options.

Opening current accounts (with an other provider) without overdrafts would also beneficial.

jimjames

kennyruss72 wrote: »

eskbanker..

We have 4 mobile contracts in the house, 2 adults 2 kids - We pay circa £60 for these 4 accounts, mostly sim only contracts..

If you are unable to clear your overdraft with your current spending then you probably need to review all costs very, very carefully and will need to be ruthless to cut out un-necessary items which may include not spending £60 a month on phones for 4 people. If you can't reduce spending then the other option is to increase income but spending tends to be easier to cut.

grumbler

kennyruss72 wrote: »

...we are pretty much down to the bones as it is. ...

kennyruss72 wrote: »

We have 4 mobile contracts in the house, 2 adults 2 kids - We pay circa £60 for these 4 accounts, mostly sim only contracts..

£15 p.m. per a person?!
Is this what you call "down to the bones"?! And what does 'mostly' mean? Cheapest phones cost no more than a tenner, and you clearly can't afford anything better than basic phones.

What exactly are these £60 for? This amount can buy 2000 minutes or 3000 texts on pure PAYG. And there are ~£5 monthly bundles that pretty much anyone can survive with.

omits

I have a PAYG basic phone. Refuse to be conned into contracts. That's what you should have. Your money with smartphones must be going on keeping up appearances! Sit down with the whole family and draw up plans to fight back against those organisations that are taking your money. I have grandkids who come to my house and sit there using up my bandwidth (I don't know why they come!), now I turn it off as they walk in the door. Be strict!

Kim_13

The problem here is these are all Halifax overdrafts. It is very clear what the charges are as they charge a set fee by the day and not an AER that needs to be calculated. Some do prefer them for short term borrowing for this reason, but on most overdrawn amounts, there will be cheaper options out there (if you can be accepted with another bank to transfer any overdrafts.) Nationwide FlexDirect overdrafts are fee free for a year, so they are worth a look and if you could get one or more of your overdrafts fee free for a time, it would help you to pay down the overdrafts. Outgoings also need reducing as much as possible. You could swap to giffgaff for instance and take one of the lower packages; you'd get free calls and texts to each other and others on the network to bridge the gap and keep costs down.

Halifax charge £1 per day on overdrawn balances of up to £1,999.99, £2 on 2,000-2,999.99 and £3 per day over £3000. You would save £1 per day by transferring say £600 from account 1 to account 2 - both accounts would then attract a fee of £1 per day, rather than £1 on account 1 and £2 on account 2 that you currently have.

Halifax could pull some or all of the overdrafts at any time so you do need to cut back somehow and pay them down.