Alliance & Leicester change overdraft policy

klint

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

As I said in the part of my post you deliberately didn't respond to, you clearly don't believe you should pay for banking at all.

I'm with gemz & sui on this one. When I read their posts, I didn't think they were implying that they didn't want to pay for their banking. Only that they wanted to be charged fair amounts.

I hear what you're saying, 50p doesn't sound much, but it's the principle. I didn't sign those T&Cs, yes I was given 30 days notice and I could have left them if I objected; in fact I do object but find it inconvenient to switch and also switching accounts affects your credit rating. I still intend to switch some time but would prefer it if they just reverted to a sensible charging policy, to save me the trouble of switching.

YorkshireBoy

klint wrote: »

...and also switching accounts affects your credit rating.

But not by as much as you perhaps think.

One current account search on your file will have very little detrimental effect, and if you don't close your old account (in the case of A&L, just downgrade it to one that doesn't require monthly funding) you can still claim the same 'time with bank' on any credit applications you make.

You're playing entirely into their hands with your inertia.

gemz700

Right - here goes.

Which part of your comments did I not respond to MarkyMark? I have not ignored any, so tell me and I will respond.

I am not saying I will not pay for my banking in anyway - £2.50 is not the maximum they will charge, it's £5.

My grudge is that if i went overdrawn by 1p for a month, I would be charged £5. Work out for yourself what the APR is on that and try telling me that it's competitive. I think not.

As I said - I don't mind paying the debit interest, but £2.50 to go a few pounds in to my agreed overdraft is ridiculous.

PROLIANT

gemz700 wrote: »

well i think that it's disgusting that A&L are charging these fees and I am now going through the process of leaving them.

This month there were a few 'anomolies' that went through my account. I have a £50 agreed overdraft. First a transaction came out taking me £2 in to my overdraft - i noticed this and transferred some funds from my savings to cover it. Then, another transaction came out taking me £11 in to my overdraft for 3 days before my salary went in.

A&L are charging me £2.50 for the benefit of using my AGREED overdraft. I very rarely use it and am annoyed that someone that was £3000 overdrawn for the same amount of time will only pay £2.50. I am also annoyed that i agreed this overdraft with them and they have the cheek to charge me to use it. They use the excuse that i am not paying debit interest but my debit interest never came to £2.50!!!!!!

Rubbish

Well I also have a £50 AGREED overdraft with A&L, if you did not have an AGREED overdraft they would have charged you £25 for going over by £2. Be thankfull, if you dont like it switch banks. Debate over.

MarkyMarkD

gemz You said you'd been charged £2.50 in a month and that's how I got to £30 per annum. I know the maximum is £5 but that would require you to be overdrawn by 10 days in every single month to get to a £60 per annum charge. £60 per annum is still nothing for a banking service which you could make huge use of.

And you don't even have to pay £60 - you can easily enough pay far less, or even nothing.

I really struggle to see how anyone claims that a charge of between £0 and £60 per annum is a lot of money for a current account banking service. Most people spend more than that on take-away coffees or other non-essentials.


I'm not saying that the new charging system is better for everyone - clearly it isn't. But nor is it inherently unfair as gemz suggests. And the fact that two customers, one overdrawn by 1p and one overdrawn by £1,000, both get charged the same 50p per day doesn't trouble me either - that's life.

And anyone who is overdrawn permanently by a trivial amount needs to sort themselves out and put their account back to a zero balance - problem solved.

PROLIANT

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

gemz You said you'd been charged £2.50 in a month and that's how I got to £30 per annum. I know the maximum is £5 but that would require you to be overdrawn by 10 days in every single month to get to a £60 per annum charge. £60 per annum is still nothing for a banking service which you could make huge use of.

And you don't even have to pay £60 - you can easily enough pay far less, or even nothing.

I really struggle to see how anyone claims that a charge of between £0 and £60 per annum is a lot of money for a current account banking service. Most people spend more than that on take-away coffees or other non-essentials.


I'm not saying that the new charging system is better for everyone - clearly it isn't. But nor is it inherently unfair as gemz suggests. And the fact that two customers, one overdrawn by 1p and one overdrawn by £1,000, both get charged the same 50p per day doesn't trouble me either - that's life.

And anyone who is overdrawn permanently by a trivial amount needs to sort themselves out and put their account back to a zero balance - problem solved.

Some would say people spend more on bog roll annually to wipe their a*r$e on. :eek:

MarkyMarkD

Fair point. Any example will do. Most people spend more than £60 a year on very many things. And yet a banking service - which most people would actually consider essential, rather than a luxury - is expected to be for free.

It doesn't make sense.

PROLIANT

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

Fair point. Any example will do. Most people spend more than £60 a year on very many things. And yet a banking service - which most people would actually consider essential, rather than a luxury - is expected to be for free.

It doesn't make sense.

If everybody paid a fixed fee of say £50 per year that would equate to say if the Alliance and Leicester had a customer base of around 100,000, £50 x 100K = £5 MILLION, if that money could be used to better the service provided then everybody would be happy.