Charged £39 by Halifax because A&L screwed up!!

MadSage

I've just received a letter from the Halifax telling me I'll be charged £39 in 10 days because a direct debit to my A&L Direct Saver has failed!

Several days ago I attempted to transfer money from my Halifax current account to my A&L account. After 5 days, there was no sign of the transfer being made, and the pending payment had disappeared, so I did the transfer again. Now my A&L account is showing two transfers were attempted, and the second failed.

I should not be paying for this mistake, but what can I do?

debbie42

How are you initiating the transfer from the Halifax to the A&L? I have a transfer set up for it that I can instigate manually, and the last one took 6 days to transfer between accounts.

I wouldn't personally have instigated another transfer without finding out what had happened to the previous one. Did you check with the A&L? If not then I doubt you have a case against them.

MadSage

I used the transfer panel on the A&L website to do the transfer, which issues a direct debit to Halifax. The transfer is shown in pending payments. Transfers are normally done in a few days, then the pending payment disappears.

In this case, after five days, the pending payment disappeared, but there was no sign of a transfer in either account. I didn't contact anyone about this and just put it down to a computer error.

Milarky

Still not clear what this is about. You were paying money from Halifax (current account) to A&L (savings account?) using a direct debit collection facility?

The amount was not collected so you repeated the request through A&L's site a second time - but this time the amount was bounced by Halifax (presumably because the first amount had left and after all and second amount when called for breached your agreed overdraft?)

Obviously any one taking funds from their current account via a DD process is responsible for ensuring (i.e. checking) the balance in that account+overdraft will cover any proposed withdrawal. Otherwise the bank (Halifax) is entitled to charge an unpaid item fee.

I don't understand how you could have got into such a situation though as if you weren't sure whether the money had been taken from Halifax the first time you wouldn't be checking the A&L website - you would check the Halifax one and get an up to date balance. I assume this you did not do?

Why not just 'push' the payment from Halifax to A&L instead? You send he payment and the bank stops you sending payment if it would breach your overdraft and you can't get charged. Plus, you know the money is sent. Direct debits aren't really suitable for sending large amounts of money between accounts for this reason.

debbie42

Milarky wrote: »

you would check the Halifax one and get an up to date balance. I assume this you did not do?

Why not just 'push' the payment from Halifax to A&L instead?

The OP did suggest that the transfer wasn't showing on either accounts, so I assume they did check the Halifax end? I've always "pushed" the transfer from the originating end as described by Milarky, and then if it did go astray I'd soon be chasing it!

It can't possibly be a safe approach to assume a direct debit has "disappeared" without checking it with either (or both) ends. How can the A&L know that you don't actually want to send two DD requests unless you make sure the first is cancelled? I've certainly initiated multiple transfers from the Halifax to the A&L within a couple of days.