Complaint to Nationwide about irresponsible lending? Advice please

Lemon2

Hello,

I wondered if anyone can advise on what I should ask Nationwide for in my complaint.

In October 2017, after speaking with a national debt charity, I wrote to all my creditors, requesting reduced payments as I was in financial difficulty. They registered defaults on my credit file, the interest was frozen, and I entered into repayment arrangements with them all.

In April 2018, I was really stuck for money. I applied for an overdraft on my Nationwide current account and they gave it to me – £1,600. I was surprised, but relieved!

6 months later, they decided to withdraw the overdraft entirely. I couldn’t pay back the £1,600 immediately, of course, so I am now on a repayment plan with them, where it automatically gets reduced by £10 a month. I am also being charged interest (which comes to approximately £17-£18 per month).

However, my financial situation did not change between October 2017 – October 2018. It did not improve and did not worsen. I was making all of the payments to my creditors on time as agreed and my salary didn’t change.

If Nationwide had properly checked my credit rating with a credit reference agency when I applied for the overdraft, they would have seen that I had already defaulted on a bank overdraft, bank loan, bank credit cards, plus payday loans. I think it's pretty clear that I should never have been been given the overdraft to begin with.

I have been advised that I should complain to them about irresponsible lending. But my question is, what should I ask them for to resolve it? Can it be written off? Should they freeze interest? I'm not sure what I should expect here.

Many thanks in advance!

Duckyduck

Novel idea, but how about taking responsibility for your actions?

You approached Nationwide and applied to borrow irresponsibly. Why did you apply for the overdraft if you knew you couldn’t repay it? What would you have done if Nationwide had rejected the application?

Pay it back and learn the lesson for the future.

sourcrates

Hi,

You should expect nothing to be honest, you can’t really mis-sell an overdraft.

If it were a string of payday loans rolled over numerous times, then fair enough, but for an overdraft, you must have passed a credit check, and everyone knows an overdraft is repayable on demand.

Arrangements to pay your creditors are not always recorded as such on your credit file, they would not necessarily have known you were in debt management, you must of passed their checks and got what you asked for.

It’s a bit rich to complain about it now.

Grumpelstiltskin

I have to agree. No one made you use the full amount of the overdraught.

You must have known the charges involved before you accepted it and you should have also known the bank could withdraw it without notice.

-taff

Lemon2 wrote: »

I have been advised that I should complain to them about irresponsible lending. But my question is, what should I ask them for to resolve it? Can it be written off? Should they freeze interest? I'm not sure what I should expect here.

Irresponsible borrowing is more likely to have been the case. When you applied for this overdraft, did you do it online or in the bank?

Why did they remove the facility?

It sounds as if you asked for an overdraft online and said you only needed it for a specific length of time and would not require it after that. Which, as you bank with them they are more likely to agree to.


It is not likely to be written off, they do not have to freeze interest.
If you are in current financial hardship, i'e. you have no DDs for expensive mobile contracts, Sky subscriptions, all your money goes to paying bills, then you can ask them to reconsider your account. They may freeze interest, they may return some fees, they may waive charges, all of these though , will only be for a limited time.


Sounds like you were in a DMP at the time and then you asked for further borrowing, which is a bit of a no no for DMPs. If you were in financial difficulty while in a DMP then you should have written to your creditors again and re-jigged your SOA to accomodate this, or considered other debt remedies.