Help! 15 February at 3:02PM in Budgeting & Bank Accounts 6 replies 362 views

damienk

Hi,im new here but i have something i dont understand and i wonder if some one could help me,its about pending transactions and how they work,last night i had a £18.80 in my day to day account but this morning i was over drawn and after transfering £50 to the account it left me with £14,according to the bank i had £116 in pending transactions which to my knowledge was taken from the account when i made the transactions and £30 was a cashpoint withdrawal when i had the funds to do so,right problem is if the money was taken from the account when i had the funds how did i end up overdrawn,according to the person from the bank who tells me aparently you can make purchases and withdrawals without the funds in my account even though the funds was in there,i said does that mean i could technicaly make a purchase run to the cashpoint and withdraw the funds she said yes,she also said i could make certain purchases without funds being in my account which is news to me,its not a life or death situation where i depended on that money but i feel like im being ripped off in someway and no one at the bank can explain it to me,it seems like they just say our systems are right and thats the be all and end all also i have no planned overdraft and she said all banks work the same way.

eskbanker

I appreciate that you're a newbie but you'll find that people stand a better chance of understanding what you're trying to say if you don't post a massive Vicky Pollard-style stream of consciousness single sentence, so punctuation and paragraphs will help.

Anyway, if your point is that you can't rely on real-time account data being 100% accurate then yes, that's true, or if your beef is that banks sometimes honour transactions that'll take you into unarranged overdraft then yes, they do that.

born_again

Why do you think you are being ripped off?
You say you had £18.00 in your account, but had £116.00 pending. So you have spent £98.00 more than you had available in your account.
Pending transactions are just that. They may or may not debit.
A example is using pay at the pump for petrol. Some are now pending for £90, rather than the amount you have filled your car up with. But when it debits it will be for the amount you filled up with. Others do it the other way pend for £2.00 (approx) and then debit the full amount.

Something many people do not realise is that your limit is not a brick wall that can not be breached. something that I think will change when all the new interest rates come into force. 
Then see people moaning that they can't buy food etc.... As they have done previously.

Willing2Learn

I think you need to keep some sort of 'spending diary' to help you to keep track of your pending transactions.  Do you budget on a monthly basis by using a SOA (Statement of Affairs)?

Tildaplum

You could change banks to one that does (mostly) real-time transactions and has no concept of 'pending' eg Monzo

moongarden

Tildaplum said:

You could change banks to one that does (mostly) real-time transactions and has no concept of 'pending' eg Monzo

Monzo shows pending Direct Debits if you have these set up. I have a main pot, a bills pot and an easy access savings pot as a buffer. DDs are paid from the Bills pot automatically and show up in the 'Home' list of transactions from the day before. 

Ergates

Tildaplum said:

You could change banks to one that does (mostly) real-time transactions and has no concept of 'pending' eg Monzo

All banks have pending transactions for cards - this is because it's not in the control of your bank when the transaction is posted.