£15 charge for 49p overdraft

davery83

I've just noticed (I'm not sure I received a letter, but has appeared online) I am going to be charged £15 for the bank allowing a £1 direct debit coming out 3 days before I was paid when I only had 51p in my account - is there anything I can do about this?
Alliance & Leicester state in their conditions that its £5 for every day I am overdrawn, however I do not check my bank on a daily basis, and this £1 was a magazine subscription so wasn't sure when exactly it would be coming out.
I have phoned A&L but they refuse to do anything about it as they're refunded a single charge before, but that was due to their website being rubbish, and they admitted that!
I'm very annoyed that the bank could charge me £15 for such a tiny amount, how exactly are they losing that amount of money?!
Any advice would be appreciated!

Primrose

I know this seems unreasonable charge, but some banks in the past have been charging far more than this and I do think that especially in the current economic conditions, it is up to customers to ensure they keep sufficient funds in their current accounts to meet any expenses drawn on them. If you run your bank account with such fine limits and so close to the wire, sooner or later you run a huge risk in going into overdraft and incurring such charges.

Lavendyr

The charge could be for a bounced direct debit rather than an unauthorised overdraft.

You could query it with them if you have a good history of managing your account and they might refund it as a goodwill gesture.

lindsaygalaxy

I had something similar with Nationwide, I kept complaining until they gave it back to me!

YorkshireBoy

Haven't got my head around the new A&L fee structure yet, despite recently opening an account, but payment review fees seem to be £25 so maybe there's one of these to come as well?

Would now be a good time to ask for an overdraft facility, if maintaining an adequate buffer is a problem?