Can the Halifax do this?

PIB_2

Hello

I've been having major problems with charges and the latest incident has prompted me to post here:

Due to an unavoidable change in my income, (medically retired due to serious illness), the problems started creeping up around September of this year.

To cut a long story short, I went slightly overdrawn in my two Halifax accounts. (I had an 'ordinary' Cardcash account and had opened a current account, which I'd planned to make my sole account.)

Since around September just passed I've been charged:

£342.00 - current account

£390.00 - cardcash account

The Halifax have applied £732.00 'overdrawn account' charges to me in the last 3 months!

They seemed more concerned with the current account: I got letters, texts, phone calls - the works. Perhaps because I'd 'stabilised' to an extent, the cardcash account. The current account getting increasingly more overdrawn because of their charges.

Two days ago my former employer paid my pension in to my cardcash account. The payment included a surprise of some overdeducted tax arrears. I intended to spread this out to repay other debtors and to add funds to my current account. Imagine my surprise when I logged on to the home banking facility to discover that the Halifax had already transferred £300.00 from the basic account to my current account! They must be watching me like a hawk, for them to move so swiftly. I had visions of them transferring the rest today, so I moved swiftly to transfer the little amount left to my Paypal account.

You can imagine how angry I was, that the bank was moving funds within my accounts. I was tempted to phone today and report them to themselves for fraud... that someone or people within their organisation, could quite easily delve in to accounts and move money. I remember when I first signed up with them, one member of staff had to give me the first half of my security pass and then the call was passed on to a another member of staff, for the other half. How times change!

Does anyone know if the bank was within its rights to do this; do I have grounds for complaint? This, on top of their ridiculous charges, feels like the final straw for me.

Thanks in advance, for any help.

olly300

Banks have and always have had the right to move money between your accounts.

The first banking advice I ever got from my parents was don't have a savings account and a current account in the same bank especially if you are liable to go overdrawn.

I suggest you look at the Halifax T&C.

BTW I've worked at a large retail bank and any staff looking at any bank account that wasn't their own, let alone moving money around was immediately suspended then sacked for gross misconduct. Banks have strong security to track those looking into each system. Banks systems are much more up to date technology wise than HMRC and any government department/agency.