bank charges?

bwatt00

Can someone tell me im sure i have read it on here before if not by someone else then by martin himself but if i have a direct debit set up on my bank account and i forget to have enough funds in the account to cover the debit can i stop the bank giving me a charge as there was not enough funds?
Im sure i read on here that i am allowed to ask the bank once to put a stop to it,i even want to go as far as telling them i will close my account i will be charged £35 charge because i was £5.50 short on the amount needed.

Can anyone give me advise on this please i really hate having to pay such a high charge and banks should not get away with it.

grumbler

bwatt00 wrote:

... i read on here that i am allowed to ask the bank once to put a stop to it...

As far as I know you cannot do this. The maximum you can do is just to cancell all your DDs and pay all bills manually. I don't think you'd like this. If you want to have all advantages of full account with debit card, DDs, cheque book you need a lot of discipline with managing your account. Otherwise downgrade it to a basic one.

Similar threads:

A&L Current Account overdraft policy

Royal Bank of Scotland Bank Charges - WARNING!!

' I can't believe banks can get away with this...'

Fatboy_NSS

Well you are certainly allowed to ask the bank to refund the charge. However the bank are certainly allowed to collect the charge as long as it's listed in their tarriff of charges.

Taking grumbler's point one step further, I'd suggest stopping DDs and paying bills manually if you can't guarantee the funds will be in there on time. It's amazing the number of customers I see who have large amounts of charges on their accounts due to unpaid DDs, but they say they have to pay by DD to save £1 or £2 a month. It's not worth saving a couple quid if you're going to be charged £30-£35 a time!

digp

both responses are [blah blah].

see: http://bankchargeshell.co.uk/

Fatboy_NSS

Quick response which has to be applauded, but the bank charges hell site seems to be quite poorly researched. I don't think any bank charges monthly or daily fees for being over limit any more. The only fees are per transaction fees, which I don't see how you can have any argument with. All the banks have large departments dedicated to dealing with customers who are defaulting on their accounts. These departments have staff with wages which have to be paid. The BCH website argues that certain groups of customers shouldn't have to foot the bill for others. Fair enough, which is why the charges applied to customers who can't run their accounts properly pay for the cost of the debt management units so that people who do run their accounts within the limits (who incidentally make far more money for banks than people who don't) pay for the expenses they build up.