£12 over limit fee for going 73p over for 2 days

moneymoner

cx6 said:

It is important to note that a credit card is a borrowing facility ie you are not spending your 'own' money like eg cash

Also important is that when you applied for the card you didn't apply for eg a £3000 loan which cannot under any circumstances be increased. You applied for an open-ended borrowing facility. The card company then told you how much you can borrow (a credit limit) and the charges for exceeding that.

What the lender is saying is that we will lend  to you up to a limit (a credit limit). When you try and spend over that limit, the lender is actually saying 'ok, since you asked, we will lend you a bit more but you know the charges...'. 

A credit limit is not a hard stop. It is a line below which certain charges apply and above which different charges apply

I agree, but like I've already poitned out in my previous posts about irregular payment schedules, micro-payments, security deposits and pay and pump petrol services etc... your credit balance is not always easy to predict. If CC's providers had a buffer in place the over-limit charging could be avoided and small oversight's that take a balance over by pennies, as in this persons case, would not be an issue.

It's so very easy to say, oh it's your own fault for going over or that you're not responsible with your finances.

CC's don't or won't do anything that prevents them from profiting from a fee or charge.

RG2015

Wheres_My_Cashback said:

About 15 years ago I just forgot to pay my NatWest credit card. At that time I paid the full balance by cheque at the bank. The balance would have been about £500.

I was charged a fee and interest which was fair enough. Nevertheless, I phoned them and had the charges refunded. The agent emphasised that this was a one off and if it happened again I would not be refunded.

I now pay online as soon as I receive my statement. I do not setup a direct debit because NatWest take this 10 days earlier than the due date.

No, they don't do that.

If you make the minimum payment of £x.xx and it reaches us on the due date of 13 December 2021 ....

Your nominated bank account will be debited with the full balance on 13 Dec 2021 or soon after.

Payment taken on due date.

See the link below where it says.

Direct debit

• Minimum payment - payment is claimed 25 calendar days from statement date or shortly afterwards
• Full payment - payment is claimed 15 calendar days from statement date or shortly afterwards

https://supportcentre.natwest.com/Searchable/913255502/How-long-does-it-take-to-make-a-payment-to-my-credit-card.htm

However, if you look at my post on 21st November on this thread (P2) I noted that NatWest had changed their website information to agree with what you say above. Both pages are still there.

I have acknowledged that my information was out of date but noted that NatWest are still showing contradictory information.

moneymoner

eskbanker said:

Yes, it isn't practical, not least because in many cases, such as your regular automated transactions ("many micro-payments and debits registered with my card"), they happen automatically behind the scenes, so there is no option to display and review such exception handling notices.

So there you have it and that's the whole the point I am making. Not pratical to send an SMS or show a message on a display in 2021 ? What about card terminals in shops and online ordering. I'm constantly shown messages for charity donations when I purchase something online. I'm also shown a message when a transcation completes or is declined. When I withdraw cash from a cash dispenser, I'm shown a message about a fee along with my account balance. So you are saying, that a CC processor cannot show a message on a terminal screen about a fee before allowing a transaction ?

eskbanker

moneymoner said:

eskbanker said:

Yes, it isn't practical, not least because in many cases, such as your regular automated transactions ("many micro-payments and debits registered with my card"), they happen automatically behind the scenes, so there is no option to display and review such exception handling notices.

So there you have it and that's the whole the point I am making. Not pratical to send an SMS or show a message on a display in 2021 ? What about card terminals in shops and online ordering. I'm constantly shown messages for charity donations when I purchase something online. I'm also shown a message when a transcation completes or is declined. When I withdraw cash from a cash dispenser, I'm shown a message about a fee along with my account balance. So you are saying, that a CC processor cannot show a message on a terminal screen about a fee before allowing a transaction ?

You're missing the point in several ways again - of course it's technically possible for card companies to send SMS messages to those cardholders who choose to register mobile phone details, and indeed many already do send out alert messages to notify them of going over limit, as well as two-factor authentication.

However, the authorisation protocol used to determine whether or not a transaction should be given the go-ahead is a well-established international standard, and wouldn't readily be adapted to a two-way real-time dialogue about whether the customer wishes to proceed under certain circumstances, even if there was any desire to start introducing such developments!

But the point I was making above is that you only seem to be considering interactive card transactions involving real time authorisation with customer input, whereas there are of course numerous other scenarios, such as all the ones you said made it difficult to keep track.

You can spend as much time as you like dreaming up notional 'how hard can it be?' solutions to the perceived problem, but ultimately you need to echo OP's acceptance that it's the cardholder's responsibility to manage and control their own spending, rather than expecting banks to do it for you....

redux

Some transactions are not instant live online, for instance some motorway tolls abroad (which therefore don't accept some types of card), and some contactless payments seem to have slight delay and be aggregated only a couple of days later.

RogerBareford

moneymoner said:

FaceHead said:

As above, I miscalculated the credit available on a card, which pushed it 73p over it's limit after buying a few things. 

Two days later I saw this land on the statement and hastily put a payment on the card to bring it back into it's limit. 

I've now been slapped with a £12 over limit fee. 

Seems quite disproportionate to going pence over. Is it worth asking the provider to be a bit more forgiving with this, or is message that they have to earn a living somehow, SoBe more careful in future? 

This has happened to me on several occasions when small micro-payments from services like PayPal and Ebay etc.. have pushed my credit balance over the limit by a few pence. What makes this unusual is that if I ever attempt to purchase anything using my debit card which exceeds my account balance, the purchase is declined at the checkout.

Why can't these credit cards be frozen and the purchase limit applied before making a purchase that would exceed the agreed limit that you applied for ?

It is not you that has gone over the credit limit, it is the credit card issuer who has allowed you to exceed the limit and borrowed you more than you agreed to. Not only that, a fee that is disproportionate to the amount exceeded is being applied without any kind of buffer.

I have never missed a payment on my credit cards but at the same time I rely on the fact that I have a limit and that limit protects me from falling into spiralling debt. The credit card issuers are using these overlimit fee's to make a gain and rely on the fact that some people are not always going to know their exact balance on the day of purchasing something with the card.

If your going over your limit then your limit isn't enough and you need to ask them to increase it or spend less money on that card it's not exactly difficult. The bank has said to you here is a card where we will let you borrow £X but if you go over £X for any reason then we will charge you £X so it's pretty clear. It's like if you were in someone's house and asked to borrow £2 and they said "sure, just take it from the bowl of spare change over there". So you go to the bowl and find £5.50 in there and take it all and when they say "why have you taken so much when i only said you could borrow £2?" would you then say "well it's your fault for having more than £2 in the bowl"... I really don't think that would go down well...

moneymoner said:

eskbanker said:

If you want the sort of real-time budgetary control that comes with using cash, then use cash!  It's not irresponsible for card providers to allow some latitude where transactions exceed limits, unless this is done excessively, although it is undoubtedly usually in their financial interests to do so, as you say, rather than any genuine sense of altruism in terms of being concerned for customer convenience....

If your credit card limit and balance is £1000 and a transaction of £250 is allowed, then to me, that makes my credit limit £1250. Why have a credit limit ? I thought the credit limit was there to prevent over spending and use of the credit card. You were mis-sold the credit card in that case as where you expected a limit to be in place.

So with banks and cc's not really having any concern about protecting you from spiralling debt but rather pushing you into it for their own financial interests and gains.

Is it my fault or ignorance that credit or debit card transactions are not yet possible to be processed instantly in 2021, where this has always been possible with cash payments ?

When your on an airplane or cruise ship or anywhere else where a connection might be interupted it is quite good they don't require checks for every single transactions to make sure you have enough money. 

moneymoner

RogerBareford said:

FaceHead said:

As above, I miscalculated the credit available on a card, which pushed it 73p over it's limit after buying a few things.

If your going over your limit then your limit isn't enough and you need to ask them to increase it or spend less money on that card it's not exactly difficult. The bank has said to you here is a card where we will let you borrow £X but if you go over £X for any reason then we will charge you £X so it's pretty clear. It's like if you were in someone's house and asked to borrow £2 and they said "sure, just take it from the bowl of spare change over there". So you go to the bowl and find £5.50 in there and take it all and when they say "why have you taken so much when i only said you could borrow £2?" would you then say "well it's your fault for having more than £2 in the bowl"... I really don't think that would go down well...

When your on an airplane or cruise ship or anywhere else where a connection might be interupted it is quite good they don't require checks for every single transactions to make sure you have enough money. 

This is very good advice to give the OP when all they made was a mis-calculation not deliberate attempt to obtain more than the supposed so called limit on the CC. So for a forum that offers advice with credit and debt problems, your solution is to increase your debt. The CC provider failed to provide a buffer around the limit and therefore could prevent issues like this from ocurring.

Your anology is incorrect also because that is stealing but in the OP's instance he/she clearly stated they mis-calculated the limit and did not intenionally do this.

If you would like a more valid anology consinder this. We drive around in cars without speedometer's can can only check our speed via SMS. The highway agencies impose lot's of fines on drivers who are 1Mph over the designated speed limit. The only advice they have is to drive 10Mph below the limit or ask the Highway agencies to increase the speed limit. The Highway agencies will not put a buffer in place becaus it is not pratical to do this or the loss in revenue from fines.

It's clear as mud who is right and who is wrong.

moneymoner

redux said:

Some transactions are not instant live online, for instance some motorway tolls abroad (which therefore don't accept some types of card), and some contactless payments seem to have slight delay and be aggregated only a couple of days later.

Finally, someone with some sense.

eskbanker

moneymoner said:

redux said:

Some transactions are not instant live online, for instance some motorway tolls abroad (which therefore don't accept some types of card), and some contactless payments seem to have slight delay and be aggregated only a couple of days later.

Finally, someone with some sense.

You do realise that post was highlighting another reason why your idea (of seeking explicit customer approval of potential limit breaches in real time) wouldn't work, rather than agreeing with you?

redux

moneymoner said:

redux said:

Some transactions are not instant live online, for instance some motorway tolls abroad (which therefore don't accept some types of card), and some contactless payments seem to have slight delay and be aggregated only a couple of days later.

Finally, someone with some sense.

As eskbanker has just surmised, I wasn't saying this to mitigate customer reasons for going over the limit, or support a complaint something is unfair, but to try to suggest you can't always have instant interactivity, and keep such transactions in mind when estimating the likely change in balance since it was last checked.

Some card issuers are saying they will have methods like this, text confirmation, in future for internet tramsactions, but I assume it will be random chosen ones rather than every single time.

Remember something else I already said - there is no rule against making more than one payment a month, so if things are getting marginal send part of the intended monthly payment a bit earlier.