ABBEY Overdraft charges - Check this months statements!

malcolm000

Similar occurence for me (as mentioned in the original post) - April statement mentions an 'Instant Overdraft Interest' payment of 39p to be deducted from my account on 22nd May. Definitely have not been overdrawn or close to it!!! Quickly phoned them on 08459724724 and after all the palaver of pressing buttons finally spoke to someone who reassured me it was a mistake and the amount WOULDN'T be taken out of my account.
Guess what!!!! The 39p did come out on the 22nd May!! Another phone call and again there was admission of a mistake and told I would be refunded after they had completed an internal form.
Intend to write a letter and also claim for the postage costs, 0845 calls and the 39p!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

dollywops

I am copying a post I made on another 'Abbey' thread a couple of week's ago. I apologise for the length of it.

For anyone who is unhappy, I suggest telephoning the Chairman's Office on 01908 680227. The compensation offered to my family and I has varied between £10, £30 and £50 on this occasion. I think I got £50 when they did this to me in January of this year.

As an aside, the monies 'stolen' from my daughter, have yet to be replaced, despite someone in the complaints department saying they would be and that her account is being monitored for this.
DD's statement turned up and I was horrified to see that she was going to be charged £34.62 in instant overdraft charges. At no point in the period, or any other time for that matter, was she overdrawn.

I immediately telephoned the Chairman's office, but the young lady who answered the phone obviously had some sort of problem with me, because, having tried to go through security with my daughter, she failed her. She said the only course of action was to go into a branch. Our local branch, being the one, where, by mistake, after crediting my son's account with a cheque deposit, put in the branch deposit box, £200 just went out of his account. This is also the branch that, having deposited a cheque for £115 erroneously in my account, withdrew said amount without notification. I will explain. We use the cheque deposit box as the queues in this branch are horrific. I know what cheques I have given to OH to pay in, but I have no idea what cheques he pays in, ie reimbusement for petty cash, etc. When I saw the £115 deposit, I had no reason to assume it was not ours. When I saw a withdrawal from my account accessed via internet banking, just saying 'withdrawal Watford HQ', I was somewhat concerned, needless to say. A return phone call from the manager advised the mistaken deposit and confirmed that a letter of apology was on its way. When I asked why I was not informed of the mistake first, with notification of the impending withdrawal, I was told that as there were sufficient funds in my account, they withdrew first and wrote second. When I complained to the Chairman's Office, stating this and also pointing out that I had a number of cheques waiting to be put through, an apology ensured, together with £50 compensation. Therefore, going to the local branch was definitely not an option.

A suitable letter expressing my daughter's anguish and requesting an explanation was sent to the Chairman at Abbey House. This letter was duly forwarded to Milton Keynes. Yesterday, 23 May, a letter was received by my daughter dated 15 May.

Quote - 'There is an issue with our computer system, which is being investigaged at the present time. This situation occurs when credits to and debits to your account happen on the same day. So although you look at your account statemet it does not appear you have gone overdrawn, in fact you will have done for a very short period.' I have to be careful what I say, so I will just say this is a lie.

What actually happened was that a large sum of money was transferred from DD's esaver to her current account in the first instance. Subsequent to this transfer, a payment was made from her current account to another institution. At no stage during this process did her current account go overdrawn.

Quote - 'A check on your account has shown that there a number of 'same day' transfers done on your account in the past.' WRONG - prior to that same day transfer, there were none. After that, there was one, for which no doubt she will be penalised on her next statement. Since when does 2 constitute a number.

Quote - 'If you are considering further 'same day' transfers in the near future, this particualr problem may occur again if the issue has not been fully rectified'.

Following receipt of this letter, OH spoke to someone in the Chairman's Office and suggested that Abbey look at the debits from an account, before looking at the credits and that this would appear to be the problem. Said person could not disagree with that. Although a request was made for the writer of the letter to call my husband, that call did not materialise.

In the letter, an offer of £30 was made as a goodwill gesture, and in full and final settlement. A request has also been made for the £34.62 to be put back into the account. Neither has happened yet.

OH will be penning a suitable letter demanding an apology and a true explanation of what is actually going on. I also have the paperwork from the Ombudsman and am seriously considering taking this further.

As an aside, DS's statement arrived on Wednesday, and Abbey were going to take £21 from him in instant overdraft interest. His first phone call to the Chairman's office directed him to telephone banking. He did this and spoke to someone abroad, who told him a mistake had been made. He would not be charged. In fact, on checking his statement, he saw that this money has already been credited to his account. Maybe they are sufficiently incompetent that the charge might not go through. His further phone call to the Chairman's office, resulted in an offer of £50 in compensation being credited to his account.

I apologise for the long post, but these are just a few examples of the incompetence meted out to my family by the Abbey. To date, their mistakes have netted myself, DS and DD in excess of £500 in less than 12 months!

For anyone who does not know it, the number for the Chairman's office for unresolved complaints is 01908 680227.

kimlisa66

Hi Dollywops

Thanks for this, you sound like you are going through the mill with Abbey just like I am. I have had to make 3 complaints over 3 separate issues in the past 6 weeks.

On one occaison I wrote to request details of my penalty charges levied against my abbey credit card. What they sent me were details of my son's bank account and charges but addressed to me and my son jointly. We are not financially linked in anyway, only share the same address and thats all. He went beserk when he found out, and seeing as he is a serving soldier, his security could have been compromised by their incompetence if they had sent that out to a complete stranger.

So far they have still not sent me details of my abbey charges, have not offered me financial compensation but have offered my son £25....big deal !

Back to the overdraft charges issue...I faxed a letter off on Wednesday and If I havent received a satisfactory reply by the end of the week, I am phoning the chairman (Thanks for this, a great help) and sending him a copy of the letters I have sent so far. :rolleyes:

Abbey should be renamed Shabby for the incompetent way they administer their customers accounts. :mad::mad::mad::mad:

I am moving all my business elsewhere as they do not deserve my custom. As a long standing customer of over 25 years, I am appalled at the way they treat their customers and then expect them to stay loyal.

Vic_of_eltham

My wife was charged £1.57 last month for an unorthorised overdraft, the account has never been in the red, rang up abbey call centre, was on the phone for 40 minutes at a cost of over £2 not very clever but you think it shouldn't take long. They said it was a system error and won't happen again. This month she was charged £4.15, went into the local branch to sort it out, asked the guy to ring the call centre and ask for a refund, the call centre said they would not talk to branch staff and they cut him off. He took our details and said he would sort it out. To-day I recieved a statement on my account saying I would be charged £0.86, again for an account that has never been in the red, on ringing the call centre again they said it was a system error and will not happen again. It sure won't because were off and taking all our accounts with us.

molley

I have noticed a significant increase on my Abbey charges ,This month it is £11+. I have an authorised overdraft of £1100 and never exceed it .I usually get to about £8-900 before my pension goes in to wipe the OD out ..I have searched their website for an explanation of charges but cannot see it anywhere . I have written to them for an expl'n of these charges so we'll see what they say .

molley

I sent a message to Abbey via their website quoting my a/c number asking them to post me an explanation of the charges and what do I get back .I get an e-mail saying they cannot discuss this by e-mail and asking me to phone them .I didn't ask them to discuss it by e-mail ...I said to post the explanation to me .Do these people not read what is sent to them? .So I replied telling them what I wanted and saying if they want to speak to me by phone then they can call me ...?...GRRR !!!

surreysaver

molley wrote: »

Do these people not read what is sent to them?

No, they don't! That is their standard response when you message them. There might as well not be that facility. And those that do read what's written don't understand it.

Dave_W_M

Just seen your note after posting my own. In my case it was £1.90 charge and i was given the same reason "an error on their behalf" and to expect the refund in 10 days.

Everyone should complain to enusre we all get these charges back. Abbey will not give an automatic refund as they took the money from my account on the 31st May and have had ample time to refund it. More importantly, they have the ability to refund it now, not in 10 days. If we go overdrawn 1 day and then put cleared funds in the same day, they will still charge us for the month.

There is no excuse for this as i have never been overdrawn for years. They are just stealing little amount s of money from each of us knowing the majority will not notice it or decide not to complain.

Incidentally, i was offered £0.84 compensation for being on the phone for 21 minutes. AFTER ANOTHER 7 minutes of conversation, they withdrew that offer as i felt it wasn't adeqaute compensation ofr inconvienience caused and the fact that i earn more than 4p per minute, they should pay me for my time as well.

treecity

Dave_W_M wrote: »

Incidentally, i was offered £0.84 compensation for being on the phone for 21 minutes. AFTER ANOTHER 7 minutes of conversation, they withdrew that offer as i felt it wasn't adeqaute compensation ofr inconvienience caused and the fact that i earn more than 4p per minute, they should pay me for my time as well.

Write a letter of complaint. You will get at least £15

NEVER waste your time ringing customer support for these issues. They are USELESS 100% of the time.

The address to write to is posted in this thread already.

kimlisa66

I am still going round in circles with my complaint....got passed to telephone banking who said my charges were not incorrect....got put back to complaints who said my original complaint had not been registered so need to do it again....

Im about as P***ed off as it gets with Abbey. Have now written to them, and faxed them and told them im giving them 7 days to respond and credit me with the charges plus interest plus inconvenience money or I'm going to the newspapers and the ombudsman...

I suggest everyone does the same as they must be making millions like this.

Kim