Egg money overdraft charge - Am i in the wrong?

snowmander

ok, so basically i was £475 overdrawn on my egg money account (my credit limit is £500).

I regularly log in to check my balance and also register to text updates on my balance which i recieve every monday.

Last monday Egg text me saying i was £475 overdrawn confirming what i knew. Believing i had £25 remaining i made an £8 purchase.

Later in the week egg called saying i was £528 overdrawn and had incurred a charge of £16. I called to enquire how i had gone overdrawn and was told two charges had recently come out of my account, one made 15th march and the other 28th. I had expected these to appear on my statement issued 3rd April considering this statement included transactions from 31st March!

I called to find out why these were so late to appear and when these were taken out of my account and was told they appeared on Friday 4th, the day after the statement was issued.

I asked egg why i had recieved a text saying i was £475 overdrawn when in fact i had already exceeded my limit on the Friday when these transactions were taken out the account.

They were unable to offer a reasonable answer and was told they must have been processing at the time and was told abruptly that i should be monitoring my transactions carefully to make sure i do not exceed my limit.

I do not think i am at fault for this as firstly some of the transactions were very late to appear and also that I had been incorrectly informed of my true balance.

What is the best way to resolve this issue? Egg are more interested in lecturing me on account management than explaining to me. Am i or Egg in the wrong for not informing me of the correct balance??

What are my chances of avoiding this £16 charge?

Apologies for the long story, hope somebody can help.

Thanks in advance

---lee---

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it is up to you to manage your account. My advice would be to learn from this mistake and use it as a warning to be more responsbile in the future. I know that sounds patronising but if you do this, you will never look back. It's always easy to make excuses...

I've worked on card authorisation systems for years and there are many reasons why collection of funds may be delayed. A common reason is that transactions are often processed together in batches (in thousands at a time).

Once a payment has been authorised from your card, the 'reservation' of the funds remains valid for 5 days. This means the merchant has been garanteed the funds (more or less) and can collect it from your card upto 5 days later.

Issues like this make it difficult for your card provider to keep track of your balance and to prevent you going over your limit. It's also a good opertunity for them to charge you a few £ which they are unlikley to miss.

Paul_Herring

Never trust the financial institution to give you an 'accurate' balance; you must maintain your own.

Only you know what's been charged on the account - the institution may not have received or processed transactions you know about, and relying on the figure they give you (without those transactions) gets you into the sort of situation you're now facing.

christmasoompa

Don't know if it helps at all but transactions can be much later than that - in our most recent credit card statement, a payment from 14th January had just gone through! So that one was 4 months late, no idea why, but I don't think you can rely on payments going through straight away, you have to account for them at any time it seems.

Sorry you got caught out.