It's unreasonable to be charged £6 for being £5 overdrawn.

My DDs (from many accounts, covering over 75% of UK high street banks) always go out in the morning, so not sure why yours are being taken in the afternoon. They can be taken in the afternoon if there isn't enough money in the morning so the DD is declined, then you put money in during the day though. Anyway, a DD isn't really an unexpected expense. I have a sheet showing me all my expected DDs. If it's really unexpected, then you should be able to claim it back.

If one of your accounts is regularly going overdrawn yet you have money in another account, it seems that you could manage your accounts better. If it's a case of keeping joint and personal expenses separate, can't both of you just pay more money into the joint account? Or is it sometimes the joint going over and sometimes your personal ones going over?

Thanks for the reply. From what I've seen, at the start of the day any money for DD's seems to reduce the 'available' balance, then at the end of the day, it goes from the actual balance.

The DD's going out are not unexpected (although the specific day they go seems to be different by up to a week each month), but the charges for going overdrawn certainly is unexpected.

It's only ever our joint account that goes overdrawn, covering bills and household shops. We've over-budgeted for all the fixed monthly bills going out, as well as several shops, and have generally got enough each month, it just seems to be if we do a shop on the same day as one of the DD's going out, that it gets a bit out of sync, and I still believe the transaction should be declined, instead of the bank knowingly allowing me to go into an un-arranged overdraft, then charging me - which seems a bit underhanded to me.

We've recently up'ed the amount we transfer in an attempt to counteract this, but no doubt it will happen again in the future, so just wanted to see if there is any way of actually linking the accounts to auto top-up from each other if necessary. Probably a discussion to be had with the bank directly, but they'll probably just tell me it's my fault and they have every right to charge me.

Are you saying you're not pre-notified (with 10 working days notice) of both the date and amount? Or are you saying you don't check the statements/emails/letters sent to you, and just presume the date will be the same as it was last month? If the former, then you claim under the direct debit guarantee. If the latter...well, you know what you have to do.

Didn't know I was supposed to get notification of date and amount to be honest - it's a life insurance policy that has been running for 4+ years, set up via a financial advisor when we moved house. It seems to go any time between 10th-20th of the month.
Don't recall ever receiving anything from them actually, since the original policy documents!

Honestly? Yes, you are being unreasonable. Each of those accounts is distinct and, furthermore, the money in an individual's acount does not belong to the person with whom they hold a joint account. The money in your joint account is jointly owned by you and your partner, but the money in your personal account or theirs belongs solely to that individual, so the bank cannot draw on those funds to avoid the overdraft on the joint account.

You (and your partner) are responsible for managing your money. The bank has provided you with a joint account and any payments that you authorise on that account should, rightly, be drawn on that account. They should not touch the money in any other account that you hold. If this is a regular problem, then I suggest you look at your outgoings from the joint account and ensure that more money is deposited into it each month to cover them.

So they waived the fees for going overdrawn because you hadn't received a text alert which you hadn't actively signed up to??? You argued that they shouldn't charge you because you hadn't received a text message that you didn't ask for??? I'd say that you were very lucky to get them to waive the fees that time and you should count yourself as such.

Furthermore the text alerts can be handy, but they are not guaranteed to get to you in time. You shouldn't rely on them. You need to take a more attractive approach to monitoring your account.

Which bank is it? Many don't charge if your account is in credit at the close of business, even if it goes into overdraft during the course of the day. You need to check your terms and conditions to ascertain what your bank do. If they say that they won't charge as long as the account is in credit by the close of business then you have grounds for a complaint. If they don't say that then you don't have grounds.

No, they shouldn't, because your current account has an overdraft facility on it. Furthermore, your debit card transaction may not have been processed online, so there was no way for anyone (except you) to know that you didn't have available funds (although you did because of the overdraft facility). Again, you are responsible for ensuring that you have the money to make any transactions that you choose to make.

If this is a common problem, then you may want to consider a credit card, which would give you an interest free period and delay the withdrawal of your money from your current account. It is important, however, that you learn some money management if you are going to use a credit card, as it is a risky option for those who spend without checking that they actually have the money / will have the money once the repayment is due.

You are in the red in that particular account and that is what matters. It is not for the bank to manage your cashflow, but rather it is for you and your partner to do so.

You will have been notified of what the charges are in the terms and conditions. You went overdrawn, so you should have expected the charge. That you didn't realise you would go overdrawn is your fault not the bank's, and they are entitled to charge you for that.

Clearly you aren't putting enough money into the joint account. I think that one of the problems here is that you are trying to make known and fixed payments from an account where you are also making unknown and unfixed payments, i.e. your monthly bills are known and fixed, but your shopping can vary. This means that you are not depositing enough in the account to cover all of that. If you were to use a credit card for the shopping then this would eliminate the problem. You could transfer the necessary sum into the joint account for the direct debits each month and then do your shopping on the credit card. Once the credit card bill came through, you would know how much you needed to transfer to the account to cover it. Simple.

It isn't underhand to charge you the advertised fees for going overdrawn. Having money in another account is irrelevant.

I've given you a solution above.

Look at it this way, the bank does not know what you planned to do with the money in your other account. If they dipped into that without asking you, and subsequently bounced a request for payment for something critical, you!!!8217;d likely be annoyed that they had caused you to fail to make that payment.

They are not there to manage your money for you, you need to take responsibility for this. If one account has a buffer, transfer this buffer into the account that is running short.

I!!!8217;m not expecting them to manage my money for me - but surely the premise behind the charges is that I!!!8217;m borrowing money from them, effectively causing them to go into debt. When I!!!8217;m actually not, as I am still in the black overall.

Yes I did argue with them that I had relied on their system for notification. They said to me that I accepted their T&C!!!8217;s saying it should not be relied upon as it may not arrive on time. This is not the case, I never agreed to this, as they activated the service on my accounts. Even then, they did not read them to me, did not advise me where to find them, nor ask me to agree to them in order to get the service active. So that!!!8217;s their failing.

The part that I feel is underhand is that up until that point, the message would come through and we!!!8217;d resolve the problem straight away. Then miraculously the system would start ONLY sending us the messages the following day saying we!!!8217;d incurred charges, that seems to arrive perfectly fine and within the normal timescale in the morning (0800-0900). It!!!8217;s not like the message from the previous day comes through late, there has clearly been no attempt to send that one through to us. In fact all the recent cases of this have happened that way. Nothing on the day we could have resolved the issue, then both get notification of fees.

I completely agree that as a !!!8216;normal customer!!!8217;, I would not want them to take money from the other account and risk causing issues that way, but that!!!8217;s not quite what I!!!8217;m saying. I!!!8217;m on about an opt-in service where I can select which account could be used as a buffer and up to a certain amount, if the funds are available. Much like a credit card can be configured to automatically draw the outstanding balance at the end of the month to return to zero. I!!!8217;ve heard that!!!8217;s a thing, but as I don!!!8217;t have a credit card (never needed one, don!!!8217;t want one), I can!!!8217;t say for certain how that works.

The bank can't move money from one account to the other for you, you have to do that or your joint account holder from theirs.

Have you considered using the joint account for bills ie DDs only and having a different account for spending. This means the DD money will be available for the DD (specifically the one you refer to above) on which ever day it is called for.

We have indeed considered this and will probably be one of the next steps, depending on how successful our increased transfer amounts turn out to be!

It is irrelevant that you have money in other accounts. That account is overdrawn. This issue is to do with how you manage your accounts, which is your responsibility.

I don't agree. The t&c are available on the bank's website and as you are using the service you should have familiarised yourself with how the service worked. They didn't need your express authorisation to set alerts up as it is an account feature and you had agreed to the account.

As you had already identified this as a problem, why didn't you stop relying on alerts? They don't guarantee to alert you in time and you are responsible for managing your money, not the bank.

You are asking for a service which was never offered. There are lots of good reasons why it isn't, as I, and others, have already explained. Your analogy to a credit card is nonsense. What you are talking about is where a customer has set up a direct debit to pay the outstanding balance every month. Current accounts are completely different products, and a direct debit from one of your other accounts couldn't be used because you have to be notified of a direct debit at least ten days in advance.

Why don't you want a credit card? It would solve all of your problems.

To clarify further, I have held my account with them for over a decade, the joint one was set up about 7 years ago. They enabled the alert service approx 4 years ago. So no, I did not accept the terms and conditions when it came with the account, because it didn't. My point is, they tried to claim I accepted these terms when activating the service, but I never activated it, therefore any such claim is false. Starting to wonder if you are the person I spoke to that day.

The difference is, they say they can't guarantee the alerts reach you on time, but this isn't a case of them arriving late, they simply don't arrive at all. Therefore no effort is being made to send them, so they might as well not bother with the service at all. Yet conveniently the ones saying it's too late and I'm going to be charged always seem to come through without fail. This is the reason I have issue with them and believe it is underhanded.

My other issue is that if the DD is clearing and my 'available' balance is reduced until it has left the account, then any transactions made on that day should surely be equally declined, because the funds are not available against the available balance. It has happened many a time that I'll go to pay for something for say £10 in the shop, and the card is declined, because the funds are rightly not available. Yet in the example above, the funds are also not available and they allow the payment and I get charged. That is not me asking them to manage my finances for me, that's me questioning why they are knowingly allowing me to go overdrawn when in other circumstances they do not. It is a failing of their system based on the specific set of circumstances provided.
It may surprise you to hear that not everyone checks their bank balances before every transaction to make sure the funds are available. The card being declined is a pretty good indicator that I need to top the account up, so I just pay with my other card before moving some money around to sort the problem.

I realise I'm asking for a service that was never offered, thats why I prefixed it with "just wanted to see if there is any way of"... It seems like a pretty simple service to me, but then why would the banks want to offer such a service which would stop them being able to charge people. It's not in their interest to do so.

The reason I don't want a credit card is because I simply don't need to borrow money. And don't try and say "well you're going overdrawn so therefore you do", because that is, as you would say, nonsense. I have the money available to my name, its just in the wrong digital bucket. The bank has not been inconvenienced, nor have they had to go and get a Wonga loan with an extreme interest rate because little old me went £5 overdrawn, because as a person, I have not. They still have all my other money to do whatever trading they do with.

As has already been explained to you, not all debit card transactions are "online" (meaning not all transactions involve the retailer's bank contacting yours in real time). Many smaller transactions fall below the retailer's bank's "floor limit" meaning that it will honour the transaction without having to check it in real time. In these cases it could be days (or in extreme cases even months) before your account is debited. You should not rely on a card being declined to indicate you have gone overdrawn.

Pathetic conspiracy theory.

I don't need to borrow money. Most credit card users don't need to borrow money. They are used to manage money. By putting all your spend on a credit card and then settling the credit card bill in full every month you will avoid the issues you have been having, and never pay interest on the credit card (indeed depending on which credit card you use you may get a small amount of cashback).

I'm afraid that you are wrong there. Every time the terms and conditions are updated the bank informs you of this, and when the new terms are due to take effect. You are free to close your account before that date and not be bound by the new terms, but if you don't then you are deemed to have accepted the new terms, so you did accept them. That's the way it works in law.

You did accept the terms by not closing your account before the new terms came into effect. Sorry, but you don't seem to understand how contracts work.

I'm not the person you spoke to, but I do understand how a contract works and the revisions to it.

They don't have to. It is a feature of the account (that you consented to), but not one that provides any guarantee. In essence, it is a gimmick that may be of use, but may not.

Irrelevant. You are responsible for managing your own finances, not the bank. The bank provides a non-guaranteed service that may help you with this, but you cannot rely on it and they expressly say that you shouldn't.

No, because, as I have already explained to you, you have an overdraft facility on the account and therefore the bank will honour the transaction. And, for the umpeenth time, it is your responsibility to ensure that you have sufficient funds to meet your transactions!


Maybe it has been, but that could be due to whether the payment is being authorised offline or online. If it is online then there is a check that there are funds, but if it isn't then there is no check and the bank, therefore, honours the payment because otherwise the merchant would be out of pocket and you would have got a load of free shopping.

No, it is a failing in your understanding of how payments work. And yes, you are asking the bank to manage your finances: you are responsible for ensuring that you have the funds necessary.

We don't all need to because we know that we have sufficient funds to cover all of our spending. You, on the other hand apparently do not, and so you should be checking regularly, and keeping track of your spending.

Give me strength! That is not pro-actively managing your finances. You are taking a reactive approach and relying on the bank sending you signals (in one form or another) that you don't have money in the account. You are responsible for ensuring that you have funds available.

Don't be ridiculous. You took an acount with them and agreed to the terms. Because of your poor financial management you have been charged overdraft fees and so now you are complaining that the account should offer a feature that it was never advertised with, and that you knew it didn't have when you opened the account!

It may, "seem like a pretty simple service to [you]," but it isn't one that they offer. Furthermore, it remains your responsibility. I see no reason why the bank should offer this, but if they did then one might reasonably expect that it would be a paid for feature - banks do have to turn a profit, you know. Would you be willing to pay for such a feature?

Where do I begin with this? You don't seem to understand credit cards either. Yes, you are borrowing money, but at 0% every month. As long as you pay it back then you never pay any interest. Credit cards are only a source of debt if people don't take care to only spend money that they actually have. Thousands and thousands of us use credit cards all the time and never pay anything for the facility. Of course, given your apparent inability to keep a track of your spending then maybe it isn't a suitable option for you.

I use a credit card for almost all of my spending, but I have absolutely no need to borrow money. I use the card because of the many benefits that it provides (see below) and because it assists in the management of my money.

There are other benefits to using credit cards too, like Section 75 protection; earning interest on the funds in our accounts for a longer period of time due to the interest free period; earning cashback on our spending (thus reducing or outgoings); earning rewards, e.g. Tesco Clubcard points, Avios points, etc.

Oh, and by the way, it is conventional to respond to comments made rather than try and guess what someone will write and get your attack in first. You are the only one writing nonsense in this thread.

Then put it in the right "bucket" and stop blaming the bank for your own ineptitude with managing your finances.

Utterly irrelevant, as has been explained to you repeatedly. You have gone overdrawn, entirely through your own fault, and the bank has charged you entirely within their stated terms and fees, which you agreed to!

You don't seem to understand how banking works.

May I remind you of how you began your first post:

I'm here to let you know that you were correct in your suspicions: you are being stubborn.

This is getting painful at this point.

It was your fault, it was completely your fault, the bank did nothing wrong, and you do not seem to understand this.

You need to start acting like an adult, and taking responsibility for your decisions. The bank is not your parents, it is not there to hold your hand, and it explicitly explained this to you.

Are you by any chance a millennial?

To further clarify - yes when the main terms and conditions change I get noticication, I keep the account open and thereby accept them. I get that. That isnt what has happened with this specific service though. They didn’t one day say “hey, we’re activating this service here are the terms, read and accept, or don’t read and accept them by default”. This has never happened. I just started receiving messages one day. Even after I spoke with then on the phone, they did not request I read and accept the terms, or the service would be deactivated. Therefore no offer of contract amanedment was made.

I appreciate I’m being stubborn, but getting into “Are you by any chance a millennial” is not constructive in the slighest and in my opinion shows that if anything, you have resorted to trying to cause offense instead of continuing in a debate and trying to convey and articulate your point. Not a good character trait.
At least ValiantSon whilst constantly picking apart my posts (little annoying, but with reason) is addressing all points to improve my understanding.

As far as I’m now concerned, this topic is done and can be closed. The point has been made that yes I am in the wrong (we’ve covered the fact that I said this was a possibility from the offset). I still don’t agree with some of the points, but that is how it is. I think it could be run differently; maybe when I come to power, I’ll make a bank with my bright ideas and watch the masses come flooding to me because I look out for the customer by offering them easier ways to manage their money in the digital age where there is no reason not to provide systems which the user can customise to achieve such a feature

Debate?

There is no debate, everyone is telling you the same thing, you are being ridiculous and this is completely your fault.

You are a millennial, aren’t you? And this is not trying to cause offence, just noting the high correlation between being a millennial and completely refusing to take responsibility for things that you chose to do.

You need to grow up and start taking responsibility if you want to get anywhere in life.

Quoted for posterity, as I’ve a feeling that otherwise the original may not exist for long...

It’s still a debate, because it’s me stating I disagree with the points being made, and giving my reasoning why. Then others raising counter arguments. Last I checked, that’s how it works.

Be honest, you were trying to cause offense, are are still continuing to do so after I’ve said the topic is done. You’ve just done the equivalent of “I’m not being racist, but...”.
You’re now trying to backtrack because I called you out on it.

I’ve acknowledged I am in the wrong, but you are continuing. What more do you seek to achieve from this exchange?

I’m already taking enough responsibility and have made what I want of my life so far considering the cards I have been dealt, but thank you for your concern. I’ll cite you as my inspiration when/if I make it to the height you believe I should be at.

Quote me all you like for ‘posterity’. I won’t be deleting the thread, but if I did, your quote would disappear also. Maybe try printing it off and framing it behind your toilet.

Should you decide to become a long term and productive forum member it's worth knowing that you can't delete a thread (in some circumstances you can ask MSE to delete it for you, although I don't think this would be such a case). You can delete posts after the first one, but all you can do with your OP is to delete the content, which is why we sometimes quote it when there is a perceived risk that the poster will throw their toys out of the pram.