To think unpaid transaction fees are bullshit?!

[WanderingNotLost]

Owing to a two-month gap between finishing my last job and starting this one, I've not been paid since mid-July and won't be until the end of this month, and so have been pretty much flat broke for a good few weeks now. As a result I've missed a few direct debits because there wasn't enough money in my account to cover them. And Natwest, in their apparent eagerness not to miss an opportunity to make a shit situation worse, have taken it upon themselves to charge me an 'unpaid transaction fee' every time this has happened. So far I'm down £30, which may not sound like a lot, but that would cover me for dinner for a week. They're essentially fining me for being poor. How the fuck is that allowed?!

If you cancel all the DDs now (well, ideally before this, but that's gone now...), by the time each of the various cos have realised and contacted you to sort it out, you should be back on your feet again, and you can just apologise, "so sorry, was tidying up old/unused dds on my account, must have cancelled this one in error, please reinstate"

Do you pay an annual charge for your account? Then you might have some leeway, but most people expect current accounts to be free and then complain when charged for trying to spend money they don't have.

At current interest rates the bank must be making almost no money on your account - because you have no money and interest rates are so low - and yet you still expect them to provide above the basic service for no extra money. As a pp said they are now only allowed to charge what it reasonably costs them and that's what they have done.

Maybe you should have rang the bank to arrange something beforehand when you realised you'd be short of money, rather than complaing after the fact?

We all have been stung by fees. But you sat back and did nothing about yoir situation before this happened.

You could have rung bank and asked for overdraft
cancelled dd and phone each compnay and explain their money will be late

You didn't address the situation at all

I had an arranged overdraft with halifax, I didn't have enough money to live on at the time.
I got charged £1 per day overdrawn, in my arranged overdraft. an additional £1 per day for being overdrawn beyond that limit (Which happened a few times) by the time I'd paid for my months food and bills, I'd be at the bottom of my overdraft. if an unplanned DD hit my account (Experian, tried to cancel that for 3 months running. the bastards) I'd go over my overdraft and get charged the full £60. A trick they liked to do to me was 2-3 weeks into the month they'd take the fees for my overdraft, tipping me into my unplanned overdraft. I'd generally pay an extra £10-20 or so by the time payday came around.
This went on for years. I worked out that even at £30 a month I would've more than cleared my overdraft, three times!
thankfully I'm now quite well off and have no debt other than £10,000 spread across two mortgages which I will have cleared over the next few months, but I sympathize with you about banks and their stupid charges.
it is a tax on being poor, Like many other taxes on being poor...

I get what you are saying as these charges are essentially a tax on being poor, but similarly it wounds like you were fully aware that these Direct Debits would not clear in advance, and yet did not cancel them or arrange a temporary overdraft, so I think you need to take a bit of responsibility here too.

^ 'sounds like' not 'wounds like'!

Did you inform your bank you could have got a temp overdraft your DD are automatic your account status doesnt have an she is skint function you have put your head in the sand and now moaning about it.

Fees are a pain in the arse but you cant blame bank when you have done nothing about it.

I really feel for you Wandering! We got caught up in the fees/bounced DDs/more fees cycle when my husband had to lower his working hours due to disability. It was literally the fees that drove us into bankruptcy. This was about 12 years ago, so the charges they have these days seem positively munificent. However, any amount is too much when you don't have it!

It's true that you 'should have' cancelled DDs or tried to get a small overdraft, assuming you haven't already but it is very easy to forget or put it off when it's such a huge reminder of a shitty situation. Do call, as they may well waive at least some of the charges and do discuss with them what you can do to prevent more problems. Hopefully in a couple of months this will just be an annoying blip.

OP it is shit. Completely get it as we live in our overdraft, trying to get out of it but it's not easy when you are disabled and on fixed income.

Whilst I appreciate there is a cost involved in declining transactions I certainly don't think it's £30! Banks make quite enough money from credit and debit interest, paid for accounts etc without making money from charging people who don't have any money.

I think you'd have to work very hard to convince me that one transaction between computers costs more than another... That said, someone did mention manual reconciling upthread.

I am glad they have now been forced to limit the fees but it is still crap. Once I was living hand to mouth each week and my pay didn't go in. A DD was due to go out which would have taken me a pound overdrawn. They rejected the DD as they wouldn't allow me to have an unauthorised overdraft, the DD reject fee took me £10 overdrawn and then they slapped the overdraft charge on. Bastards wouldn't budge when I rang 😞. It was a huge chunk of my wages so the cycle started again.

It is like any debt situation though at the risk of being shouted down. If you had spoken about the situation to the bank you may have avoided the fees.

In the UK we are lucky that we can still get free banking if we stay in credit. In many countries you pay to have a bank account, for cards, for cheque books etc.

The charges are set out in terms and conditions when they are set out. A sensible way may be for the bank to have the charges to arise the following month so that once you have been paid you can set that sum aside to cover them rather than driving the overdraft up further at that point. They could then email saying that on xth of the month charges of £y would be taken so you knew in advance.

SabineUdine - how bloody rude!

I've been in the shit and told all my bill companies immediately, to avoid fees and prevent charges. I'm not smug but fed up of people expecting others to clear their mess up. Take some responsibility!

It is shit yes. And affects the poor disproportionately.

However the alternative is everyone having to pay a monthly fee to have an account, or pay a transaction fee whenever you make a transfer or withdraw cash or use your card. This is how bank accounts work in other countries.

Personally I think a system of everyone paying a small amount for their account would be better (as it would be fairer). But many would disagree.

I used to work for telephone banking while I was at uni and this was before the big bank charges legal proceedings. I'd have customers being charged £200+ in a month because they were charged DAILY for being overdrawn. The amount charged depended on how much they were overdrawn by. OD by £100 and you'd be charged £15 a day (I think) for up to 21 days. It started a cycle that a lot of people could not get out of. These poor people would call me for help and the things I had to say to them were awful. I hated working there. I regret working there.

Charges are "fairer" now (not my words) but they still suck. The bank is not your friend. My bank loves me. They want to give me the world right now but they didn't 13 years ago and they won't if my circumstances change. Banks will take every opprtunity to take your money.

I was in that boat, I asked the bank to increase my overdraft from £50 to £200.
They cancelled it. Sadly that did not cancel my liabilities and I've been in debt ever since. I've nearly got it paid off, and when I do I'm switching banks.