to think that people should shut up about their bank charges? You incurred the charges, so pay up.

[AitchTwoOh]

honestly, i've got a friend who just got £5500 back and he's off on holiday with the proceeds.

he's absolutely USELESS with money and knowingly incurred all teh charges, so why exactly does he deserve to get the money back? it's not a bloody savings account he's been paying into...

Well you know where I am if I can help in any way

X

Opprobrium, Noodle, is shit heaped upon your head!

And then compacted.

What happened to me was that I put money in the "fast" deposit letterbox, unfortunately because they were short staffed the money was not put into my account till the next day. Halifax need you to have the money in the day before something is due....because they were slow in putting it in my direct debit was rejected and I received a £39 fee, this was taken from my account which only had enough money in for the original dd....so I was then short for the dd, so to cut a long story short I ended up receiving another charge of £39 and then charges for being overdrawn...in the end I got the money back as if you use the fast deposit thing it is meant to go in that working day.....took them 4 weeks to sort it out tho.

Banks are rip off merchants and I'm glad ppl are standing up to them

My head in particular due to previous comments or in general?!

Ah yes Hayes

The practice of taking the charges out before the DD's

remember that one (buggers)

Fox, I understand that, and I agree with that. Never implied that I didn't. It's the tone of some of the posters that bothers me, not the debate itself.

If you refer back to the OP from Aitch, she is making a specific gripe, the essence of which I agree with. That the banks have been profiteering on this for years is not up for question. Do we like them? Nope. Not much. But the friend, who is 'crap with money' has had all his bank charges returned, and that is not a good precedent. He should have had the unfair proportion returned, but let the minimum fee stand.

He knew what he was doing.

Sorry Noodle, haven't read your comments on this thread. I meant in general. It's me that's getting the opprobrium

Thanks rabble - just checking.
Thanks for reminding what thread is about.

Not read the whole thread (I'm at work!) but I agree with the OP. I have sympathy for people who make genuine mistakes and go overlimit, or it happens to once or twice.

However, people who go into unauthorised overdrafts every month know the consequences. OK, so the banks are charging too much, fair enough but I bet it wont be long before all these people have spent their cheques and will be in an unauthorised overdraft yet again. Sorry, just my opinion

How is he supposed to pay the minimum fee when the banks wont disclose what that fee is?

i told my bank to close one of my accounts, shortly before moving. All forms signed and everything. It was my student account

they didn't close the account. instead they changed it to a "better" account that incurred charges. This was not routine and was utterly without my consent, which you'd have thought you'd NEED really, but no, it seems not.

I went and had a baby and then another one and became crap at opening letters from the bank. I do online banking and so just assumed that the letters I got were statements from the OTHER accounts with that bank.

I discovered my mistake when I opened a letter from some baliffs, asking for about £1200 off me in bank charges (becuase there was 0 in my account, as soon as they started charging a maintenance fee I went overdrawn, and this was an unauthorised o/d so charges...etc etc).

I never spent a bloody penny of that. I wasn't on the ball enough, I agree. I do basically just do my banking online (and the account wasn't an online one so didn't show up).

But am still bloody about it. I didn't HAVE a spare £1200, so, guess where that came from? . oh yes an o/d which they were most happy to give me and get me paying charges on.

the b*stards involved were RSBC, btw.

OK, I haven't read much of this thread, really only the title, but felt I wanted to chip in.

I am a site helper on a bank charges website, and you wouldn't believe the misery that the charges cause people. The vast majority of people claiming their charges back are relieved and gateful that they will now be able to pay back other credit that they have.

Nobody (even the site admin) deny that there is some cost to the banks when they bounce a DD, cheque etc, or a person goes over their agreed limit, but economists and bank insiders have put that amount at anywhere between 80p and £2.50. I cannot see how anyone could think that it is unreasonable to ask for the difference back. The banks will not officially comment on how much it does cost them, therefore the only sensible thing people can do is claim the whole amount back.

I personally have managed to claim back oer £7k from 4 different bank/credit companies, and have mostly used the money to pay off other credit that my exH kindly put in my name before he disappeared then went bankrupt. There was a small amount left over which I took my children away on holiday with.

The best thing IMHO about people reclaiming their charges is the sense of empowerment it gives them in their lives overall. It is a joy to see people starting to stick up for their rights.

Oh and the main problem that the charges cause is the snowball effect, ie they charge you so much in one month that you cannot pay your bills the next month, therefore incurring more charges ad infinitum

Bugger, have I killed yet another thread???

just to remind everyone that no-one is defending the banks' rights to profiteer. just asking for a degree of personal responsibility, that's all. the friend i referred to in the OP basically thinks people who take care of their finances are, and i quote, 'saddoes'. and why would he think anything different, he's the one with the new ipod, the spiffy new tv and tickets to mauritius in his hand? running up bank charges isn't 'naughty' as was said on another thread, life's not a carry on film. it's either unfortunate or monumentally stupid, but 'naughty' stinks.

and like rabble, shiny, i personally would rather my children did without than got me into debt. me and my three siblings couldn't afford to go on school trips sometimes, which was quite gutting at the time but in the long run not the worst thing in the world. better, imo, than my folks getting into debt they couldn't handle. but obviously not your opinion, as you have mentioned a number of times.

and filly, same thing happened to me with the Halifax, oddly enough. early nineties, there was a lot of it about. didn't even know the account was still open as it was a student one and they'd transferred it to a fee paying account. first fee put me over, the gits. luckily i got to them by the time i was only £160 in and they waived it.

Well posted, Aitch: well started and well finished ... unless a shiny happy person wants one more swoop ??

crumbs! Still going. Impressive.

Filly - which bank is RSBC??

and there was a famoue incident a few years ago when the Yorkshire Bank did something horrible to a customer along these lines.

Soooo,

He withdrew all his money , save a pound, and formally changed his name. Opened a new account under new name, and went into old bank, asking for a cheque for one pound in his new name to pay into his new bank.
Hence they had to write him a cheque in the name "Yorkshire Bank Are Fascist Thieving Bastards".

Sometimes it's the little things that help.

oh duh

rbs

w*nkers

see i was def contributoraly negligent, i should have opened my mail, ffs, not just relied on internet banking! I was a bit crap, though I did have 2 babies in the 22 months spanning this incident.

but £1200 is out of all proportion. and it WAS their fault really

Shiny i do emperthise with people alot of the time. I was talking about the 'i want it now' generation who get themselves into debt because they cannot wait. I wasn't talking about the people who really do struggle. You say 'than have my children grow up looking back on a childhood where their peers got all the things their parents could never afford.' Well with out sounding like a mater here, me and my sister did go without alot of the time simply because my mum couldn't afford it. We never had birthday parties or went to swimming club or any kind of club if it wasn't free but we were still happy children (i have fond memories of playing teddy bears picnic in the garden). We never once had a holiday.

If my mum had got loans etc for these things she new that me,my sis and herself would be alot worse off as she new she couldn't pay it back. I don't see this as her being selfish at all, so we went without, so what, she made up for it when we were older and she was always there for us.

People have different ideas to me as to what is a luxury and that is fine, it doesn't matter. I think luxurys are having a car (any car,old,new,big or small), having a computer, having the internet at home for personal use,having sky/cable tv,eating out or getting takeaway,having a holiday (abroad or in the Uk), going to clubs that are not free,going out to the pub/clubs and i could go on. Please don't get me wrong, i have these things and so should everyone else but to me they are luxuries not life essencials. I grew up without everything on that list and it hasn't killed me and i think not having those things really tought me to value everything i have.

Did anyone see that tv program a few weeks ago on Barcleys bank and how they con some of their customers?

I worked for Halifax for 8 years. The people whoc ould really do with an overdraft on their account will never be given one. These are the same people who would call the day before a direct debit was due to leave their account asking to cancel it because they're short by pennies or a couple of pounds. These people didn't have the money to pay in or any way of getting it so they knew they would be charged and were trying to do the right thing EXCEPT you have to give 2-3 business days notice to cancel a direct debit. So the d/d comes off anyway and the same people who didn't have the couple of pounds to pay in now also have to find £30 odd to pay for the charge. I am very fortunate in that I don't know what its like to have no access to money (I have an o/d and a credit card or my parents could lend me money if I was stuck) but when some people have no money they literally have no access to anything at all. Having to tell people they were going to be charged extortionate amounts of money when they can barely afford to feed their kids is one of the reasons why I no longer work in banking.

A car IS an essential to some people. And I mean that its down to circumstances, not personal preferences. I won't go into mine lest they get considered to be a dramatised sob story not in keeping for the financial norms of most people who incur bank charges

Rabble: "If you think it's cool to go overdrawn so your children can have the same things that other children have, that's your view and your entitled to it. I profoundly disagree, but as some famous Frenchman once said, I would defend to the death your right to say it."

This sucks. I never said ANYTHING about thinking my overdraft is cool.. I don't much like my overdraft,. but have no intention of my kids missing out so that I can prevent myself from needing to use it. That is mad and masochistic. And I am not using it to buy my children designer labels! An overdraft is a facility FFS.. it doesn't make you a bad person to use it.. and you pay the bank for the pleasure. I don't have credit cards, I don't have loans.. but I have a small overdraft. ANd I use it.

Let me use an example of one of my "extravagances" that I "can't really afford." Annual swimming club fees for two children do not come cheap. But they swim 3 times a week (max for the money I pay) and they keep fit because of it! But according to your principles, my kids should stay home and not go, to save my using my overdraft.

That's mad.

I am not robbing banks or old ladies to pay.. I am using my overdraft!

And use of an authorised overdraft does not incur bank charges (just the agreed fee) anyway.

Honestly. Ivory towers and halos. And people's wacky ideas about what constitutes a "luxury!"

shiny, honestly, you've been needlessly aggressive on this from the minute it started. all this ivory towers stuff is so insulting, you've got no idea about peoples' personal circumstances, as they have no idea about yours.

you're normally a relatively sober and reasonable poster, so this has obviously touched a nerve for you but you maybe should take a step back? there's no way you should be justifying yourself or what you pay for swimming lessons, for goodness sake.

why are you taking this as if it's an attack on you when it clearly isn't? read the OP again, my friend is USELESS with money and knowingly ran up charges, paying them as and when because he couldn't be arsed dealing with them. fine. now he's phsl at all the 'saddoes' who tried to keep their finances in good order because they're not getting a 'bonus cashback' as he laughingly calls it. who do you have more in common with, him or someone keeping their finances under control?

Aitch i think its because there is an automatic judgement ergo assumtion with the OP.

as you say about circumstances - we know not each others. Yet you proceed to judge.

Had you said " my friend got some money back from the bank and went on holiday with it - as he is useless with money AIBU to think that perhaps he should save some"

but that wasn't your op.

Thats why shiny feels she has to justify, thats why i used a made up example. becuase there is judgement by you.