Is this legal?

[CherryMonster]

my bank has taken out £72 in charges today for failed direct debits. i had no warning of this as i have not received my statement yet due to the bank holiday post. i read somewhere that it is illegal for the to take charges out of my benefits. can anyone tell me more about this please?

From what I can find online (moneysavingexpert forum and moneysupermarket forum) then yes, they can take it - it's income.

They can't take benefits as security - eg a Child Benefit book as a guarantee of payment against something, but once it's in your bank, it's just plain old income from which they can take what you owe.

On the MSE site there are a couple of cases where people have written to the bank's Head Office and got the money refunded.

Give them a call and explain, I got £168 of charges refunded yesterday by giving them a ring

they must have taken nearly £1000 from my benefits in the last 4 years, and i think its totally unfair. they can see from my statement that my benefits are my only income, and i have 4 children to feed, 2 of whom are disabled.

been on the phone to them for the last half an hour, they are refusing to help. i now have no money to feed my 4 kids

sorry to ask, but why have you not arranged an overdraft facility if you go overdrawn so often?

because they wont give me an overdraft.

how many direct debits were not paid? and for what reason? i know they can still charge, but there was some kind of legislation on amounts, so they couldnt basically charge whatever they wanted.

basically my bank card was cloned, and payments made with the cloned card which meant that there was no money in my account to cover my direct debits. i cancelled the card as soon as the fraudulent payments showed on my online banking, but they are still charging me

why have the payments made on the cloned card not been refunded?

can you claim it back when you claim back any money taken through the fraud?

the payments made on the cloned card were refunded, and some forms were sent to me but i havent received the forms. anyways, i finally got through to a nice lady at the bank (after speaking to some jumped up little scrote) and she has spoken to debit card services and said that if i go into the branch tomorrow they will do the forms for me to sign, and fax them through and all the fraudulent payments and charges will be refunded by close of business tomorrow. she has also ordered all my statements for the last 4 years and given me an address to write to to reclaim the lot because of financial hardship.

The bank's beuocracy are a nightmare to deal with but you seem to be on the right trail now. Regarding reclaiming your bank charges go the MoneySaving Expert.co.uk and there is a template letter for reclaiming bank charges. The recent court ruling was not as favourable as expected and, although credit card companies cannot charge more than £12 the banks don't have a hard and fast ruling. You can probably get a lot of your fees refunded, but read the article on the website to get a better idea of the process. Loads of people have successfully claimed and you can go back 6 years.

Reading your OP again... rather than waiting for paper statements, do you have access to online banking? If you monitor your bank and other accounts daily you can quickly see if payments have or haven't been paid or if your account is nearly empty etc.. The quicker you spot problems, the easier they are to resolve.

Sorry... I see that you said later on that you have online banking. No reason then to wait for a paper statement through the post?

To be fair even online banking isn't completely up to date all the time. Often a balance can be shown on DH's account (he has online banking, I don't) that we know isn't accurate as direct debits or card payments have to come out of it which aren't yet entered.