Thread: Charges Now Deducted as Interest

A couple of months ago I had a payment going through paypal. The payment was supposed to be taken out of my paypal account but went through my flexi account instead. Nationwide returned the payment and canceled the direct debit. I contacted paypal and asked them why did they not take the payment from my account etc. They replied that it was a technical error and all financial systems that are reliant on computerized systems aren't 100% accurate all of the time and glitches do happen. They stopped the second attempt and took my payment through my paypal account.


Nationwide charged me £30 unpaid direct debit fee and a £30 overdraft fee. I put this in a thread as someone was charged overdraft fees but they weren't technically overdrawn. These fees were charged on the same day, I was not overdrawn because they didn't take the money out of my account they just stopped the direct debit as I can't go overdrawn on this account.


I was advised by JM to go and talk to the manager and explain to him that it was a technical error, I wasn't overdrawn etc and see what happens. I went to speak to the manager and he just said that in the terms and conditions they have to charge if a direct debit is returned and even though I wasn't technically overdrawn I still had to pay an overdraft fee because it is seen as I tried to get an unauthorized overdraft and he can't do anything about it.


The same happened in November and I received some info at the end of my statement that they would take £60 unpaid direct debit fee,£20 unauthorized fee, 10p interest. They wrote saying that they would take it out of my account mid December 09. I kept checking my account and they hadn't taken any of these fees out. I made sure that I had enough funds in my account incase the paypal system did it again ( they can't understand why this has started happening with my account as it was fine before). I checked my account this Monday and the money was still in there. I checked on Tuesday morning and it seems that Nationwide waited until my tax credits totaled the charges and took 2 weeks worth of my tax credits which I use to live off and to pay my paypal fees. So next month I will be charged another £80.


But on my online statement the charges are not named as "charges/unpaid fees etc" but as "interest" . And my returned paypal payment has been named as a "correction" but this time they did take the payment out of my account for probably a few hours then returned it ( again on the same day).


Should I start with a prelim letter, if so should I mention that they waited until I had enough tax credits in there so that they could take out their charges or should I wait until the new POCs. Has anyone else had the name of the charges changed to interest.
Many thanks for any advice given

Hi,

About the bank charges - phone Nationwide to see if they will refund the charges. I had a similar problem in Dec 09. I phoned Nationwide and told them that the charges were causing me financial hardship. They sent me an income and expenditure form which I completed and sent back. I then got a refund 10 working days later. Worth trying : )

Thank you for your response inabind
I've called Nationwide and gone into the building society and they just fobbed me off with "you should be more careful etc". So a couple of weeks ago I sent them one of the new template letters on MSE and today I got a income/expenditure form, fingers crossed I'll get all my charges back