Below is the text of a standard unauthorised OD letter issued by the Bank of Scotland. Note that they claim the first charge of £30 (I think it's £39 now) is to "cover our costs" but the additional £28 charge is not itemised.

Is this the same text as used by Halifax?

John

**

Dear

Your overdraft limit: £000.00

We have paid the item(s) shown below even though this means your account is now overdrawn by more than your overdraft limit.

To cover our costs, we make a charge of £30 (maximum 1 charge per day) for any item we pay when your account is overdrawn in excess of any agreed limit. We will take this money from your account seven days from the date of this letter. If this causes you to have an unauthorised overdraft, we will also charge you interest at the unauthorised rate, and a monthly unauthorised overdraft fee of £28*. However, if your unauthorised overdraft is £30 or less the unauthorised overdraft charge will not be applied.

We appreciate that nobody likes paying charges and we'd like to help you avoid them in future. To help you we've provided an online banking service that allows you to view an up to date statement of your account, details of your standing orders and direct debits and much more. For full details of the service log on to http://www.bankofscotland.co.uk.

Should you wish to discuss your borrowing needs, you can make an appointment by visiting any branch. Alternatively, you can discuss your requirements by calling our telephone banking service 24 hours a day. You'll find the number at the top of this letter.

Yours sincerely

Garry R D Kettle

Manager

Personal Banking Services

it is identical, even the same garry r d kettle. furthermore they say "seven days"... breaching the banking code. i never spotted that before, another zone of attack.

btw mods - shouldnt BOS and halifax be one forum?

Excellent letter and well spotted. "Cover our costs" is unequivocal. And if it is wrong then it seems to me to be little other than downright dishonest and a deception. I'm not ranting when I use these words. I think that would be a reasonable inference.

I think that you would be justified in asking them to give a detailed breakdown of the costs and that if they fail to do so then you will take action to recover the money.

It is clear that they are not claiming the charge in order to pay for a service so they have closed of that line of argument even before they get into court.

it is identical, even the same garry r d kettle. furthermore they say "seven days"... breaching the banking code. i never spotted that before, another zone of attack.

 

btw mods - shouldnt BOS and halifax be one forum?

Just to clear this one point up - The Royal Bank of Scotland issues are debated in this forum. There are many other banks that are owned by the RBOS group; Natwest for instance, but these banks all have their own forums. So to clarify, if the matter is The Royal Bank of Scotland then it belongs in this forum. If it's Halifax, Natwest or any of the other banks owned by the RBOS GROUP, their discussions belong in the forums set up for those particular banks, as some of their individual policies may differ from the RBOS.

Hope this clears things up.

-=Vixy=-

it is identical, even the same garry r d kettle. furthermore they say "seven days"... breaching the banking code. i never spotted that before, another zone of attack.

 

btw mods - shouldnt BOS and halifax be one forum?

 

Just to clear this one point up - The Royal Bank of Scotland issues are debated in this forum. There are many other banks that are owned by the RBOS group; Natwest for instance, but these banks all have their own forums. So to clarify, if the matter is The Royal Bank of Scotland then it belongs in this forum. If it's Halifax, Natwest or any of the other banks owned by the RBOS GROUP, their discussions belong in the forums set up for those particular banks, as some of their individual policies may differ from the RBOS.

 

Hope this clears things up.

 

-=Vixy=-

I'm afraid it doesn't clear things up at all. The Royal Bank of Scotland and the Bank of Scotland are two completely seperate entities. If this forum is for RBoS, where do we discuss BoS? For that matter, what about the Clydesdale Bank?

Given the jurisdictional issues, I'd suggest a Scottish Banks forum. Also given that BoS specifically market their accounts to Scotland and Halifax accounts to the rest of the UK, I'd suggest that makes the most sense.

Know thy enemy!

John

I'm sure the admin team will read your comments and create some more forums. When we initially set up, we set up forums for English banks because those were the ones we knew the identity of best - Having seen how we've grown in such a short time, it's oviously an oversight we need to correct.

If anybody living in Scotland can give us a more definitive list of Scottish banks, and who owns who up there, we can set up more forums to cope as it would appear that Scottish banks are as bad as English ones when it comes to the matters this group discusses.

Thanks in advance for your help, and for bringing it to our attention

-=Vixy=-

The BoS and the RBS were put here together because of jurisdictional issues when the acounts are based in Scottish branches of these banks.

I'm getting to see that it is more complicated than this because there are other Scottish banks - which could go into Other Institutions but on the other hand it seems very reasonable to have a Scottish Banks forums. However, what happens where customers of those Scottish Banks open their accounts in English/Welsh branches and so come under E/W jusrisdiction. There is no problem about creating a new forum. I would rather rename the existing one and not increase the forums but I'd like a bit of advice on this, please.

And if anyone starts talking about yet other jurisdictions, then all I can say is that I feel a banning coming on!

Below is the text of a standard unauthorised OD letter issued by the Bank of Scotland. Note that they claim the first charge of £30 (I think it's £39 now) is to "cover our costs" but the additional £28 charge is not itemised.

 

Is this the same text as used by Halifax?

 

John

 

**

 

Dear

 

Your overdraft limit: £000.00

 

We have paid the item(s) shown below even though this means your account is now overdrawn by more than your overdraft limit.

 

To cover our costs, we make a charge of £30 (maximum 1 charge per day) for any item we pay when your account is overdrawn in excess of any agreed limit.

Fishing through old statements etc I have 2 of these letters; one from 16th Feb 05 and the other from 20th July 05. The first is exactly as the one above; the 2nd says maximum 3 charges per day. WTF? How can their daily costs change from £30 to £90?

John, can you confirm the date of the letter you have copied the text from? I'm interested to see if I can prove that they increase the number of charges they hit you with as a punitive measure. If your letter is dated after 20th July I'd suggest the letters I have are evidence. I'll certainly be asking about this in my letter to my branch. (see my own thread)

This particular letter was dated June 20th.

I have reviewed the letters I have on my internet banking archive and can confirm that you are correct. They increased the daily charges from a maximum of 1 to a maximum of 3 around the begining of July 2005.

HTH

Thanks John.

I'm going to explicitly ask my branch manager to itemise the costs referred to in these letters. And I'm going to ask him to justify a threefold increase as well.

Wonder what he'll say?

Whatever he says, can you please, please, please let us have a scanned copy of his answer? 8)

This topic was closed on 03/05/19.

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