I'm hating smile right now

[Siobhan36]

Hello,

First post here. Just got off the phone after a lengthy argument with a woman in customer services there after they again charged me a load of money. She graciously agreed to meet me half way because it was 'six of one, half a dozen of the other' and paid half the charges back to me.

This particular charge I am so angry about. I'm in a really tricky transitional period at the moment moving into self employment. I have £370 a month to pay all my bills with. My extremely understanding partner is paying the mortgage and all the shopping etc while I try to get established and start to earn some money.

On Friday I logged onto my account as I knew I was nearing my OD limit and some direct debits were due out. There was a secure message waiting for me saying there were insufficient funds in my account to meet two direct debits and the company concerned will try to represent them and I should ensure there are sufficient funds in my account and by the way if I visit the smile website and look up my particular account and check under tarifs I will see how much this is going to cost me. (£25 per returned item - £50).

So I check my current account and it says the balance is within my overdraft limit, and it is showing the two items they say are being returned as on the transaction list, and therefore they appear to have in fact gone out and I'm still within my overdraft. So I message the woman back and say it looks like you've made a mistake because I'm looking at my account and it's showing those two items and the balance is showing as within my limit, so I do hope you're not going to charge me.

So today I log in and instead of showing those two items, there's the charge of £50 for returned DDs. Plus they just happen to have added on a daily excess charge, a service charge and their interest for the month, so now my account is £65 over the OD limit.

I rang and told the customer service woman that I had specifically checked the account on Friday and it was showing everything had gone through and everything was ok. Her explanation was that had I checked the account the day before I would have seen the balance was the same and that would have alerted me to the fact there was something not right, and in fact, even though those two items were showing in the transaction list, in fact they had been returned and the money had not left my account. I argued I had no way of knowing this as the information presented to me was as if they had been paid. We went round and round, you can imagine. Then she started saying I'd left it too late to check the account anyway and if I knew DDs were leaving my account I should have checked the day before to ensure the funds were there. ARGH! I find them so frustrating. Last month they charged me £100 including their ridiculous £5 daily excess charge for being overdrawn for a week or something. When they don't even email you to tell you you're over your limit, what can those charges possible represent? How can they justify £5 costs to them? It's outrageous. And £100 is like a third of the money I have to live on for a month. And then they show me inaccurate information on the screen making it impossible for me to actually tell what is going on, and tell me 'oh it's six of one, half a dozen of the other' so you give me inaccurate information, expect me to know it's inaccurate and then when I make a mistake because of it, then you charge me loads of money.

I hate them so much right now. I will be following the advice on this website to claim my money back from those *****ing b******s!

S.

 

MOD - ** No Libellous Comments Please **

[rogerebaker]

Just a bit of encouragement.

 

Smile paid back all charges to my daughter after 2nd letter. Was only a couple of hundred quid but if you look at the Smile Forum they are being a lot more reasnoble than most.

 

Get stuck in

[Thailand]

They seem to be the easiest to claim back from tho, so you lucky!! check here

[Siobhan36]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the encouraging words. I used to love Smile but they've been making my, already tricky, financial life so hard right now and their customer service guys just won't accept any responsibility and just keep blaming me. Just telling me it's my fault doesn't help and I just can't afford these ridiculous charges.

Anyway, I'll crack on with trying to get them to refund it and then maybe I'll go back to liking them again. I've always hated banks since they gave me a hard time as a student and Natwest was a nightmare. It gave me so much pleasure to be able to tell them to stuff it and I loved being with smile, but gradually they've turned into the same corporate money grabbing financial institution as all the others. Have you seen how much they put their credit card APRs up recently? It's really disappointing.

Anyway, fingers crossed for the future, and thanks for the welcome.

S.

[Thailand]

Siobhan don't let anyone wind you up (I know cos' i'm always stressed lol!) time to calm down and direct your frustrations to the source they were concieved. Follow the FAQ's and templates in this site - the banks hate them, so embrace them. You'll get all the support here you need, if in doubt ask.