Nationwide charges forced son into unauthorised overdraft....

[deb4tlj]

... and so they charged him for that aswell! Son only earns £200.00 a month (he works part time in a primary school) and they've taken £100.00 off him. Son was in the process of closing this account as he had nothing but trouble with them and I honestly believe this is a retaliatory gesture. Put together a letter asking for charges back and received the attached in reply.

 

 

Any help and advice on our next step would be appreciated.

Edited September 23, 2012 by deb4tlj
attachments too small to read

[BankFodder]

please can you give more details as to why these charges were incurred

[deb4tlj]

Here's a straight cut and paste from the letter I helped my son compose and sent to Nationwide.

 

"Upon taking advice I have been informed that these charges are exorbitant and require proof of why these charges have been levied to this account and why your charges have been so high. On the 19th July you allowed me to withdraw £10.00 from a cash machine when I only had 10p in the account, thus allowing me to become overdrawn. You had the choice to refuse this request and not allow me into overdraft or to accede to this and treat it as a request for an informal overdraft. You chose to do neither. You then allowed two further withdrawals from this account further placing me into your unauthorised overdraft. You then, on the 31st July charged me a further £20.00 overdraft fee.

 

I see that you then on the 17th August 2012 applied a £15.00 paid item fee to my account which effectively placed me again into an overdraft. You then commenced to charge me another unauthorised overdraft fee of £20.00. I object to these fees because it is your own charges which you have levied against me which have put me into overdraft. It is your charging scheme, it was designed by you, and it is intended to provide revenue for all parts of your personal account operation. Therefore your imposition of these charges on me can not be said to be ‘un-arranged’. You have imposed these charges upon me deliberately, in full knowledge of the state of my account and for your own purposes.I also believe that these charges could be interpreted as being a retaliatory gesture on your part for my moving my account elsewhere."

 

 

there was also a £30.00 "admin fee". Hope this helps.

[BankFodder]

Did he have an overdraft facility before? If not, did he ask for one and was it refused?

[deb4tlj]

No, he didn't have an overdraft facility and yes, he had asked for one in branch and they refused - one of the many reasons he decided to move his account elsewhere.

[BankFodder]

Please begin by reading this article on the BBC website which is linked from the CAGMag - http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/content.php?899-Unfair-bank-A-new-set-of-rules-to-help-you-sue

 

I think that your situation is a very good example of unfair treatment by your bank.

 

If you want to do something about it then you have to decide how far you want to go. You could make a complaint to the FOS - risk free but long-winded - up to two years and you will probably find that the FOS decides against you.

 

You could bring a County Court claim. So far this has not been tested for this kind of issue. You risk losing your court fee and some travel expenses if you fail but probably no more than that as the claim would most likley be allocated to the small claims track.

We would help you all the way but you would need to read up so that you understood what was being done and why. The claim would be brought by you and you would have to appear in court - if it went to court.

There is a very good chance that the bank would settle rather than go to a hearing on this issus - but there is no guarantee.