Bank charges advice
 

Ok, i've slipped up for the first time ever and gone overdrawn on my current account.
For one whole day I was £25 overdrawn, the bank (Halifax) has charged me £69 for the pleasure.

This was broken down as follows - £30 for allowing a £3 cheque to be drawn against this overdrawn balance.
£39 for rejecting my monthly car insurance payment of £70.

Now, I will be phoning first thing tomorrow as although I have gone overdrawn on an account without an overdraft I was only for a single day (got paid today) and I believe taking another £69 for this minor slip is totally excessive.

Surely a £3 cheque should be charged at £3 plus interest for the day?
How on earth can rejecting a computerised transfer cost £39? I'd have though the system would be smart enough to just wait until the account had sufficient funds and action the transfer then?

Anyway, just like to know peoples opinions on the plan of attack. Do I beg and grovel or do I go on the offensive and threaten to close the account?

Opinons of any kind gratefully accepted :thumb:

This may help:

GMTV - Are you the victim of unfair bank charges? Get advice from Martin Lewis of MoneySavingExpert.com

Ask them, politely, to refund all the charges.

If they refuse to pay back every single penny, advise them you will close your account. If they don't refund it all - move to another bank.

I've done this and they refunded all charges.

Robbing gits :razz:

Halifax will let you away with it the first time if you ask them nicely. The second time you'll have to get all legal on their ass which is where Martin's site comes in.

By the way they have no right to do it - like many, many, many things in this country they rely on you being too lazy or scared to make any stand against it.

This action by the Banks is illegal, but they keep on doing it. They are only allowed to charge for the interest they have lost.

I found this the other day on BBC - seems you can claim the last 6 years of penalty charges back :

BBC NEWS | Business | How to claim back penalty charges

I'm with the RBS and I once went over my overdraft and was called by them and asked if I wanted to up my overdraft to avoid being charged. Now thats customer service. RBS are brilliant.

^^ What Paul said, they once just increased my overdraft so i wouldnt get charged. :)

Ok, just got off the phone with them. They immediately removed the £30 charge for the £3 cheque.
The operater though would not remove the £39 charge, onto a letter now to fight for that back.
Galling thing is it was a transfer to my savings that came out a day before pay day that caused me to go o/d. Not like I didn't have the money, just it was in the wrong place. Reason they said they didn't stop the transfer even though I had sufficient money is because they thought it might be for a mortgage...... b.....it!