Don't bank with Alliance & Leicester

[Meowster]

Hi all,

Never ever bank with Alliance & Leicester. They just tried to charge me £400 (apparently not including admin fees, even though that entire sum was one huge admin fee) for a 98p overdraft I had outstanding on my account which, at the time it was made, was allowed on my account. I have never used my account since signing up for it because I was provided with a 9 digit long bank account number that none of my employers were able to pay me into; A&L said that I should have known that they're "9 digits long because you take the first digit off to use it". This was never explained to me, ever, while I was signing up, and it's clearly not as obvious as they seem to believe as none of my employers knew how to use it either.

They also claimed that they sent me letters informing me of my overdraft and also their policy change on charging for overdrafts. I never received these, and then discovered that they'd put a "no longer lives at this address" flag on my account (even though I've lived here for three years now, far longer than I've ever had an account with A&L, and I've never had a problem getting mail from anybody else).

Though I got my money back, I was furious at how they had attempted to scare me into paying this ridiculous sum of money all for the want of 98p. Further investigation shows that Alliance and Leicester charge £5 A DAY for every day that a customer is overdrawn, with no limit as to how far they extend that charge! They also only send letters informing you of this every couple of months apparently, instead of every day when they apply the charge, so by the time I realised what they were doing to my account they had charged me over £400.

I advise anyone who banks with this particularly corrupt and money-grabbing bank to close their accounts. Try First Direct or even Barclays. I really can't believe how corrupt their overdraft policy is - I know that banks are in hot water over this at the moment and no bank is ideal, but £5 a day without limits is atrocious and is going to put so many people in the red that do not deserve to be...


Additionally, they only refunded the money back to the 98p that was originally outstanding, which meant that unless they froze my account, I'd get charged £5 a day for the five days it took for the money to get cleared into the account, or that I'd have to go into a bank to pay in 98p by the end of the day. The woman speaking to me said quite calmly that it "probably won't matter if I freeze your account, you'll get a mark 3 on your credit rating but that probably will never matter". I can't believe she actually breezily advised me to get a mark against my credit rating instead of dropping £1 into my account that day, which is of course what I did.

[BOYD1981]

I think the real issue with all these overdraft charge horror stories we've been hearing about the banks and building societies in this country lately is the fact that people are allowing themselves to go overdrawn. Nobody can take money out of your account without authorisation very easily, and if you have any direct debits setup you should know when the money will be taken and make sure there is enough in the account to cover it.
It's just a simple case of people being charged for the convenience of being stupid, if you use a debit card to make a purchase knowing you don't have enough in the account then it's your fault you go overdrawn, and when taking money out through any ATM there is the option to check your account balance. But in this case I do think the bank just hasn't done their job properly, but still you should always make sure there's enough money in your account, and you obviously have the ability to check it online so there's not really any excuse for not knowing you're overdrawn when you could easily check.

BTW, I've been with HSBC for 11 years now and have never had any problems with them and in the rare case when I do go overdrawn (which is always my own fault) i've never been charged.

[Layabout]

The reason they have overdraft charges is to trap the debt inclined, with no money handling skills and feed from their wallet. They are truly evil bastards. If you happen to go overdrawn (missed DD charges, bounced check charges, charges for taking a dump), then you obviously aren't looking after your money (it's happend to me, now i watch my finances alot closer). It doesn't help that the banks take days to update your balance sometimes. Unless you pay attention to how much goes in and out of your bank account, you never know what can happen. You might go overdrawn by 2 p and get charged £35 for the service of them lending you that 2p. Most banks don't give a crap.

[Meowster]

What annoys me most however, is that the charges originated from nothing. Rent was attempted to be taken out of my account, it wasn't taken out because I didn't have enough money, but then I got charged for going overdrawn for about 1 second. Since the money was never taken out of my account, whydid they do this? Furthermore, banks then can charge you on the debt that they have created themselves.

That is pretty astonishingly cunty of them.

[Layabout]

If it was a standing order, they will charge you for it. They are bastards. The lot of them. Every bank will charge you for something like that.

[SSH]

Don't you guys realise how much it costs the banks for a computer to do the arithmetic to work out if you're in credit or not? I mean, it must take a few nanoseconds of computer time to work it out, and time is money. Therefore they charge you about a £360 million an hour for their computer time. The answer is obvious: quit your job and become a computer for a bank... they're obviously much better paid than you are!