Overdrawn Accounts and Charges

[GlasgowBandit]

Evening Blonde's,

Looking for a little bit of help here if anyone can assist. 

I have recently received notification from my bank that my account has become overdrawn by quite a substantial amount of money and of charges they wish to impose.

From what I can gather, it looks like deposits I have made to Poker Stars have somehow taken a lengthy time to go through and been returned to my account with neither a debit or credit being shown for them.

I administer my account by checking my balance on an almost daily basis via the website and differentiate between spending money and money owed out by clearly identifying my ledger balance and my available balance.  As it stands i don't actually have an overdraft, because I fear that most month I'd probably use this to bet with if I was running a little short.

I just had a conversation with the bank and to be honest, I am not best pleased the condescending attitude of the advisor really got me annoyed.  Rather than have the call escalated to a manager at this time at night I think tomorrow I will be using an internal method of contacting the head of personal banking at the concerned bank.

Now my query is this - if I don't have an overdraft facility and ledger balance and available balance are not managed clearly by the bank do I have a case for looking for the overdrawn to be written off?  As I would never have spent the money I never had!!  Moreover should i stand my ground and refuse to pay the charge.

Secondly has anyone ever had any difficulties with depositing on poker stars via a debit card?  By this I mean dos it take an abnormal amount of time for any deposits made to them to clear on your account?  up until recently I hadn't played much on stars so don't have enough info on this.

Most of my deposits in the past have been made via Ladbrokes and Tribecca and the money had cleared on ledger balance within 3 working days and available balance immediately.

Your thoughts and help on this would be most appreciated as I am going to be well out of pocket if I let this rumble on till pay day i am almost tempted to close my account and get my waged paid elsewhere for this month but not sure I have given our pay roll guys enough time to get this sorted.

Cheers
Mr Bandito!

[lazaroonie]

Evening Blonde's,

Looking for a little bit of help here if anyone can assist. 

I have recently received notification from my bank that my account has become overdrawn by quite a substantial amount of money and of charges they wish to impose.

From what I can gather, it looks like deposits I have made to Poker Stars have somehow taken a lengthy time to go through and been returned to my account with neither a debit or credit being shown for them.

I administer my account by checking my balance on an almost daily basis via the website and differentiate between spending money and money owed out by clearly identifying my ledger balance and my available balance.  As it stands i don't actually have an overdraft, because I fear that most month I'd probably use this to bet with if I was running a little short.

I just had a conversation with the bank and to be honest, I am not best pleased the condescending attitude of the advisor really got me annoyed.  Rather than have the call escalated to a manager at this time at night I think tomorrow I will be using an internal method of contacting the head of personal banking at the concerned bank.

Now my query is this - if I don't have an overdraft facility and ledger balance and available balance are not managed clearly by the bank do I have a case for looking for the overdrawn to be written off?  As I would never have spent the money I never had!!  Moreover should i stand my ground and refuse to pay the charge.

Secondly has anyone ever had any difficulties with depositing on poker stars via a debit card?  By this I mean dos it take an abnormal amount of time for any deposits made to them to clear on your account?  up until recently I hadn't played much on stars so don't have enough info on this.

Most of my deposits in the past have been made via Ladbrokes and Tribecca and the money had cleared on ledger balance within 3 working days and available balance immediately.

Your thoughts and help on this would be most appreciated as I am going to be well out of pocket if I let this rumble on till pay day i am almost tempted to close my account and get my waged paid elsewhere for this month but not sure I have given our pay roll guys enough time to get this sorted.

Cheers
Mr Bandito!

it will be written in the terms and conditions of the account/debit card, that you are ultimately responsible for the use of the card and any spending that arises from using it.

Ultimately if you spent the money then you must pay it back. There maybe an argument that any charges levied as a result of your indebtedness are excessive and not wholly reflective of the cost of the administration of your account, but this is a seperate matter.

[M3boy]

You cannot go overdrawn by using a debit card - the money is taken from your account at the time you "spend" on the debit card.

Unfortunately, NatWest have a strange system whereby on a Monday, some payments that were on your account (any kind of payments and there is no reason for this or pattern) on the previous Friday will dissapear, in effect giving you more that you can spend on your debit card on the monday. Then when these payments (on the firday) are added back to your account on Tuesday/Wednesday THESE cause you to go overdrawn.

I do not know if other banks work the same way as NatWest, but it is VERY annoying to say the least!

But dont worry, open up a new bank account, then go to this website

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1141050760,24632,

Have fun   - I cetainly have, and on a 20% commission basis for my clients - NICE!!!

[scotty2hatty]

You cannot go overdrawn by using a debit card - the money is taken from your account at the time you "spend" on the debit card.

This is most certainly incorrect.

[Claw75]

You cannot go overdrawn by using a debit card - the money is taken from your account at the time you "spend" on the debit card.

This is most certainly incorrect.

it depends on the type of debit card you have.  Visa Electron, for example, will decline any transaction where you don't have the funds in your account.  I can use my Visa Delta card, on the other hand, as many times as I like without it being declined, no matter how overdrawn I am.  And then the bank will happily charge me £30 a pop for every payment they authorise whilst I'm overdrawn.  I'd be a lot happier if the thing just got bloody well declined!

[GlasgowBandit]

You cannot go overdrawn by using a debit card - the money is taken from your account at the time you "spend" on the debit card.

This is most certainly incorrect.

it depends on the type of debit card you have.  Visa Electron, for example, will decline any transaction where you don't have the funds in your account.  I can use my Visa Delta card, on the other hand, as many times as I like without it being declined, no matter how overdrawn I am.  And then the bank will happily charge me £30 a pop for every payment they authorise whilst I'm overdrawn.  I'd be a lot happier if the thing just got bloody well declined!

The account I use for making payments to online gaming sites is a visa electron, simply for the reason that the most my account could and evr did get overdrawn before was a £10 - and from when Halifax and Bank of Scotland Merged this had been reduced to a £5.

I don't dispute that if I spend the money then I am ultimately responsible for it, but I think the bank have an obligation to administrate my account properly. 

I don't understand how I can look at available balance one day and its at say £300 and the next days its £27 and then 2 days later its like £600 these are just made up figures, but I don't understand how this can work.

I make a number of deposits with different sites on an almost daily basis, i also cash out from said sites on a daily basis and in the main I alway know where I stand.

This month however I have somehow managed to become overdrawn by £500 - I don't understand how an account without any overdraft can overdraw by so much!

[lazaroonie]

You cannot go overdrawn by using a debit card - the money is taken from your account at the time you "spend" on the debit card.

This is most certainly incorrect.

it depends on the type of debit card you have.  Visa Electron, for example, will decline any transaction where you don't have the funds in your account.  I can use my Visa Delta card, on the other hand, as many times as I like without it being declined, no matter how overdrawn I am.  And then the bank will happily charge me £30 a pop for every payment they authorise whilst I'm overdrawn.  I'd be a lot happier if the thing just got bloody well declined!

The account I use for making payments to online gaming sites is a visa electron, simply for the reason that the most my account could and evr did get overdrawn before was a £10 - and from when Halifax and Bank of Scotland Merged this had been reduced to a £5.

I don't dispute that if I spend the money then I am ultimately responsible for it, but I think the bank have an obligation to administrate my account properly. 

I don't understand how I can look at available balance one day and its at say £300 and the next days its £27 and then 2 days later its like £600 these are just made up figures, but I don't understand how this can work.

I make a number of deposits with different sites on an almost daily basis, i also cash out from said sites on a daily basis and in the main I alway know where I stand.

This month however I have somehow managed to become overdrawn by £500 - I don't understand how an account without any overdraft can overdraw by so much!

its actually quite simple - for solo/switch/maestro and all other debit card transactions the bank has up to SIX MONTHS in which it can debit the money from your account, from the point of authorisation. Different merchants will have different systems in which the point of sale transactions will eventually be reunited with the banks back office authorisation, and the money debited from your account. 99% of these will happen with immediate effect - but some will take longer.

Tell you a story - about 3 years ago I booked a holiday over the telephone with my debit card. I checked my balance the next day at the bank, and the "available" balance was down by £3500, the cost of the holiday. normally within a couple of days the account balance would be reduced by this amount. But this did not happen. And a couple of days after that my available balance went back up by £3500. I phoned the holiday company and they said they had been paid. The bank said that there was nothing wrong, dont worry. But I did worry - I knew I was 3.5K to the good. Three months later we left to go to glasgow airport, with the 3.5K still in our bank account. I was half expecting to get turned away. But we went away, came back, still the money was there. I didnt know what to do.

eventually, in August, fully 5 months after I originally "paid" for the holiday, the money, as if by magic, disappeared out of our account. Nobody could every give me a good explanation for it. Now consider if I had been the foolish type, it would have been very tempting to spend this money, knowing in full well it didnt belong to me. Ultimately I would have been left with a 3.5K debt.

[AlexMartin]

You should have withdrawn every penny from the account, opened up a new account, and remained £3.5k to the good.

[lazaroonie]

You should have withdrawn every penny from the account, opened up a new account, and remained £3.5k to the good.

wouldnt have worked - since even if I close the account that the transactions are drawn on, I would have still been liable for them after the account closed. So all I would have ended up with would have been the bank of scotland chasing me for 3.3K

[M3boy]

You cannot go overdrawn by using a debit card - the money is taken from your account at the time you "spend" on the debit card.

This is most certainly incorrect.

Learn something new everyday. The debit cards I have had I have never been able to spend what I dont have - and that I like.

[RichEO]

Just pay the interest, which won't be much as it sounds like you were overdrawn for a day or 2 only. If it's not much - then time is better spend on other things than trying to get back not much. Then get the bank to waive the charges, which some do automatically for the 1st time overdrawn and a lot will do at least once as a "favour". If they don't / won't refund these fees, they are apparently unlawful anyway and you should try and reclaim them like mentioned above via the info on moneysavingexpert.com

[happybhoy]

I once managed to get overdrawn at the age of 14 on a supersavers account by fudging of the time delay in accounts being updated. I withdrew £20 from 1 banks ATM (which recorded it to the card) then pedalled like fuck to the next village and withdrew from the cashier. Very clever for a young kid (less so when I failed to intercept the bank managers letter and had to explain to my parents who showed a distinct lack of enthusiasm for my budding talents as a bank fraudster).


P.S. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6657025.stm

[Sark79]

Does anyone know if there is a charge for inactivity on an Alliance and Leicester account?   

While in town today, I was about to go and buy a delicious vegetable sandwich from Subway.  I reached in my pocket to discover I had an insufficient amount of pennies.  Off to find a Bank.  Upon arriving at the bank ( Bank of Scotland ) I put in my card and typed in my pin. This went through no problem at all.  I clicked on the funds I wished to withdraw and I got a message " retaining card" or something like that.  I hate it when this happens.  All the way home I was thinking negative panicky thoughts that I had been robbed, someone had hacked my account, the idiots who gave me my computer virus last week had discovered my pin number and were using my account to move around drug money or the profits from illegal diamond operations in South Africa.  I phoned  the bank when I got home and they said there was no problem, it was just an error with the machine.  I don't know what irritates me more, the machine error or the fact another person is eating my yummy sandwich right now.

[Swordpoker]

Don't think there is much you can do Bandit.

It's a bit like writing someone a cheque and they wait 5 months to bank it making you suddenly overdrawn.

Maybe you can use your infinite charm to sweet-talk them into dropping if you take out an overdraft facility with them. You can have the facility and not use it - but its there just in case the same sort of thing happens again. Some banks don't charge you for having an overdraft facility but I don't know which ones.