Banking charges - any point complaining?

[ailbhe]

Hi all.
Long story short, I made 3 laser transactions on Fri 19th of this month.
One in the morning, 2 in the evening.
This left my balance at exactly €10. I checked on Monday morning and all payments had been processed and the balance was €10.

Something came up on Monday and I needed to withdraw money. I knew that if I went over my limit I would be charged both interest and a fee of €5 for the first amount being overdrawn but I needed it so I withdrew €60 which should have left me €50 overdrawn.
I checked today and I am €80 overdrawn!
Reason being they have charged me 4 separate overdrawn fees amounting to €30. €5 for the first 2 and €10 for the next two.

My statement now reads that the cash withdrawal was done first! It definitely wasn't. The other payments had been processed before this withdrawal had been made.
So they charged me for the cash withdraw which brought me just into the red (-€15) and then charged me for each of the laser transactions.


I am really struggling at the moment and trying to keep my head above water and I am sickened at the loss of €30 for nothing. It just seems so wrong of them to rearrange the order in which they recieved the transactions just to screw me in fees

 

[sam h]

Definately contact you bank & get this rectified, that would really bug me!! Good luck

 

[Locke]

If it is as you say then deffo get in touch with them. If it is an error it will be rectified.

 

[ailbhe]

Rang them and they are saying that although the charges on the laser were on the friday and were showing up on my online account, that they weren't actually processed until Monday (business hours).

So nothing they are willing to do even though i argued the the charges were showing up on my account over the weekend with the fridays date on them. They were authorised but not processed or some such BS.

Time to look for a new bank

 

[sam h]

I would raise that higher up the chain - get a manager & don't give up until the refund or you close your account. You should not be penalised for their administrative issues. At the end of the day, you had money in the account when you made those withdrawals.

 

[TarfHead]

They were authorised but not processed or some such BS.

Time to look for a new bank

This was something BOI brought in a few months back. AFAIK AIB already had it in place - don't know about the others.

When you use your LASER card, those funds are 'ringfenced' in your account until the retailer claims the money. If the retailer doesn't claim the money, the funds would be released (after a few days) for your use.

I assume that the t&c of your account refer to the actual transactions that hit your account, and not to the practice of 'ringfencing' funds.

€5 per transaction seems mad. If you do choose to switch banks, make sure you get better value than that.

 

[ailbhe]

This was something BOI brought in a few months back. AFAIK AIB already had it in place - don't know about the others.

When you use your LASER card, those funds are 'ringfenced' in your account until the retailer claims the money. If the retailer doesn't claim the money, the funds would be released (after a few days) for your use.

I assume that the t&c of your account refer to the actual transactions that hit your account, and not to the practice of 'ringfencing' funds.

€5 per transaction seems mad. If you do choose to switch banks, make sure you get better value than that.

Yeah this is pretty much the spiel I was given.

€5 is for being overdrawn without permission. I don't want an overdraft and rarely go overdrawn so I did know the first €5 charge would apply. It's €5 for the first 2 and then €10 for the next ones so total of €30 in charges instead of the €5 I thought.

I guess it's a pricy lesson learned

 

[Odea]

Yeah this is pretty much the spiel I was given.

€5 is for being overdrawn without permission. I don't want an overdraft and rarely go overdrawn so I did know the first €5 charge would apply. It's €5 for the first 2 and then €10 for the next ones so total of €30 in charges instead of the €5 I thought.

I guess it's a pricy lesson learned

Did you do anything about it? There is no way I would allow them to do this to me. They should have debited your account in the order that you withdrew your money.