Whopping overdraft charges from Halifax
November 8, 2009 by admin
Filed under News, News-Banking
The High Street lender Halifax is to increase its borrowing costs from December of this year, and this will see customers having to spend a small fortune on the cost of borrowing, with the lender planning to hike up borrowing costs significantly.
In December the lender will launch a new charge of £1 a day on its overdrafts and this will replace bank charges and interest, but could see customers having to pay far more in the long run for borrowing.
The new measures mean that customers could be paying up to £31 a month for borrowing on an overdraft facility of under £2500 and on overdrafts for above this amount the charge doubles to a massive £2 per day, which could end up costing the borrower even more. The bank has said that the reason behind this new move is to make it charging structure as simple as possible.
However, an official from the consumer campaign group Which? said: ‘This is bad news for any Halifax and Bank of Scotland customers who regularly use their overdraft as it’s effectively a big hike in charges. Anyone who’s unhappy with the new charging structure should vote with their feet by shopping around and switching to a current account that best suits their needs.’
Another industry expert said: ‘They claim this is in response to customers wanting clarity on charges, which is good, but an increase in fees of 300% is verging on criminal given that we know that the extra cash will go to fund unjustifiable bonuses. There was no warning of this, giving little time to pay off any outstanding sum. I am on a fixed income and their timing – approaching Christmas – is about to cause serious financial hardship.’
Tags: overdraft facility, bank charges, interest, charging structure, halifax, halifax bank charges, income
Halifax Building Society, should we be worried?
Halifax has deposited our money into their matured funds account, and keeps finding reasons why they cannot release it to us. We have done everything they requested, well in advance, but their excuses are becoming increasingly bizarre.
Is it incompetence or is there a policy of holding on to matured money (no interest payable) because of financial difficulties?
halifax…charged me 1 pund per day for being overdrawn…then they pulled out the 28pounds a day earlier to tip me in to the unarranged overdraft category of 5 pounds per day i was away at the time so didnt realise until i got back what they had done by which time the bill was nearly 180 pound ….absolutely ridiculous they can shove their account where the sun dont shine they wont see a penny of it from me
Halifax? After overcharging me for overdrafts (in one case attempting to claim that an account that has had *zero transactions* for 2 months spend over a week in overdraft. Then to my face claiming that this charge was correct!) I left. Except I couldn’t – as above, they kept coming up with increasingly bizarre reasons why the account couldn’t be closed. It’s still open – I gave up.
Probably they’ll try to slap a random fake overdraft charge on it, put it into a real overdraft then claim the resultant charges are 100% correct (I’m quite prepared to see them in court if they try..).
My wife had a fixed term ISA. They wrote to her saying it was about to be finished.. she rung up and they revealed that she must turn up *in person* on the *exact morning* of the day of maturity to close the account. As it happens they’ve closed the local branch, the nearest one is a few miles away, and she has an injured foot and can’t walk very far. She really tried, but just couldn’t make it. Halifax now say that because she was unable to make it it’s in another fixed term account *at 0.1% interest* and she cannot access the money for *another two years*. This is tantamount to theft – as they were told repeatedly that she intended to close the account, both before and on the day. Apparently it’s legal for banks to do this. In two years they’ll repeat the charade, and it’ll continue.
Halifax are just a legalised protection racket. Anyone considering doing *any* business with them needs their head examining.