Bank overdraft unfair charge - please help!?

Question

I am an international student in UK. In order to pay my university fees I had to open a bank account and finally I chose LLoyds because it looked the best for a student.

Tha matter is that 1 month ago by mistake I went down of 0.71£ (71 pence). I was in my country in that moment and I didn't realize the fact before 15 days when I came back to UK. I immediately transferred 1£ in my account to stop the overdraft charging but now (after 15 days) they claim 75£(!) for a 0.71 pence overdraft!!!

I believe is really unfair and moreover I don't have enough money to pay now so I will go overdraft again because in several days they will debit the charge in my account.

What can I do?

What happens if I don't pay? As a EU citizen can they pretend me to pay?

Thank you for your help

Answer 1

I'm surprised they charged you that much. After all the drama with unfair bank charges a couple of years ago I thought banks had sorted out their charges at least going forward, even though I think the jury is still out on a lot of the historic banl charges.

Have a look at

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/bankcharges

I think there is a template claim letter there which is definitely worth a try.

However in the meantime you would be better to pay the £75 and hope to get it back with interest. Otherwise it may spiral out of control. Call the bank and ask to extend your authorised overdraft by £75 to cover it.

Answer 2

You can appeal it - but if you have not been a customer for long they may not be helpful. This happened to me once with the Co-op bank - they just do not give a toss - I ended up telling them to shove it and closed the account!

If you did what I did you could open another account with another bank -  they will not chase you for such a small amount.