I am furious.

That's all very well... but that has nothing to do with my situation.

I didn't accidentally slip into the red, my bank made a mistake and are penalising me for it.

I have an account with a well-known building society (we'll call them Nationwide) and I am having an absolute nightmare with them at the moment.

I only use this account to transfer savings into - the balance is never more than a couple of quid, and I rarely check its statements because I use it so infrequently.

In May, I had to transfer some money from my savings into this account, as I had halls of residence fees to pay. I checked my account balance online to make sure that the money had gone through, and found that there was £60 less in there than there should have been. I looked around all of the different sections of the account to see what was going on... and found that a Direct Debit had been set up without my authorisation, and had been trying to withdraw £50 a month from my account, to pay for somebody's gym subscription!

The problem is that because I had so little money in the account, the Direct Debits could not be processed. So each time this happened, I was charged a £30 unpaid debit fee. Needless to say, none of this was my fault; I don't use a gym and I certainly wouldn't pay £50 a month to go to one.

Anyway, as soon as I noticed all of this I got on the phone to Nationwide and spoke to a girl, explained what had happened and she cancelled the Direct Debit. She also assured me that all of the money would be refunded to me. When I asked her why the payment had been set up in the first place, she said that it must have been a mistake by one of their members of staff when they were typing in the details (i.e. they had typed my details in by mistake).

About a week later, I received a letter from a customer service administrator, saying that the money had been refunded and the penalties cancelled. It was written in a very patronising way, giving me 'useful tips on how to avoid incurring charges in the future'. This made me so angry; it was their fault that I had gone overdrawn in the first place! I went and checked my statement, only to find that none of the charges had been refunded, and I had been charged another unpaid debit fee.

At this point I was absolutely fuming, so I got on the phone and called the guy who sent me the letter. He apologised that it hadn't been taken care of, and assured me that he would get it sorted out for me straight away. I told him to send me written confirmation that it had all been sorted, and he agreed. I took his word for it and assumed that it would all be taken care of.

So I checked my statement today, and to my dismay, the money still had not been refunded, and yet another £30 fine had been imposed on me. I was incandescent with rage. I got on the phone, spoke to the guy I spoke to previously, and made it clear how furious I was with the whole situation. I demanded to know why, despite being promised twice that it had been taken care of, I was still in the red. His excuse was (and bear in mind this is a huge company) 'I asked Jez to do it and for some reason he hasn't put it through'. I was so angry. I demanded that he refunded the money there and then, and send me a letter without fail to confirm it all. He agreed, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if I never receive a letter and am still overdrawn this time next week. I told him that not only will I be canceling the account, I will be making a personal complaint against him and possibly going to the press.

I rarely complain about service I receive, but this is truly appalling. My credit rating has probably taken a real battering, considering that I do not have an authorised overdraft on the account, and I've been overdrawn and incurring charges for over a month.

Have any of you been in a similar situation? If so, what did you do? How can you get this sorted out, and above all, who can you complain to? If you ask somebody to explain what's happened, they blame someone else. If you speak to the other person, they refer you to someone else, and so on... it never ends. Who are you supposed to get angry with, when nobody will accept responsibility? It is utterly infuriating.

Sorry for the rant, but I have never been so furious with a company (or anyone, for that matter) in my life. Thanks for reading

Is this really something to get angry about? Not everything revolves around you.

Is this really something to get angry about? Not everything revolves around you.

They charge you £30, without sending a request in person, for being overdrawn when you don't have that facility! Is it just me or is that whole concept arse-upwards? Surely it would be better to at least send a letter saying you're overdrawn? If they don't then surely a debt could just spiral out of control when you dont even know about it until your next statement. Bonkers!

*note to self*
Never get a Nationwide account.

Originally Posted by jeffers
I have an account with a well-known building society (we'll call them Nationwide) and I am having an absolute nightmare with them at the moment.

Is this really something to get angry about? Not everything revolves around you.

note to you, correct me if im wrong, but I think he was just calling it nationwide for arguements sake.

note to you, correct me if im wrong, but I think he was just calling it nationwide for arguements sake.

Hehe, no he was right. It is Nationwide that has been giving me the grief.

"I asked Jez to do it"

Classic. What an inept f***ing cretin.

They must really value me. They spelt my surname wrong three times.