I had a pleasant enough day yesterday. I went over to my parents’ house because my sister phoned me and said that she going to go over there with my nephew. I did feel a bit frustrated by the plans though because it was originally me and mum who were meant to be meeting up and then my sister asked me what I was doing yesterday and I said I was meeting up with mum, so my sister said that she’d probably join us. That was all totally fine and it was nice to see her. The thing was that mum never spoke to me about the plans for yesterday and just spoke to my sister about it, so I only knew she was expecting me to go over for lunch because my sister told me. I phoned mum and asked her what was happening and she then said that she’d thought that my sister and I had arranged to do something and that our plan to meet up had therefore been cancelled. It was just a whole load of crossed wires and a bit irritating.
However, what was really irritating was when I went and got some money from a cash point on the way home. I checked my balance and was really confused by it. It was showing a balance that didn’t quite make sense to me and then it struck me that not only did it not make sense but in fact it was showing a negative balance… A negative balance! I have never ever had a negative balance. I’m not particularly well off, I just have a rule that I live within my means and if I don’t have the money to pay for something then I don’t buy it (apart from the purchase of the place I live obviously). Anyway, them’s the rules and I have always stuck to it.
I went home and logged into my back account to see if I was going mad. I wasn’t. I scanned through my recent transactions to see what had happened and realised that two payments had gone out to pay my credit card bill. I always pay off my credit card bill every month (because that’s the rule…) and what had happened was that when I got my statement I had set up the payment to go from my bank account but what I had failed to realise was that because I had asked my credit card to set up a direct debit to pay off my balance every month they had already set this up and so took the money as well. Having just moved house I reckon this is probably the biggest credit card bill I have ever had – and I managed to pay it twice. Annoyingly, I think basically the mistake was mine.
I phoned my credit card company and they said that they could refund the money either to another credit card – I don’t have another credit card - or send me a cheque in seven to ten days. I asked why they couldn’t refund the money to my bank account and she didn’t seem to be able to explain why and just said they couldn’t. I asked if I spoke to someone more senior if they might have the discretion to pay the money back by other means and the woman basically said it wouldn’t make any difference and wouldn’t let me speak to anyone else. She did however tell me that they don’t advise customers to go into credit. I pointed out that I hadn’t actually deliberately gone into credit and that was the whole point of my phone call.
I then phoned my bank and they didn’t seem very fussed. The woman actually said to me that she didn’t think I would be charged because I was still within my overdraft limit, but I’m a bit confused about that now because I thought that even if you stayed within your agreed overdraft limit they still charged you (I actually have no idea though, having never used it before…). But, my bank account is the one I set up when I was student and there is a chance that they have (mistakenly) never removed the free overdraft facility even though I stopped being a student many years ago. I’ll wait and see if they charge me and if they have I’ll go and speak to my bank and see if they will refund the charges because they’ll be able to see from my statements what caused the problem and hopefully they’ll be kind to a loyal customer.
Anyway, I’m now going to have to dig about for some money to get my bank account back into the black and then await a cheque from my credit card company – which might not get here until the beginning of next month and won’t be for the whole amount anyway because they will deduct this months spending from it and then return the balance.
Added to that is that somehow in the process my bank account then locked itself so that I had to order a new password for it, which will be posted to me.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
However, what was really irritating was when I went and got some money from a cash point on the way home. I checked my balance and was really confused by it. It was showing a balance that didn’t quite make sense to me and then it struck me that not only did it not make sense but in fact it was showing a negative balance… A negative balance! I have never ever had a negative balance. I’m not particularly well off, I just have a rule that I live within my means and if I don’t have the money to pay for something then I don’t buy it (apart from the purchase of the place I live obviously). Anyway, them’s the rules and I have always stuck to it.
I went home and logged into my back account to see if I was going mad. I wasn’t. I scanned through my recent transactions to see what had happened and realised that two payments had gone out to pay my credit card bill. I always pay off my credit card bill every month (because that’s the rule…) and what had happened was that when I got my statement I had set up the payment to go from my bank account but what I had failed to realise was that because I had asked my credit card to set up a direct debit to pay off my balance every month they had already set this up and so took the money as well. Having just moved house I reckon this is probably the biggest credit card bill I have ever had – and I managed to pay it twice. Annoyingly, I think basically the mistake was mine.
I phoned my credit card company and they said that they could refund the money either to another credit card – I don’t have another credit card - or send me a cheque in seven to ten days. I asked why they couldn’t refund the money to my bank account and she didn’t seem to be able to explain why and just said they couldn’t. I asked if I spoke to someone more senior if they might have the discretion to pay the money back by other means and the woman basically said it wouldn’t make any difference and wouldn’t let me speak to anyone else. She did however tell me that they don’t advise customers to go into credit. I pointed out that I hadn’t actually deliberately gone into credit and that was the whole point of my phone call.
I then phoned my bank and they didn’t seem very fussed. The woman actually said to me that she didn’t think I would be charged because I was still within my overdraft limit, but I’m a bit confused about that now because I thought that even if you stayed within your agreed overdraft limit they still charged you (I actually have no idea though, having never used it before…). But, my bank account is the one I set up when I was student and there is a chance that they have (mistakenly) never removed the free overdraft facility even though I stopped being a student many years ago. I’ll wait and see if they charge me and if they have I’ll go and speak to my bank and see if they will refund the charges because they’ll be able to see from my statements what caused the problem and hopefully they’ll be kind to a loyal customer.
Anyway, I’m now going to have to dig about for some money to get my bank account back into the black and then await a cheque from my credit card company – which might not get here until the beginning of next month and won’t be for the whole amount anyway because they will deduct this months spending from it and then return the balance.
Added to that is that somehow in the process my bank account then locked itself so that I had to order a new password for it, which will be posted to me.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
2 comments:
Yuk, but could have been worse, at least you weren't a victim of ID fraud....
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Just a thought, a friend works for an organisation that 'buys back' unused annual leave from it's employees in the form of a cash settlement.... might be worth investigating.TF
Yep, that had crossed my mind as well. Hopefully it will be fixed reasonably soon.
I think my work might be willing to pay me for my leave, but my plan now is to try and slowly chip away at it. It's nice to have leave in reserve should I ever be desperate to take a few days off. but that cash might come in handy at some point...
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