A couple of months ago, my almost dormant spare Lloyds TSB bank account was hunky dory. Today I am in debt by £350 for missing a single £24 payment. And am currently being charged £15 per day whilst overdrawn. On the 7th June Lloyds TSB will take £165 from my account, even though I am overdrawn. And there's absolutely nothing I can do about it!

Ordinary folk just don't understand.

I tell this story to people when they don't understand what a bank penalty charge is. The story is silly and maybe even badly written, but for those people who care about beer would know what it's like to have beer stolen or lost in a pub. Not very nice.

If you don't like beer, swap beer for something you really care about and read it again. Like horses or M&S for example.

There's a lot of people out there that never go overdrawn and don't quite understand what the fuss is all about.

There's also a lot of people that don't earn much money and can sometimes exceed their overdraft, and sometimes by only a matter of pennies.

And lastly, there's people like me who earn an OK wage but life flies me by so fast I am just not completely on top of things.

I spend on the internet and I keep an eye on my online bank statement (this is with Smile) every few days.

Online Statements

However, online bank statements are not up to date. And they are often misleading. One example would be when I log in to check my statement in the morning. A direct debit of say £20 is showing up as leaving the account.

You log in again at the end of the day and that very same transaction has mysteriously disappeared - and a nice messages mysteriously appears in your in-box. The messages says, "Unfortunately we could not make a payment as you did not have enough funds, you have been charged as per our published tariff".

Or even worse, "We were really nice and had to make a payment on your behalf because you didn't have enough funds. So you won't get into trouble with the beneficiary. However you are now in deep trouble with us and now we're going to make you pay".

Or "There wasn't enough funds in your account to take our own fees, so therefore we are charging you yet again to make your life even more of a misery. Let's hope your wife doesn't find out, she'll leave you". I hate that last one. Really strikes a nerve....

Now this is initially very annoying because you are led to believe that everything is OK. With SMILE you are not given a running total so without actually adding up every payment on a page you would not ever be sure if the statement is correct.

In other words, if you knew there was a "pending" payment about to go out of the account that would ultimately make you overdrawn, you could have enough time to transfer funds or pay in some cash at a local branch.

Read the rest at

http://www.lloydstsbstolemycash.com

Enjoy!!!