Hi
What a terrible situation you are in.
Have quickly read your comments and maybe someone has already suggested this.
I would do 2 letters 1 to Abbey and the other to First Choice listing everything that has happened cross reference them and send them registered or special delivery give them each 7, 10 or 14 days to respond. If you don't get a satisfactory answer by your deignated time tell them you will be seeking legal advice/small claims court. Hope you get sorted quickly. Remember to claim for out of pocket expenses - phone calls, time that you hae been inconvenienced etc.
Do be quick as from Saturday Royal Mail are starting 14 days of industrial action.
Irene

Mystery solved.

First Choice were paid for their holiday.
But Abbey NEVER debited us. They remembered about the end of June 07 & decided to take the money without warning, they also BACKDATED it to June 4th & whacked us for charges, they debited the money historically.
I think its appalling the way they have behaved.
First Choice are innocent, I wish I could re-name the thread.
I'm going to fight the charges, they are un-ethical.

Anyone got any advice?

I am shocked that they are able to take the money from your account so long after the event without contacting you first I'm not sure though, how you didn't notice that your bank account wasn't down by the necessary amount last year? Presumably, it was because you had so much extra activity going on in your account?

I have no advice to give, sorry, but maybe they could give you time to pay, seeing as it was their mistake in the first place?

It was because of all the activity that we didn't notice, I know that sounds mad, but its possible we just proved it.

TIME TO PAY, you must be joking.

Thats what I'm fuming about now, they didn't physically take the money till the 2 July, but they backdated the transaction to the 4th June, thereby putting us overdrawn. Now they couldn't bounce the DD because they had already paid them, so they charged us £30 for each & every tranaction for a month while being overdrawn, total nearly £1,000!!

Hard to understand but I think the law of estoppel may well apply here. See this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel
BUT
book an appointment at your Citizens Advice Bureau asap. There is usually a wait but they will be able to help you.
You may also want to use the other site I advised you about re the banking code in an earlier response before making any formal complaint to the Abbey. This could muck up your credit worthiness for some time to come unless you can come to a reasonable deal with the bank.

So the best advice is to seek formal advice because it is the sort of situation that could have major repercussions in the future.

have changed the thread title for you kim. If you want more than just the name changed just let me know. Good luck- this is a nightmare for you and your bank should have least given warning. They must be wrong in their actions

Thank you all for your support.

It took my husband HOURS today to get the answer, why couldn't they have just told us that in the first place instead of leading us to believe First Choice took it?

I'm going to fight the bank charges tooth & nail, its their c0ck up why should we pay. Really we should be entitiled to some refund of telephone, petrol & parking charges, our time even, if they had just come clean about what was going on we wouldn't have been ringing & visiting everywhere to get an answer.

If they had just given us forewarning we would have paid up (with a little time - after all they waited 18 months, would another few weeks have hurt). We have no problems paying for a holiday we had. But Abbey have behaved really badly & shamelessly milked us for bank charges.

Fiona

Can you delete the same thread on tour operators, please?

Thank you
Kim

edit
no problem
fiona

Kim
I agree that Abbey have not behaved very well at all.

Do take a look at this website:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/

There's lots of info on claiming your bank charges back.

Of course, after all this you may want to claim additional costs that you've incurred, too.

I'm sure there'll be someone on the same site that could give you advice.

Good luck, do let us know how it ends up.

Regards
Polly

and once its all resolved take your banking elsewhere but.... do what I did. Leave £1 in your account and let them send out statements every month ( they did stop the statements eventually but I took great satisfaction in the months before that )

There are now several issues that you need to deal with.

1 - The situation where you cannot speak to the bank due to it being your husbands account. He needs to advise/authorise the bank to speak to you without him having to authorise each time. This is done all the time once the correct authorisation is in place.

2 - You need to obtain copies of the relevant statements to confirm that the transaction was not debited to your account. You also need to check all the other transactions at that time to ensure that they were correct.

3 - You need - without delay - to meet and discuss with the bank the problem that you now say you have financially. This needs to be a priority.

Yes you may try to get charges reduced/refunded but that is not going to happen in a couple of days. Any delay will only drive you deeper into debt.

You both need to take time off from work to do this. Trying to sort this out by telephone and letter will only cause more delay and exacerbate the situation. Sitting down with a manager you can explain your problem far easier and ask for help in resolving it.

Debit card transactions made by the card holder cannot be stopped. They are treated as a cash transaction.

The original problem was created by a computer glitch, something which neither party can be blamed for. They do happen.

The bank was correct in recovering the money when they found the error. You do not dispute the fact that you had made the original transaction... You say they did contact you to advise they were taking this money. Simply telling them you would not authorise them was not enough, did you not follow it up? Reading your post it would appear that you did not.

I accept that at the time this started you were in the middle of a major refurbishment, but cannot understand why you were not checking your statements in view of all the monies you were paying out.

Writing to the press etc will not solve things. You owe the money and the only people who can help are the bank. You are not the first person to have this problem and will not be the last.

fwh

You booked the holiday last year, agreeing to pay the required sum. That sum wasn't paid. Maybe not your fault, but I fail to accept that you were unaware that money had not been taken from your account at that time.

Now, the money has been taken and you are unprepared for it to the extent that you are seriously overdrawn.

I believe the Abbey should first, out of courtesy, have informed you prior to taking the money especially as they could see this withdrawal would take you over your limit and trigger penalty charges.

That said, you are likely to recover those penalty fees after the dust has settled. I've just recovered almost £1000 for a family member from two different major banks - and without recourse to the courts.

I think the lesson here is........if you get a £x bank error in your favour Monopoly type windfall, put the money to one side for 6 years in the belief that you may get charged at some point in the future.

Life stinks doesn't it.

Mike, nail on the head!

Another update, Abbey phoned hubby today & said they were going to remove all the bank charges, we will have a letter in the post to confirm this. Hubby is useless at these sort of things, but hes got the impression that they have also agreed to pay other expenses as a result of this large debit.
Abbey have got the holiday money back now, almost I think we still owe them about £300.
He has actually opened a A&L account (on MSE Martins top pick account) & hes closing his Abbey account anyway ASAP, he opened it BEFORE this all started, DD & I have opened them too. Shame he hadn't closed down the Abbey one already, they couldn't have just dipped in, they would have had to let us know.

It was Abbey that phoned, not First Choice. I think First Choice are off the hook totally.
The email I sent to Abbey I also sent to the financial ombudsman, banksafeonline, which, creditaction, fla, ico.gsi.gov.uk, legalservices.gov.uk, moneyadvicetrust.org, reader@guardian.co.uk, reader@observer.co.uk, watchdog@bbc.co.uk, dom@flametv.co.uk
Do you think thats why they called us out of the blue today & offered to waive the charges???

To anyone that doubts we didn't realise the money was taken & thought we had a bonus, we REALLY didn't. If we had, we wouldn't have been so shocked when it happened. My husband NEVER checks his bank statements (but he will in future).

We NEVER complained about paying for a holiday we had. We never expected to get it for free. But Abbey made a major c0ck up & it was unfair of them to charge us 1k for their mistake.

To those who have offered advice & support a very big thank you.

To those miserable gits, who made unhelpful snips & remarks, may the karma you spread find its way back to you.

May I suggest that if possible with the new bank account you sign up for online banking. That way you can check your accounts on a daily basis and soon spot anything that might be not quite right. I think most of the banks offer an online service.

Pippa

And I would also sort out the authorisation for you to discuss the account if it is going to be in your husband's name only.

luci

I assume, now you have resolved the matter, you will be writing to the various organisations you contacted, and withdraw the allegations of sharp practice which you made.

By all means complain when there is reason, but as First Choice had done nothing wrong they deserve an apology.

Expressions of sympathy sometimes help when faced with a problem, but I and others, did advise speaking to the bank from the start.

Bank accounts are managed by computers and charges applied by them. It is only when you speak to a person those problems can be resolved.

In my opinion, Abbey have been very decent in the way they have responded. There is a duty of care that applies to you as well as them.

Failure by yourselves to check statements and therefore ensure the funds were available is what caused the problem, not the delay in taking the money from your account.

fwh

I think this is a good thread for others to learn from. I'm sure you would join me Kim in urging everyone to check their bank account statements. I know if I wasn't in the habit of checking everything I would have been paying for someone elses mobile phone monthly charges.

I assume, now you have resolved the matter, you will be writing to the various organisations you contacted, and withdraw the allegations of sharp practice which you made.

By all means complain when there is reason, but as First Choice had done nothing wrong they deserve an apology.

I have already wrote to First Choice & informed them of this, I have MADE it clear on this thread that First Choice had nothing to do with it. It was Abbey who blamed First Choice. I have also replied to the relevant bodies that its not First Choice, but Abbey.

Expressions of sympathy sometimes help when faced with a problem, but I and others, did advise speaking to the bank from the start.

We did, until they recieved the letter earlier in the thread, they wouldn't deal with it at all, just said sort it out with First Choice. It took hubby 4 hours & the fraud squad in spain (???) to tell him what actually happened.

Bank accounts are managed by computers and charges applied by them. It is only when you speak to a person those problems can be resolved.

I work with computers for a living, COMPUTERS ONLY DO WHAT PEOPLE TELL THEM TO, THEY DON'T MAKE CHOICES.

In my opinion, Abbey have been very decent in the way they have responded. There is a duty of care that applies to you as well as them.

Abbey have behaved DISGUSTINGLY, they lied to us for nearly a month about what happened & also backdated the debit & amended the end of day balance everyday thereafter to bump up the charges.

Failure by yourselves to check statements and therefore ensure the funds were available is what caused the problem, not the delay in taking the money from your account.

Rubbish, if Abbey had done their job in the first place we would never have been in this position.

Thanks all the same, but help like your I can do without.
Have you run out of salt to rub into the wounds now?