Arrangement fee bank charges, help!

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Hey! I figured this is probably the best place to ask, I tried my dad but he doesn't have the complaining spirit in him. My bank is HSBC and I've just graduated from uni this summer, I had there student bank account which has a £1250 interest free overdraft. Unfortunately my account is pretty much always at £1250 overdrawn ... about 2 months ago I go a letter saying my account is being changed over to a graduate account which made sense because I'd finished uni, luckily for me nothing changed, I still have a £1250 interest free over draft.

A few weeks ago though a received a letter saying on the 23rd of September they are going to deduct a £25 arrangement fee from my account the reason for this makes no sense to me the letter says `As we have previously agreed a formal or informal overdraft within this period, an Arrangement fee is due` ... say what? If I was cash rich, I probably wouldn't get upset about this, but i'm £1250 overdrawn, so if HSBC take £25 out of my account i'm going to be £1275 overdrawn and be over my overdraft limit and will have to start paying interest on my account! I plan to go into HSBC later to see if I can get out of paying the arrangement fee, I was just wondering if you guys know any good points I could argue whilst over there that would increase my chances of not having to pay the fee!

cheers guys,
rich

[abigsmurf]

Wouldn't surprise me if there was an account changeover fee which is what you could have been charged. They needed to have made this clear when they switched you over though.

[Widegoat]

I'm pretty confident that they can't take a penalty fee that would take you into un-agreed borrowing - but I'm not sure when it comes to arrangement fees. If I were you - in the short term, I'd find 25-50 quid from somewhere and stick it in there so you don't accrue any penalties.

For what it's worth - shortly after I graduated, Natwest started hitting me with fees that I was sure I didn't have to pay since they were unable to tell me the specifics of what the fees were for!

In the end the amount of fees that went onto my account in less that a year amounted to 250 quid! I told them that I was going to withdraw the rest of my money and close the account.

They paid all the money back, and upgraded my account for free - so complaining can work sometimes.

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Bloody hell, ?250 fees in less than a year! I went into HSBC before, it looks like there's nothing i can do about the fee ... the conversation concluded that the only way I could avoid paying the ?25 would be to pay off my overdraft : ( hah which i'm definitely not capable of doing right now so I just gave up. Good news is, even though it'll put me over my limit I wont get charged interest on it, they said they don't charge interest when it's bank charges that put you over your limit. Still, bank charges suck big time. Thanks for the replies though guys.

[amaan]

Don't know if this is any help, but I just got switched over to the grad account from HSBC as well, and there was no fee to pay, it was just done automatically. Also, for my final year my overdraft went up from ?1250 to ?1500, which is the standard rate as far as I'm aware as long as you didn't go over your set limit during the first two years. That limit is now interest free for two years and apparently I was told by my branch manager that student accounts are NEVER charged for going overdrawn, just the interest charges, so I would assume the same applies for grad accounts. Go in and make a fuss, ask to speak to the branch manager and clearly state that they have no leg to stand on because no arrangement fee was agreed, don't back down and eventually they will, ask to see terms and conditions etc. of where it was stated that these charges would apply, and when they cant provide them to you they will have to remove the fee.