Like many people who have, in a moment of insanity, decided to start their own business, I've had to put up with occasional bank charges.

You know how it goes: A debit card transaction doesn't show up on your online banking and you forget you made it, then you buy something else that takes you close to your overdraft limit, then the first transaction pops up and BANG you're overdrawn — £30 charge! Perfectly fair and reasonable stuff like that. Yeah right. That's why people hate bank charges so much.

Well check this out for a nice bit of customer service from my helpful friends at the Royal Bank of Scotland. Two weeks ago they asked me to come in to see about "upgrading" my personal account to a fee-paying business account. I told them that I'd try to make it as a courtesy, but I didn't really want my personal account upgraded so if a job came up then that would take priority over the meeting. That's exactly what happened and I couldn't make the meeting.

Now, somewhere along the line someone had given someone some wrong information. It turns out that the meeting wasn't logged down as being about an account upgrade. It was down as being a review of my overdraft. And when I didn't attend the meeting someone took this to mean that I didn't want the overdraft anymore so they helpfully removed it.

On a Saturday morning.

When the bank is closed.

So aside from the frustration of standing at a cash machine on Saturday afternoon, needing money for a taxi but instead staring in disbelief at a message telling me I'm overdrawn, I knew that I'd have to stay overdrawn all weekend until I could contact the bank on Monday to find out why.

And it was on Monday morning that they told me about the overdraft being removed. You'd think they might have called me in advance or sent a letter but no, apparently good manners don't apply to banks.

But hey! No charges for being overdrawn! Or so they assured me. And then they put the overdraft straight back on the account. All sorted.
Except over the next couple of days these two letters dropped through the door. It turns out that the promise of no charges was ever-so-slightly wrong. Just have a look at these figures! There's a £30 charge for being overdrawn (a "paid referral charge") and £28 for the ever-vague "maintenance charge". 

48be1967-470.jpg
Let me explain why I'm mentioning this here:

The job I did at the school concert yesterday involved getting two photos for two papers. I was able to get one in the middle of the afternoon and then I had to look for one during the concert or, as it turned out, set something up afterwards. I left the house at 1:40pm and got home at about 11:30pm. The total payment for both photos will be £55. It's okay money for doing a job you enjoy, and I do this job because I want to, but it's also working for a living.
Now my bank wants £58 for doing precisely nothing, apart from causing me some extra worry and inconvenience.
If you've never had to deal with bank charges then you may not fully appreciate why people are so outraged by them. But next time a newspaper or TV show does a feature on someone who has quite possibly been left in financial ruin by a bank simply deciding to take money away from them, remember this as another example of why people hate bank charges so much.

On this occasion a complaint has succeeded in getting the £28 charge cancelled but the £30 charge is still up in the air. This, I understand, is the latest tactic that banks are using: They hit you with two charges for the same offence, then cancel the lower charge as a "good will gesture". That way they can grab just as much money as always but they can claim that they're trying to help you.