Unauthorised Overdrafts

I resolved to my friend Steve last night that I would resume blogging in some capacity. So since it is Friday afternoon and I have no intention of doing any more work for the rest of the day; here I am.

The topic that left me screaming at the television last night was the row over banks charging customers large sums of money for having their banks accounts go into overdraft without authorisation from the bank.

The Office of Fair Trading are now bringing a legal case against all the major banks in the UK over what they perceive to be unfair charges to customers who allow their accounts to be overdrawn.

I personally find this to be utterly ridiculous. In Britain it is appallingly easy to obtain credit. Almost every bank will offer you an agreed overdraft without question. So what this means is that the people who end up being charged for going into overdraft, have already reached their agreed overdraft amount and then gone over it. They have already been spending someone else's money up to a certain level; then, since they cannot stop spending, they have taken someone else's money, without first asking if it's ok.

That is what I feel this all boils down to: theft. These people have spent money that is not theirs, without asking. I think the banks should be allowed to charge as much as they want if someone spends their money without permission. Of course last night's news story was filled with the usual sob stories of people who only go into overdraft by a little bit and then rack up a whole load of charges. Well here's a message for you people; don't go to the pub on Friday night for a couple of weeks because you can't afford it. Learn to live within your means instead of spending the bank's money and then whingeing about the fact that they've charged you for it.

Right that'll do for now