Chrissie
Posts: 1 | Comments: 46
Latest Post:
Unfair Bank Charges!
9:43am 17th Apr 2009
I am absolutely fed up with the banking charges my student daughter has incurred since turning 18. I really think it's not fair. Particularly as she is not earning as she is too unwell to supplement her income with any part time work as she suffers with a long term serious health issue. Yet she is not considered ill enough to receive disability living allowance; and as a student cannot claim Income support or job seekers allowance as technically she is unfit for work. Nor is our daughter able to attend college regularly enough or punctually enough, (due to illness beyond her control) to qualify for her EMA (education maintenance grant) which she used to get paid the weekly measly sum of £30.
So now she is subsisting on nothing. My husband is registered disabled, and he cannot work at the moment and due to subsisting on Income support the past 12 years we cannot afford to fund her necessary living expenses. Yet we are expected to manage- not only through this economic crisis many are suffering as well but trying to raise two other children through college. When I approach her student support services they say they have run out of cash and are simply overloaded with hundreds of cases like ours. Next year we have to continue to support her fees whilst beginning her foundation degree. We have debts of over £11,000 and as I say, a 16 year old who is leaving school this summer and starting college himself in September.
More should be done to stop banks pressing vulnerable and hard up students once they turn 18 into the ground with overdraft facilities we as her parents never wanted to set up in the first place! Her interest charges are rising each month we cannot afford to pay off in full with interest on top. As usual it is the sick the infirm and the poorest of the poor who suffer. I am sick of banks taking the mick.
The government should be doing much more to help not only the banks- but the poorest customers themselves who keep the banks ticking over. More should also be done to help thise subsisting below the minimum earning amounts who are ill and too sick to chase up any unwanted unecessary overdraft charges slapped on top. It is so unfair that
banks get help;but the ordinary customer is still loosing out.
