I'm going to start my own thread soon with a similarish situation to yours. I'm getting nowhere fast with Nationwide. I have a Flex Account with no overdraft facility. I've had lots of charges on the account over the past year and when looking through them, I saw that most of them were after the debit card from the Flex Account was used in shops and cash machines and the payments and withdrawals were accepted despite there not being sufficient funds in the account. This of course meant charges were levied on the account. I also got charged in November for unauthorised overdraft despite the fact that in the proceeding two months the account had been in the black the whole time. I wrote to them kicking up. Received back a generic letter telling me to fill in the included income and expenditure form if I wanted to try and get money back. No response to any of the questions I'd asked regarding how it was possible to withdraw money if account doesn't have enough funds, etc. So I wrote a 2nd letter. This time, along with the I & E form, there was mention only of the above point regarding insufficient funds and payments/withdrawals: apparently, to "avoid embarrassment caused by payments being declined" the account has a reserve overdraft set at a limit which the bank "reviews" regularly, the current amount of which I still do not know! Going into this reserve overdraft incurs a 'paid item' charge of £15.00 each time. They haven't mentioned it in their letter, but my statements show that they also hammer you with a £30 unauthorised overdraft fee as well. The letter goes on to say that they "genuinely believe it is better for customers to be able to use such a facility". Really? Does anyone here prefer a £15 charge instead of a bit of embarrassment when your card is declined? What about cash machines, do you get embarrassed in front of that lump of metal too and prefer a £15 charge? Conniving ****. This world, I don't know, any opportunity to fleece you. Never knew about this reserve overdraft feature, they don't tell you the amount, you have to telephone to cancel it which can take 7 weeks, and they never send a letter warning of charges to be applied to the account, which often causes us to go into the red and immediately incur more charges. I hope you get somewhere mfpa. You're dead right though, it is enrichment from mistakes, and they help ensure you make the mistakes, with such facilities as 'reserve overdraft' that you don't even know you have.