I am being charged an intervention fee with regard to our account based on the fact that a sum of money was paid in to our account in respect of our prelevements and cheques for a hospital operation to take place. We were informed that this money would clear within 5 days and that we should write a cheque for the hospital bills as if the money did not clear within 24 hours neither would the cheques. However the total amount of money did not clear for 8 working days and we became overdrawn by a small amount. This matter was taken up with the bank and they said we should not have been told either thing and that they would refund the charge. They did this and now we are being charged and also charged Int Deb Forfait R313-4 TRIM 01. I have looked at this and cannot find an up to date gouv.fr listing on it and understand it has something to do with leasing? Has anyone else encountered this please.
I don’t understand this because normally the concept of cheques ‘clearing’ does not exist in France. The money is credited to your account as soon as the cheque has been processed which can take a few days. If you take the money out, and it later turns out that the cheque was unfunded, it’s up to you to repay the money. It can take several weeks before the problem manifests itself, so withdrawing against a cheque as soon as it’s credited is always a risk if you’re not completely sure that you can trust the person or establishment that wrote it.
Article R313-4 of the Code de la Consommation is basically about loan repayment, you can find it on Legifrance but it’s very general. You’ll need to check with bank exactly what the Int Deb Forfait (Intérêts Débiteurs Forfaitaires) arose from and how it was calculated but it will probably be stated in an agreement (overdraft agreement ?) that you have with them. So it could for instance be the interest that has been charged at the agreed rate on an overdraft. TRIM 01 will mean Trimestre 1, ie the first quarter of the year. That would be my guess but you do need to talk to your counsellor.
Thank you please accept my apologies for not being clear in my question. I believe, whilst writing about this debacle to a friend, that I now understand what they have done and your comment with regard to the Deb Forfait has explained the issue to me.
The whole issue arose when we physically paid money through the front of bank machine into the bank to cover our monthly bills (which we have done for months now as our own branch is closed for that purpose) and to cover cheques we wished to write. Usually it only takes 2/3 working days. This time it took 8 days in all and our prelevements were due in 7. We were misinformed as to how long it would take to clear, and that we should just write the cheques - glad we did not. I will ask for a complete explanation of this as the error was based on misinformation and we now transfer from our English bank account by SEPA each month.
You might want to look into opening an account with Wise or Revolut. SEPA transfers aren’t usually the most cost efficient method for regular transfers. But certainly, manual cash payments were not a good method.