Bank Charges Financial Hardship Disussion

intrepid

This is apparently the case. Some people at the ombudsman are more sympathetic than others i found, but I gather that it is entirely up to the bank and all they do is try to prod the bank to action. But the final decision is due soon i think- today or tomorrow? So there may be a chance to reclaim some more of the money depending what is decided. Good luck. Our bank stopped our charges but we had no money back and the Ombudsman said the same to us.

saf1982

i started claiming procedure back in 2006, owed over £1800 pounds from natwest obviously it's on hold now, now i'm in serious financial hardship as i lost my job earlier this year , last year i actually changed my bank as i was unhappy how i was being treated so am now with lloyds . a company is actually working on my behalf to reclaim the money but could i go in and claim financial hardship even though i not banked with them for the last 18 months , i did get a call last year from the company working on my behalf that after the first court case had finished saying that the case was won and they owed me £2275 but then i have heard nothing from them

natweststaffmember

intrepid wrote: »

That is really a very different matter, though is it not? Fair is fair and these charges were not, being often as much at least as we were over limit by. My case as i have been outlining is that we are clearly in hardship and the bank were manipulating 'need' in order to make the figures suggest we are not. And we would have been within our limits 95% of the time had they stopped charges sooner (they have now)- OR just applied a 'fair' charge. Whatever you say, and i am curious as to whether you are payrolled by money saver or just doing this for fun- they have been causing our continued charges as we are living at a deficit as an actual result of them quite often.

I am paid nothing for posting on the forums, in fact, I have been on bank charges forums since June 2006 whilst working for the bank(just a cashier not a manager and not media relations nor even customer relations) and continue to do so whilst not working for the bank since Feb 2009. MSE do not pay me and I have never taken 1p of anything. When I was dismissed in February it freed up a lot of the stuff I did on forums so I was able to dig for information, speak with the FOS on issues regarding financial hardship and ask for information from the bank(which I continue to do today). The current situation today is that the charges may be unfair or they maybe fair but until we know if the regulations apply then there can be no assessment of fairness. With regards to financial hardship claims specifically, priority debt arrears are where payouts are being gained from. Difficulty is that each bank would appear to have different criteria which means that it may vary from bank to bank(I don't think it should but it does).

natweststaffmember

jonboy739 wrote: »

hi, i put a hardship claim into the ombudsman in june this year, since june my bank has taken over £1000 in bank charges. i have just had a offer of £105 off the bank and for them not to give me any bank charges me for 3 months, so i have contacted the ombudsman this morning and told them that is not exceptable as they have put me that far behind with my bills because of the bank charges and it seems very unfair that they still get to keep about £1000 of my money. anyway the ombudsman have told me that the bank is under no obligation to pay me any money back and the £105 that they have offered will put me back into my over draft. anyway they said there is nothing more they can do. so martin lewis do i fight on or is that the end of it?

I'm not Martin Lewis but have you updated the list of charges with the ombudsman?
Are the charges eating into your budget for priority debts(mortgage or rent, council tax, utilities)?

jonboy739

natweststaffmember wrote: »

I'm not Martin Lewis but have you updated the list of charges with the ombudsman?
Are the charges eating into your budget for priority debts(mortgage or rent, council tax, utilities)?

i have told the obudsman about the other charges since but they were not interested, i have been to court today for my council tax as i am now 3 months in arrears, im over £300 in arrears with my electric, £200 with gas and also behind on my water. the only thing i have made sure i have kept on top of is the morgage. i dont have credit cards, loans or finance on anything, i dont like to have dept but these bank charges have cripled me. i make just enough money to cover the bills and have none left over, so when i got a bank charge back in june for going over my overdraft by just over £1 i didn't have the £63 that they charged me so the month after i got more charges and so on and so on. yes by them stopping charging me for the next 3 months i will be able to start paying my bills again but i wont be able to clear any arrears.

natweststaffmember

jonboy739 wrote: »

i have told the obudsman about the other charges since but they were not interested, i have been to court today for my council tax as i am now 3 months in arrears, im over £300 in arrears with my electric, £200 with gas and also behind on my water. the only thing i have made sure i have kept on top of is the morgage. i dont have credit cards, loans or finance on anything, i dont like to have dept but these bank charges have cripled me. i make just enough money to cover the bills and have none left over, so when i got a bank charge back in june for going over my overdraft by just over £1 i didn't have the £63 that they charged me so the month after i got more charges and so on and so on. yes by them stopping charging me for the next 3 months i will be able to start paying my bills again but i wont be able to clear any arrears.

Ok, let's go back one single step. What was the reason why you didn't have sufficient money to cover the amount going out in June?
Did you initially ask the bank to refund the charge at that time?(I am formulating a logic to this).
What was your income coming in/ and expenses going out(excluding charges)?
What was the effect that the charge had to your budget to pay the priority creditors?
I think you need to argue that the current state of affairs leaves your financial hardship levelling out but does not alleviate it since in 3 months time the cycle will continue whilst because of the factors above a higher interim period of charges refunded will allow for you to pay off the arrears and take away the stress that the end of that three month hold would have.

Darth_Marty

Sorry if this is the wrong place but someone told me earlier today that a final ruling was going to be made this week about the charges situation.
Is this correct?

MsNoviceMoneySavr

We're hoping for some news on Wednesday - but who knows what that will be/mean. Just keeping fingers crossed

Darth_Marty

cool, thanks for the reply, sorry if im breaking any forum etiquette here but im not a regular and the sheer volume of threads on the subject is daunting...one question - I wrote to nationwide a year or so back about around a grands worth of charges, they responded saying they were waitng for this ruling, if it favours me would I have to do anything or would they just refund it? I guess thats still unclear is it? For me the whole subject is a tad confusing.

natweststaffmember

Darth_Marty wrote: »

cool, thanks for the reply, sorry if im breaking any forum etiquette here but im not a regular and the sheer volume of threads on the subject is daunting...one question - I wrote to nationwide a year or so back about around a grands worth of charges, they responded saying they were waitng for this ruling, if it favours me would I have to do anything or would they just refund it? I guess thats still unclear is it? For me the whole subject is a tad confusing.

Wednesday will not lead immediately to refunds because if the banks' appeal fails we will have reached the 50% mark in the case. The rules about whether bank charges can be assessed for fairness will be clear. If the banks' win the refund issue is over.