Claim back any unfair bank charges! Article Discussion Area

foreveryoung_3

I just walked into my branch of Lloyds TSB and handed it over with 10.00 cash.

Also I would go all the way to court as when because of bank charges, you find no money in your account and you have children to feed, and you are in a snowball situation, you cannot seem to get out of. When your children are at risk of suffering because they have profitted from mistakes, and then land up owing money or are in debt because of charges, it will be easy to stand in court to ask for my money back. I have had to borrow from a high rate lender because of charges, causing more financial strain. This is wonderful that people are fighting back because I was gonna be struggling for a very long time and now I wont be, simple.

asharon

What do you do if you have sent the inital letter with eh £10 asking for the statments and they have cashed the cheque but it is over the time limit and they are doing nothing ?

melpomene

indenial wrote:

....as for the breakdown of charges, you don't have to worry about that at this stage I don't think. I never got asked for a breakdown - I imagine that is only if you have to prepare a court case. Again, something I didn't bother with and never got asked.

S

I was going to supply my list of charges extracted from my statements. Is a total all that's required at the first letter stage?

Laura_Heasman

I am considering claiming unfair charges back from LloydsTSB. However, can anyone advise me before I go ahead, bearing in mind I exceeded my overdraft limit by £4000, defaulted on my Lloyds credit card, and a Lloyds loan? The actual amount I ended up owing was by far over double what I had initially been indebted to them for, despite asking on several occasions if they would freeze charges and having seen an adviser that they sent to my house to discuss the debt - he advised them that I could only afford to pay back £15 per month and they still continued to threaten court action if I did not send them £100 per month. As a result, I discontinued corresponding with the bank as I was getting nowhere and knew that if they took me to court, I would still only be able to pay back a minimal amount. It just occurred to me that if I claimed all the unfair charges, my debt with them would be hugely reduced but I don't want to put myself back in the firing line! Can anyone advise me?

emmaro

Hi,
I am in the same position as you and would love to know if we could possibly be successful in recovering some of the extra charges back, after all most of the debt is purely from charges, and probably from the recovery agents adding ridiculous amounts of money to the original debt. I agree that I also should not have buried my head in the sand but i did.
Good luck with everything
emma

ntc79

Hi I have a Virgin CC - MBNA are the company behind it and are now on my back. I didn't set up a direct debit but was making payments, now I am behind with them and I have accrued hundreds of pounds of charges - limit of my ac. is £3600 - actual balance is £4500 - and I haven't used the card for almost a year! They are calling me, have been e-mailing - I of course have been avoiding them - stupid I know. Not sure where to go from here - please advise! Thanks

maka_2

My claim was issued to lloyds on the 1st on june they have 28days before it goes to court 29/06/06 all i've heard back is they are defending the case ( as i thought they would) but they offer a full refund before the court date. But does anyone now how close to the court date do they offer the refund?

westable

Chrysalis wrote:

I may be backing out o sueing my bank because of the problem of getting a new account, would be hard for me.

I only moved last week so current address is less then 1 month - very bad
No landline yet - bad
No bank statements for current address - very bad
No utility bills yet for current address - bad
Not updated electrol roll yet - bad
Poor credit rating - very bad
No photo id - limited choice of banks, very bad for hsbc

http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/PA_1_4_24P/content/uk/pdfs/en/credit_scoring.pdf
http://www.ukpersonal.hsbc.co.uk/public/ukpersonal/personal_banking/bank_accounts/en/bac_identification.jhtml

I already done a online application for nationwide but messed up the flexaccount app by not including my current account details which is 9+ years current account, debit card/overdraft so makes me look like no banking history.

My elder sister's husband finally got an account (dont know where) when he got the photo version of provisional licence but hsbc only accept full licences so they have taken financial/social exclusion to a new level, only accepting drivers and people who been abroad.

try alliance and leicester cash only account, no problem getting one. Gives you absolutely nothing but is a start.

keefyboy_2

I want to let you know that it IS worth claiming back unfair charges, my wife and I have a joint account and a single account each with HSBC, we printed all the statements & charges on the joint account, the same with my wifes account (mine had not been hit with charges), the longest part took two day to sort out, mark and transfer to a list of ALL illegal bank charges.

We then used the example letter from the action group, following their guide lines to put in claims for both the accounts, the joint account was £2265 and my wifes account £365. We wrote seperate letters for each account, sealed them and took them to the local branch, what we also did was wrote a receipt (2 copies, 1 for them 1 for us) we asked the counter girl to sign and stamp both copies, all it was saying that at a certain time on a certain day she accepted 2 sealed letter from us, she then signed it, name in print, time and date and also the branch stamp.

The letters set out the dates and amounts and what for was the charge, then add it all up, add interest (yes you can work it out using the example form on the action group site) and submitted the claim upto a certain date. You can go back "6" years legally. We found that when we had a problem the bank on each month had slapped us for £25 charges and £100 for going over our our overdraft limit. We checked the statements back and found that when we started into trouble last year the banks £125 charge has put us over the limit and of course this compounded the problem the following month putting us deeper and deeper into debt.

We were both sure that they would use us as an example to take to court and we would not get a penny, but 5 days later we have had an offer of £2000 on the joint and £325 on the second, no fuss, no hassle, the only thing they said was it will be in full and final settlement of this matter but no admittance of liability from them. We are over the moon with the offers, but we have now been put into another question, do we refuse and take them to court or do we accept the offers and pay off all 3 overdrafts, restock the cupboards etc. We need the money now to pay off the overdrafts, we need the money to buy the food, last week I even sold a gold and diamond ring of mine so we could have food, (thats how bad things have got), so what do we do ?

We sat and talked and decided to take the offer under conditions that the claim is only for the start date to the end of May 2006, and that the money is deposited within 7 working days from the date of the letter in the relevant accounts, the other point was that we reserve the right that if they do not pay the money into the accounts within the specified period then we would decline their offer and go full hog for the lot.
One other thing that made us come to accept the offers was that we would have to find the fees to bring 2 cases to the small claims court anything between £30 -£150 each, depending on the amount being claimed, (you can add the court fees onto the bill if you (I will say WHEN) you win. We would be unable to get free court as we do not get 1 of the stipulated benefits, ie jobseekers, council tax rebate etc etc, where would we find that money was a big problem. I know that other people would say, take them to court but each circumstance is different.

So we are just waiting to see the money put into the account in time, if you find that they have ripped you off, then work out the amount they have overcharged you and go after them for it, its YOUR money.

One last thing, make sure you have copies of everything and you get a receipt for anything you hand to the bank, if you post it then send it RECORDED Delivery, then they can't deny having got it

Thanks for taking the patience to read this

and finally thanks Martin for making us aware of this deplorable actions of the banks and how to fight back.

Keefy Boy (Keith)

Benson

I thought that I may have about £150 in charges but going through my statements I hav £740

However on the statements it only says

"charges as notified"

On my spreadhsheet i have the date noted and the amount, do i need to know what the charges were for?

They differ from £20, £28 and £30.

Also, if it a joint account I presume that we have to claim together, I just cannot do it?