Reclaiming Interest on Unfair Charges

ccmug

I'm in the process of reclaiming unfair charges on both current accounts and credit cards.

I intend to claim the 8% statutory interest but can I also claim the interest that has been charged by the credit card companies on the unfair payments. I'm having difficulty getting my head around this.

If I am allowed to claim this, do I do this on a daily basis the same way as the 8% is clacualted and then add the 8% interest starting one day after that? Help please!

I found somewhere the addresses to write to for the SAR's but have lost my way to it, are there other addresses for submission of the actual claim? Can someone point the way please?


I originally sent my SAR to Natwest a year ago and they returned it because I sent them a cheque for £20 becuase their were 2 accounts and they said that I only needed to pay £5, a delaying tactic I believe. I resubmiited the request 2 weeks ago staing that they should give me the transactions from the original request date which they have done, can I claim 7 years because of that?

Finally Amex, Natwest and RBS have all returned my cheques saying they don't charge for the service

Thanks in advance for any help

natweststaffmember

This is all credit card charges, right?

ccmug

I'm claiming Bank Charges and Credit Card charges but it was particularly the credit card interest i was thinking of considering it is so much higher than 8%

ccmug

Please can anyone give me an answer or suggestions on this

St0lli

Hiya... I used the calculator tool on here to work it out
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/credit-card-charges
Hope this helps

ccmug

St0lli wrote: »

Hiya... I used the calculator tool on here to work it out
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/credit-card-charges
Hope this helps

Thanks but I have the 8% worked out its whether I can claim back the interest charged by the companies on the unfair chargesas all they did was to increase the size of the debt

natweststaffmember

ccmug wrote: »

Thanks but I have the 8% worked out its whether I can claim back the interest charged by the companies on the unfair chargesas all they did was to increase the size of the debt

My understanding is you either claim back 8% or you go contractual rate of interest all the way through your claim. They charged you at x% so naturally, if the charges had not occurred then the interest at x% is also what needs returning. Does that make sense?

esmerellda

You reclaim the charges, the interest charged on the charges (you probably have to estimate that - see what proportion of your debt each month is charges and claim back that proportion of the interest charge) then claim the 8% per annum (or contractual rate if you understand how it works) on top of that.

ccmug

I think I'm slightly confused now. Natweststaffmember and Esmeralda, you appear to be giving me conflicting opinions if I correctly interpret your statements. Could you possibly clarify?

I've been tabulating all my charges in spreadsheets and calculated the daily percentage rate of the 8% and the age of each charge and used that, it gave me the same figures as the calculator on the website. I'm sure there must be a way I can do this (i used to be a programmer so have more tools in my kit than just speadsheets) but I would need to get the interest rates they charged me and from what date. Is this information I can demand and would I have to pay a further SAR fee. Natwest/RBS have only sent me monthly summaries of charges so I don't know the date on which the interest was applied to the account but I could be generous and use the last day of the month.

Would this work?

Thanks

esmerellda

I'm right, Nats is kind of right lol.


Claiming the interest that you were charged on your charges is completely different and seperate to claiming 8% pa statutory interest or contractual interest.

It is bloody hard to work out exactly. How we tend to deal with it at the moment is look at your monthly statement, see what proportion of the months balance is made up of charges, the use that proportion of the interest charged in that month as an estimate for the interest charged on the charges. Put that figure on your 8% stat spreadsheet on the date the interest was charged to your account.

Remember charges are paid off first when you make a payment, so they tend not to sit about too long charging interest...just as purchases are paid off before cash advances....because they like to keep the transactions live that attract the highest interest.

There used to be a spreadsheet that helped work it out more exactly but was a !!!!!! to complete. Have a look on the consumer action group site, i don't have access there so can't link you unfortunately.

Hope that helps a bit more.

Ame
xx

ccmug

I've spent some time working on this now and believe i have come arrived at an incontrovertible if not totally accurate and fair to me solution but the numbers add up and i think it is worth the effort.

I've used the Advanced spreadsheet from the CAG websitewhich for those of you who are not familiar with it allows you to put in the interest the bank has charged you and a balance figure associated with that interest and calculates the proportion of the interest which was due to the penalty charges on your account up to that date.

There is a major problem if your account goes in and out of the red in that if you put in a credit balance on the interest date it doesn't work anything out

So I put in additional fields for high and low end of day o/d amounts for each interest period and took the average because i didn't think it was fair to meto use the highest o/d figure because then the amount of interest they charged is more correct. This looked to work fine in the early days when the cumulative penalty charge was well below the average o/d value but once it started getting closer, the average dropped below the cumulative penalty charge and you reclaimed all the interest even if the o/d balance had on occasion been higher than the cumulative penalty.

So now i have reverted to using the high o/d figure but have added the cumulative interest on the penalty charge to date to the cumulative penalty and i come up with a nice figure, its nearly another 50% on top of the penalty charges so it really is worth doing.

BUT

Am i in line????

And can anyone tell me more about claiming contractual interest? I've read a lot about it but am left confused - once again - but I'd like to have a go at claiming it - there so appear to be legal precedents "Sempra"?