MSE News: PM wants swift bank charges compensation

RachelW1987

Do they have all the claims still on record.

My Fiance sent his claim off ages ago and asked for his statement which he got. He then sent them one asking for the money back to which they sent the letter saying the case was in court. That was AGES ago. Will they still have record of this or not?

dirtydavey

RachelW1987 wrote: »

Do they have all the claims still on record.

My Fiance sent his claim off ages ago and asked for his statement which he got. He then sent them one asking for the money back to which they sent the letter saying the case was in court. That was AGES ago. Will they still have record of this or not?

The banks keep a copy of every thing they send. If they admitt this is another matter.

natweststaffmember

Orchid62 wrote: »

Does anyone know if this will be the case for Business Accounts as well?

The answer is business accounts DO NOT have any changes to their charging structures and only personal accounts are affected.

natweststaffmember

esmerellda wrote: »

Thank you Martin. I agree that the consumer campaign groups should be able to put forward their views should the government/OFT and the banks decide to negotiate.

I am discussing the matter with LegalBeagles,(as we have been doing over the past two years) I agree the groups should be working together and we shall respond to begin discussions on the overall consensus of what we should, if anything, be negotiating for. There are a few points you have made which we don't agree with.

Regarding your comment Do you have a copy of this report ?

This was a BBC program from 2006ish I think which I will have to look for a link there for. There were 3 people involved including one former NatWest Director.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6169539.stm

I think Legal Beagles submitted a report to the OFT Personal Current Account Study which we are still awaiting the report on with regards to fairness of bank charges.

natweststaffmember

RachelW1987 wrote: »

Do they have all the claims still on record.

My Fiance sent his claim off ages ago and asked for his statement which he got. He then sent them one asking for the money back to which they sent the letter saying the case was in court. That was AGES ago. Will they still have record of this or not?

They have to keep accurate records under the FSA Waiver on Bank Charges so yes 100% they do. They have to report quarterly I believe on numbers to the FSA.

RachelW1987

Excellent thanks for your help

Confuzzled

HTML200 wrote: »

I hope the banks are made to give the money back automatically. I've worked out how much I could get back from them, but I don't feel it would be wise for me to try, given that my bank recently agreed an IVA, which they could rip up at any moment.

I just have this feeling they'd suddenly need bigger repayments from me if I submitted a claim.

Wouldn't it be nice if a little bit of all that money used to prop up the economy actually reached the people it needs to?

i'm also hoping they'll be forced to make automatic payments as i fear that if i request the money back i'll be out a bank account!

BigBudgie

Here's a rough draft of what I consider our position should be :

1) That all future charges and the terms describing them are calculated, applied and administered in a fair and transparent manner and are independently regulated.

2) With regard to historic charges: That all historic charges are refunded, in full. The historic time period to which this refund relates is to be decided by the UK Courts in accordance with all aspects of the current test case and any future group litigation order or representative action and with particular regard to all aspects of “The Limitation Act 1980”. Compound interest is also to be paid to Claimants, at an equivalent annual rate to be decided by the UK Courts, taking into account the necessity for the banks to disgorge the unjust enrichment they have achieved by being in a position to turn money to account that they unlawfully acquired from Customers in the first instance by way of unlawful charges. This compound interest to be calculated on each and every applied charge from the date of application to the account until the date of settlement.

3) That any future negotiated settlement does not prohibit an individual Customer from taking up their own independant legal action to resolve their individual claim.

There should be no negotiation whatsoever on the above.

The banks should be told what to do, by the Courts or suffer the consequences.

The Courts will and SHOULD decide the issues regarding the fairness aspects, limitation and compensatory interest.

Just supposing the banks actually ever wished to give up further legal action and negotiate some form of settlement then who are they going to do that with? Gordon Brown?, the OFT, Martin Lewis? Gander from CAG. I certainly hope not !!!

Matters should and MUST be resolved via the court route.

Budgie

MSE_Martin

BigBudgie wrote: »

Here's a rough draft of what I consider our position should be :

1) That all future charges and the terms describing them are calculated, applied and administered in a fair and transparent manner and are independently regulated.

2) With regard to historic charges: That all historic charges are refunded, in full. The historic time period to which this refund relates is to be decided by the UK Courts in accordance with all aspects of the current test case and any future group litigation order or representative action and with particular regard to all aspects of “The Limitation Act 1980”. Compound interest is also to be paid to Claimants, at an equivalent annual rate to be decided by the UK Courts, taking into account the necessity for the banks to disgorge the unjust enrichment they have achieved by being in a position to turn money to account that they unlawfully acquired from Customers in the first instance by way of unlawful charges. This compound interest to be calculated on each and every applied charge from the date of application to the account until the date of settlement.

3) That any future negotiated settlement does not prohibit an individual Customer from taking up their own independant legal action to resolve their individual claim.

There should be no negotiation whatsoever on the above.

The banks should be told what to do, by the Courts or suffer the consequences.

The Courts will and SHOULD decide the issues regarding the fairness aspects, limitation and compensatory interest.

Just supposing the banks actually ever wished to give up further legal action and negotiate some form of settlement then who are they going to do that with? Gordon Brown?, the OFT, Martin Lewis? or that twit Gander from CAG. I certainly hope not !!!

Matters should and MUST be resolved via the court route.

Budgie

You raise a view I had expected to see - the "no negotiation lets push all the way" view.

While I more than understand the argument - I disagree. All I hear from people is "when, when, when". Lets be under no illusions that a court route means probably two or three more years.

The banks will almost certainly challenge the OFT's decision in court and will go to all the way up to the Supreme Court again.

There's a level of pragmastism needed here - and also for the wider system getting this solved and sorted quickly and with certainty is important.

My conversations with all parties show they're focusing on a 'negotiated' solution - and that inevitably means they will aim for a way of stopping a court based route and have a big mass system.

I tend to believe that will see payouts much more quickly and to many more people. In your route, everyone could need to go to court to get the money as they must rely on the court precedent to enact it - and that will discourage huge numbers, and leave much of the cash ending up in claims handlers pockets.

I'd welcome your thoughts.

Nathan_Spleen

I think you've done extremely well to elicit positive responses from all three parties and in particular the Prime Minister.

But my personal view is that I don't think you're looking at the bigger picture and there is a real need to look beyond just the urgency for quick payouts.

If I understand you correctly - and please excuse me if I don't - you want to dispense with a legal ruling on the charges in favour of a quicker, negotiated settlement.

Firstly I'd be wary of assuming that a negotiated settlement would in fact be any quicker than litigation. The test case agreement and waiver specifically requires the parties to proceed as quickly as possible. In the case of negotiating a settlement there is nothing to prevent the banks from stringing talks out for decades. At least with litigation there is an established framework. There would be no point to the 2 years of stays while the test case decides that UTCCR applies if we then ignored a positive result and left it to negotiation.

Secondly a negotiated settlement won't provide any legal clarity whatsoever and won't deal with the issue of future charging structures. If the OFT are successful in stage 2 of the test case it puts to rest the entire issue of bank charges, forever. Not just for the previous 6 years but for the next 600. Surely this is the most important aspect to concentrate on.

Thirdly the concept of allowing the banks to retain an element of the charges is in my view, perverse. It is almost certain now that the charges - hundreds of millions of them - are unlawful. I genuinely don't understand how it can be ''ligitimate'' to compensate the banks for the costs they incurred in administering each and every unlawful act.

Finally the test case isn't just about bank charges. It's also a test case about the the scope and effectiveness of UTCCR as a tool for the protection of consumers in ALL consumer contracts. And if the OFT win using it, it could benefit consumers in all spheres.