MSE News: Bank charges result next week

esmerellda

berkshirelady wrote: »

hey I just read the replies to Teaboy. Should I feel intimidated by my lack of technical knowledge?....Were we supposed to have passed some sort of legal/banking nerd exam before we could post on here?! UTCCR 1999??? I have no idea what that means, and nor, I suspect, do most people.

Please can we keep this in plain english so that people who aren't industry 'insiders' but who are consumers and therefore entitled to have a view/swap opinions/get advice, can understand what you're on about?

I say this because in my day job, talk like this would have cut out at least 70% of my callers from knowing their statutory rights unless it was explained to them with no techie jargon!

I think the replies to teaboy may have sounded that way as he had posted this
Originally Posted by teaboy2
I love this bit as it shows your lack of legal knowledge

which does kind of infer he has legal knowledge of the test case himself.

Anyhow, I agree with you plain english is important in getting whats happening in this case across to everyone - it can be complicated and goes way over my head quite a lot of the time. MSE do a great job in their guides of keeping things understandable to everyone, however sometimes in discussion about the intricate technicalities of the case especially on threads like this it is difficult to keep away from using terms which everyone may not be familiar with. And when trying to keep it simple its hard not to sound patronising.

UTCCR 1999 is the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations 1999 - which I think I posted a link to earlier. It is basically a piece of legislation which protects consumers from well, unfair terms. There is a list of terms which might be considered unfair in the second part of the regulations.

The test case initially started with two different angles, which actually are very similar. Penaltys and unfair terms.

The first, and the one I think most people wanted the OFT to win on was the 'Penalty Argument' This is based on Common Law principles that a charge for a breach of contract is considered a penalty and should only reflect the actual costs incurred in that breach. But the court didnt agree that this applied to the terms and decided that the charges were a fee for a service, basically.

anyway, what I'm saying is don't feel intimidated by lack of technical knowledge, I have very little technical knowledge on this (as probably illustrated above) and I don't think any of us are industry insiders, we just fight our way through the judgments and transcripts from the courts to make head or tail of whats happening and try use what we can learn from that and experience to help and advise others who may not have time nor inclination to read everything (and trust me some of it is exceeedingly tedious lol)

andy12345

Unfortunately, I am of the firm opinion, as an "a level" cynical, pessimistic, moany old git, that it won't matter, whether the outcome is positive or not.


The banks are free to do what they want, when they want. They will recover the money elsewhere, count on that.

I knew that as soon as this started 2.5 years ago that it would not matter who won.

Anyone who thinks that the banks are going to let themselves lost £millions, forget it.

They will just start charging account fees, easy and writing around the other loopholes or just stating clearly suchlike "if you agree to keep this account, you agree also to overdraft charges etc. JUst like barclays reserve, which I am sure everyone remembers.......

Anyway, part of me obviously would like to see this goes well, but I don't hold out much hope personally, especially looking at how banks, in the past, never wanted gov involvement, until it suited them......


Of course, I hope I am wrong.............

natweststaffmember

andy12345 wrote: »

Unfortunately, I am of the firm opinion, as an "a level" cynical, pessimistic, moany old git, that it won't matter, whether the outcome is positive or not.


The banks are free to do what they want, when they want. They will recover the money elsewhere, count on that.

I knew that as soon as this started 2.5 years ago that it would not matter who won.

Anyone who thinks that the banks are going to let themselves lost £millions, forget it.

They will just start charging account fees, easy and writing around the other loopholes or just stating clearly suchlike "if you agree to keep this account, you agree also to overdraft charges etc. JUst like barclays reserve, which I am sure everyone remembers.......

Anyway, part of me obviously would like to see this goes well, but I don't hold out much hope personally, especially looking at how banks, in the past, never wanted gov involvement, until it suited them......


Of course, I hope I am wrong.............

Barclays Reserve may well be assessable for fairness if the Banks' appeal fails.



Berkshirelady, I am similarly with Amethyst not legally trained but have been doing this stuff since June 2006. The amount of reading you have to do and legal terms you have requires either a good dictionary or google(being lazy means I use the latter). Apologies for the jargon but sometimes you simply forget you are using terms that not everyone knows.

natweststaffmember

berkshirelady wrote: »

Hi Natwest. You quoted a couple of banks who have cut charges. but that's not nearly all of them, is it? e.g Lloyds TSB (which regularly gets slated on the forums, and I have had personal experience of them too). Being cynical yet again, I believe that those banks who have slashed charges have done it to be competitive over their rivals; so that is not about fair charging, it's about market share, (as usual).
I mentioned the obvious ones I think. I agree with you on slashing the charges but it does not exclude them being assessable for fairness under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations 1999 should the Banks' appeal fail.
And if some banks have suddenly decided that this is a goer, they must have done their sums and realised that lower charges are affordable to them. So, if the charges are supposed to reflect the true admin costs to the banks (as they keep saying), how come one or two have suddenly decided they can afford to reduce them, when once upon a time they all said they had to charge so much? I suspect they could afford it anyway but it was a fast buck, wasn't it :-)
I think you are still using what is called the penalties in law argument which amethyst has mentioned above.
This is about basic human nature, if people are left unfettered and unregulated. Greed. Why charge an interest rate and make money out of an overdraft (sensible and fair), when you can sting people in droves for £35 a pop and god knows what else for going a quid over their limit? Pleases the shareholders, doesn't it. In this day and age, with zillions moving across the globe with the click of a button, there is no excuse any more. these charges have not been an 'admin fee'. it's profit, pure and simple. And the banks have appealed because it's many £££s for them. Bloated profits and happy shareholders, for not doing very much, really.
They made more on interest foregone on balances ie offering low interest rates on current accounts when the base rate was at 4-5%. I am not entirely sure that the banks' will lose the war. I think they'll lose this battle on the first part of the case but we still have further legal issues to be resolved.
Sorry, but this IS political, no getting away from it.
I don't agree with you. Where was the politicians when there was thousands of people reclaiming prior to the OFT Test case? The claimed that they couldn't interfer in the commercial practices of the bank. This is a legal case plain and simple.
We've had years of PPI and endowment misselling, equitable life, huge bank charges and god knows what else. It's time to rein them in, and in the current climate I think that any political party who says 'we'll change the law to curb bank charges and make them fair' would be very popular indeed.
You don't realise that we have LAWS already in place to make them fair because that is the whole point of the OFT test case ie the clarify the law which deals with contracts. Remember, the banks' winning the appeal is not necessarily the end of the matter as such/ Action can still be taken by the OFT but it would in all likelihood be the end of refunds.
This is why we need laws and regulation for the markets. If you let them get on with it they go nuts and get up to all sorts, it's almost like unleashing a toddler in front of a cookie jar!

I don't agree with you on bank charges and laws because we have the law related to charges: it was either penalty charges(that's gone) or Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations 1999. We await the Supreme Court decision on whether bank terms apply.

Already_a_ghost

Does anyone know what will happen in my situation - HSBC have recognised that I am in financial hardship, but offered me a miserly ammount of my charges back. The Financial Ombundsman service sent me a letter about three weeks ago saying that they would be writing to HSBC to ask for more information about my case.

I thought that I would be paid out in full soon? Will the ruling next Wednesday affect the likelyhood of this happening?

Any light cast on this would be appreciated.

thebazaargroup

This whole thing is a nightmare. Myself and my partner have two claims in (placed around 12 months ago) and everytime a new judgement is made I think we are getting closer to a settlement - only to be told to wait for the next judgement. Nightmare.

natweststaffmember

Already_a_ghost wrote: »

Does anyone know what will happen in my situation - HSBC have recognised that I am in financial hardship, but offered me a miserly ammount of my charges back. The Financial Ombundsman service sent me a letter about three weeks ago saying that they would be writing to HSBC to ask for more information about my case.

I thought that I would be paid out in full soon? Will the ruling next Wednesday affect the likelyhood of this happening?

Any light cast on this would be appreciated.

Under financial hardship the bank does not have to payout 100% of the charges under financial hardship. I have argued that you should negotiate based on arrears, based on when the financial hardship started, which may not necessarily be when the charges started, and the effect of how your income lowered and budget tightened directly because of the charges.

Next Wednesday does not have an effect on claims apart from if the banks' succeed in their appeal.

natweststaffmember

thebazaargroup wrote: »

This whole thing is a nightmare. Myself and my partner have two claims in (placed around 12 months ago) and everytime a new judgement is made I think we are getting closer to a settlement - only to be told to wait for the next judgement. Nightmare.

Next weeks' judgement will have no effect on your case unless the banks' succeed in their appeal which would end the claim as such. If they are unsuccessful then we are getting closer but it is not the end of the OFT test case issues.

Widelats

I'll come back next Wednesday then, i will bet anyone that the "judgement" will be to allow the banks a appeal, which will drag on for years. Thousands of old people will die before they ever get their cash back, i think the banks should pay the immediate faamily all of the dead persons charges as well, or the banks will still be making a profit.

natweststaffmember

Widelats wrote: »

I'll come back next Wednesday then, i will bet anyone that the "judgement" will be to allow the banks a appeal, which will drag on for years. Thousands of old people will die before they ever get their cash back, i think the banks should pay the immediate faamily all of the dead persons charges as well, or the banks will still be making a profit.

The Supreme Court is giving its decision and that means it has made a decision rather than referring the issue to the European Court of Justice. My understanding is that this is the end of the Preliminary Issues ie whether the regulations apply to bank charges terms. Their executors still have the right to pursue the claims of those who have passed on since this process began in July 2007. I suspect some banks will post a profit next year prior to the full conclusion of the OFT test case issues and that we will have a new government in place as well.