Report Bank Charges successes and failures

chick95625

Bank-Halifax
Amount claimed-1050
Amount offered-575

I was in a cycle of never having enough money to pay for my direct debits, I would then at the end of each month be charged by Halifax sometimes as much as £140 a month. This went on for around 18 months, My partner had a shoulder operation and had 6 months off from work leaving us in a very bad financial position. We fell behind on everything rent, council tax, water, gas and electric and just could not get out of the cycle.

I googled reclaiming bank charges and found Martins post and extremely helpful guide, I did exactly as he said, I sent my letter to Halifax by recorded post on Friday and received a call yesterday (Monday) to say they have received it and will get back to me. I then received an email from them today asking me to ring them to discuss the matter, I rang and spoke to a very helpful lady who sympathised with my situation and told me as a good will gesture they are willing to pay £575 plus stop the charges of £60 that are due at the end of this month.

I am very happy as I expected nothing at all, Thank you to Martin and wish everyone the best of luck with reclaiming their charges :T:T

sparklygemz

Huge happiness occurring today!

I complained to Halifax and hsbc for package account charges due to being missold and barclaycard for the charges applied to my account!

2 days later and barclaycard have refunded £240 onto my card, Halifax have refunded £325 to us into our account that's in another bank and I'm awaiting hearing from HSBC... It took me 5 minutes to fill out 3 online complaint forms and now i am £565 better off :j HSBC is the biggest one if they hold their hands up and refund it should be around £500 if they don't I will take it further, I won't give up :j

Honestly take a minute if you feel that you have been sold something you didn't actually need or if you feel you have been continuously charged on top of charge! It's worth it!!

With barclaycard they refunded over a year because although I went over my limit due to financial hardship I still made my minimum payments. They offered me £62 as a gesture of goodwill to begin with but I kindly and firmly asked them to look at it again. They then came back with £240 :j

I hope you all have a great weekend and I will update you on hsbc when theny come back to me

Rose91

I wrote to Lloyds to reclaim £640 in unplanned o/d charges for the past two years - due to a break-up which left me paying rent/bills myself as a student. The next day, I received a call from them - very helpful - asking me to explain current and historic situation. Even though I am now in f/t work, they refunded me £450 because they could see that there were few 'luxury' payments, mostly food and bills. Although it's not 100% it's still a massive thank you to all on this site for help and information!

DEBTBUSTER15

SUCCESS

Bank - Barclays
Amount Claimed - 880
Amount Offered - 500


I initially sent a letter to Barclays using the template on this forum (data request) asking for a list of all my charges and they took ages to respond so I took matters into my own hands and went through every paper statement I had a made a list of over 4 years of charges back to when I first hit financial difficulty.

I then used the second template on here to write my experiences and hardship asking for the charges back and sent this via their online complaint form

I received a telephone call under 12 hours later from someone at the bank who stated that although the charges and fees were lawful as a gesture of goodwill they would refund £500 as they could clearly see I was in severe financial hardship

It's not the full amount but I'm still overjoyed with the result, it's really giving me a huge helping hand

Crazy_fem

Natwest
Advantage gold account
SUCCESS

About 2 years ago we downgraded our Advantage gold account as we did not want the benefits and had been unhappy as to why we had to pay these fees for the past few years. After reading on here about people claiming I made an appointment with my bank and went in to see them. We complained about the charges and they said they would look into it. Thankfully we had downgraded over 2 years ago so they could see that we didn't want it. I was at the bank on Wednesday last week. Today (Monday) we have just under £1000 credited to our account which was pretty accurate. Very grateful for being able to actually get it back and it was pretty easy to do. They do try and question you a lot so make sure you have all your details with you and try stay calm.... I had to bite my tongue a few times with the silly repeated questions they asked.... but for the outcome it was well worth it. Hope this is of help to someone. Take care.

rossybearr

Hi,

Firstly great to hear you won some back!

I'm currently putting all mine together but wanted to know where you sent the letter too?

Need the best address to send the letter off too.

thanks

DEBTBUSTER15 wrote: »

SUCCESS

Bank - Barclays
Amount Claimed - 880
Amount Offered - 500


I initially sent a letter to Barclays using the template on this forum (data request) asking for a list of all my charges and they took ages to respond so I took matters into my own hands and went through every paper statement I had a made a list of over 4 years of charges back to when I first hit financial difficulty.

I then used the second template on here to write my experiences and hardship asking for the charges back and sent this via their online complaint form

I received a telephone call under 12 hours later from someone at the bank who stated that although the charges and fees were lawful as a gesture of goodwill they would refund £500 as they could clearly see I was in severe financial hardship

It's not the full amount but I'm still overjoyed with the result, it's really giving me a huge helping hand

N9eav

I wrote a letter on behalf of my son, who submitted it.


Halifax £480 charges in 12 months


To be fair the charges were mostly his own bad management of money, but once he got into the cycle of charges it started the viscous circle of charges causing there to be not enough money to meet DD and so m more charges next month.
Still it was unfair that they charged £25 in fees for a £12 debt.


I went with him to the meeting. The manager basically said it was his fault and she could see no undue circumstances and said she could offer no refund. I said please reply to the letter in writing as we would take further action.


With that she called HQ and they came back with a gesture of goodwill of 3 months refund and all pending charges cancelled.


That represented £210 and so we took it. I guess we could have tried for more, but to be fair we just wanted a situation where my son could re-start his money management and get to grips with things.


So overdraft paid off and spare cash with no pending charges


Worked well for him.

marksa91

Bank - HSBC
Amount Claimed - £1805.00
Amount Offered - £195.00 so far

Hi I'm new to this but thought I'd let everyone know my experiences so far.

Basically I have written to HSBC using the template letter on this site asking for the £1805.00 they have taken in charges from my account over the past 4 years. These charges started when I was on a salary of only £8000 a year, and even now I am hardly on a huge salary. A couple of years ago my partner lost his job meaning I was responsible for all the rent and household bills, then with HSBC charging me £100 a month in charges things spiralled out of control and now I'm left with less than nothing each month after paying the loans/credit cards etc. HSBC replied promptly saying they have refunded the last 3 months charges into my account as an 'exceptional offer of goodwill', this totalled to £195 (around 10% of the total amount). They then went on to kindly remind me that although they have refunded £195, I am due to pay them a total of £160 in charges (£90 on 27th Feb, £70 on 27th Mar) I have accrued over the past 30 days, and basically if I didn't like that they wouldn't refund me any further charges I'm free to go the financial ombudsman.
I wrote straight back saying that I did not feel a 10% refund/3 months of charges reflected the exceptional offer of goodwill they mentioned in their letter, and went on to explain in further detail of my financial situation and how the money they've taken me constantly over the past few years should have been going on paying other things. I have asked them to reconsider their choice of paying such a small amount to a struggling customer before I take their former advice and go to the Financial Ombudsman, and to small claims court if that's what it takes.

I'll keep you updated as soon as I hear anything

marksa91

I've just had a message back letting me know that they are now investigating my case and will come back with a response after they have completed their investigation. In peoples experience, is this a good sign or just a way of delaying the process? I felt like my first letter from them was basically just a standard response, there was nothing that suggested my individual case had been looked into and the letter read like it was a template.

System

Hi guys, Ive gone through the process of asking for my charges etc back and lloyds have offered me a partial refund which I'm happy with, however will this money be mine or will it just be taken off my overdraft?