Report Bank Charges successes and failures

Premier_2

giorgio992 wrote: »

Hey,

Am in financial difficulty at the moment ...

Unless you are in financial hardship as referred to in the lending code, the chance of you reclaiming any bank charges is almost non-existent.
(Even if you do qualify, there is no guarantee you will be repaid any charges)

Fortunately you had family who were willing to lend you money.
Try to avoid incurring charges in the future and use the money to repay your family the money they lent you.

You may find the DFW board a useful place if you are struggling to manage your debts at present

giorgio992

Premier wrote: »

Unless you are in financial hardship as referred to in the lending code, the chance of you reclaiming any bank charges is almost non-existent.
(Even if you do qualify, there is no guarantee you will be repaid any charges)

Fortunately you had family who were willing to lend you money.
Try to avoid incurring charges in the future and use the money to repay your family the money they lent you.

You may find the DFW board a useful place if you are struggling to manage your debts at present

Hi Premier, thanks for your advice. I clearly fit some sort of criteria as Lloyds have refunded me £845 worth of charges which they had put onto my account.

We can only hope, i've sent a letter arguing the new legal arguments as well as my financial difficulty explanations. Got a call today offerring a goodwill gesture of £100 but i'm rejecting that and asking them to review it or I'll go to the ombudsman.

I'll keep this post updated!

Premier_2

Be careful!

The only requirement under the lending code to those in financial hardhip is to treat any complaint sympathetically and positively.

That combined with the almost essential requirement for everyone to have a bank account may be a reason to refund charges (dependent on other circumstances). However, there would be a case that suggests you do not need 2 current accounts, and so the resolution to any complaint on a secondary account may not be the same to that on your primary account.

The ombudsman will not change any decision made by the bank. At best, if they consider the bank may not to have treated your compliant appropropraitely, they will simply ask your bank to look again.

marthabrae1007

Hi everyone.

Bank name - Lloyds TSB
Amount reclaimed - £2129
Amount they paid - £1384

I had used the template letters and started to write to the bank from February of this year. Their first response was a definite no, that the charges were fair and justified and that I had 8 weeks to respond. I wrote to them again using the template letters and they then wrote back saying that it was being looked into. They were really taking their time at this point, writing to me saying that it was being passed from one department to the next, but by this time the deadline for them to give me any response had passed. So I went ahead and wrote to the Ombudsman with the hope they would contact them and sort it out for me. But 2 weeks ago on the off chance I rang them and they said they would give me £1116 and their exact words were 'whether I liked it or not that the money was going into my account'! They also said that 'had I applied for these charges 3 months ago that I wouldn't have gotten a penny!' Well that did it! They put that money into my account without having any of my complaint letters that I had sent previously and I was just gobsmacked by such downright cheek. They sent me a letter a few days after that and agreed that they didn't help me whatsoever when I was in extreme hardship. So last week I sent them a letter saying that I was not happy with how I was spoken to over the phone. Yesterday I checked my account and a further £268 has be credited to my account! I also sent the Ombudsman a letter as to what's been happening,so when I hear from them I will post a comment. So to anyone in pursuit of bank charges just don't give up and don't except any crap from the banks either!

FreddieKoppa

Bank name: Halifax
Amount Claimed: £1240
Amount Offered: £120 (+cancellation of an impending charge)

Story:
Hi all, I wrote to Halifax using the template letter and they contacted me back within the last week.
The offer was based on bringing my account back within it's limit, which I find a ludicrous proposition anyway, as this is purely reliant on how much I've managed to dig myself out of the snowballing debt at the time they choose to make an offer.
They told me that they had felt that they treated me fairly, in so much as the fact that *some* of charges were for multiple transactions, and only for one business day.
They also revealed that I'm charged £28 + interest for every month in which I go over my overdraft limit, which I wasn't aware of.
They attempted to claim that I had never contacted them about being in financial hardship previously, when I told them to look at the requests to raise my overdraft, which they refused to assist me with on multiple visits, in addition to the 5 or so phone calls which I've had with them about the problems the charges are causing.
Further to this, I pointed out that my paper-free documents, which used to alert me that I should really not spend a penny more (usually as some pay hadn't gone through on time) were withdrawn without notice in December or November of last year.
Additionally, a Halifax rep rang me (I have her name, date and time of call) and told me to bring my account into balance within the next month - to pay in £240. I did so, and she claimed that this would be the end of it, and I would have no more troubles. Despite not using my bank account from this day, I had an additional £148 of charges thrown on and, here one month later, I'm still £100 under with more charges to come out.
They rang me to confirm this was my final offer (to cancel the £30 odd due interest and charges and to bring my account into balance by refund of £120) and that written confirmation would be in the post the same business day as the call. I am in sever financial hardship, with a huge student overdraft still to pay off, personal debts still due and I'm unemployed.
My inclination is to fight on via Ombudsman, but I wanted to see what consensus was amongst this wonderfully helpful forum before firmly deciding. What do you think?

kriss1977

Overdrawn: £19.99
Charged: £15.00 (so balance became £33 OD approx)
Claimed: £15.00
Refunded: £15.00 :j

Charged: £0.02 - in interest?!

I was a little nervous about reclaiming this one as I hit all my bank charges in one fell swoop in 2006 including Nationwide, and have been careful not to incur new ones since then with any banks.
At the time, Nationwide sent the standard reply (after I commenced a small claims court action) that they would refund but if i couldn't follow their T&C's in the future they would close my account so i was hoping with my current claim that they wouldn't look back too far into my history.

I read Martin's updated article and rather than copy any templates, stole only a couple of phrases for example about my debt situation only being escalated by not refunding the charge and/or applying further charges. Basically though I think as it's being judged on hardship, it is best as much as possible to write from the heart in your own words stating the facts.

Be happy to PM any one who wants more details on wording

Student123

I have accidentally gone over drawn with NatWest and Nationwide and had completely different experiences with reclaiming the charges. NatWest were awful and just refused point blank to even consider my case (student, first time overdrawn, only £30 overdrawn for 3 days, charged £60) and I gave up.

Nationwide on the other-hand were pretty good. The first time I was accidentally overdrawn with them (£150 for 2 weeks without noticing ) I phoned them up, no luck there as they give you one week to pay it off to avoid the charge (£20, not much compared to NatWest). So I went into my local branch and explained that I had been a customer since I was 12, this was the first time I had been over drawn with them and it had been an honest mistake. They waived the charge for me and I only had to pay 22p in interest, fine by me. However, they said they wouldn't waive the fee for me again, but did give me a free overdraft to avoid it happening in future.

Similar thing happened with my friend as well, she was overdrawn by £2 for 3 months without knowing (yes that is a long time not to know, she should look at her bank statements more). She went into Nationwide, they waived the fee for her and she only had to pay the interest of 2p.

My advice is, if you want good customer service don't bank with NatWest, and if you go overdrawn with Nationwide try and pay it off in the first week or if you can't go and talk to someone in your local branch, though it probably does depend on who you get.

NatWest has lost my business, but I am still a happy Nationwide customer.

shimbob

HSBC

Charged: £2176
Offered: £0

I have found myself in a situation where I've been overdrawn the last few months due to me having to make a payment to a family event in Feb. Since then i have been trying to catch up with my finances and Ive found myself going over my o/d resulting in charges being added makinng matters worse for me. The bank was no help at all when i questioned the charges and i used the template letters to try and get a refund on all previous charges. I received the 2nd and 'final' letter from HSBC stating that theyre not willing to refund any amount. I feel Ive hit a brick wall and wonder if theres any point in complaining to the FOS?!

emmawilding

shimbob wrote: »

HSBC

Charged: £2176
Offered: £0

I have found myself in a situation where I've been overdrawn the last few months due to me having to make a payment to a family event in Feb. Since then i have been trying to catch up with my finances and Ive found myself going over my o/d resulting in charges being added makinng matters worse for me. The bank was no help at all when i questioned the charges and i used the template letters to try and get a refund on all previous charges. I received the 2nd and 'final' letter from HSBC stating that theyre not willing to refund any amount. I feel Ive hit a brick wall and wonder if theres any point in complaining to the FOS?!

i currently have a claim in against hsbc with the financial ombudsman for 4k, they wrote to me to say that they were expereincing a high voloume of complaints and last week that they were getting more info on the complaint from hsbc, so who knows. How sure the fact that they are investigating it further means that something (however big/small) might come out of it. It cant hurt i dont think, for the price of a stamp and half an hour

wizziwig

Hi. I hope by now you have received a better deal from your bank, but, have you thought of hitting them with copies of other peoples' success stories to further your claim for a refund? Afterall, if some people are getting bigger amounts back, then why not you?

Just take a look through the posts on here and see how successful others have been, you could quote this in a letter to your bank, and tell them you won't give up. Good luck.