Bank Charges Reclaiming Guide discussion

natweststaffmember

multidebt wrote: »

Just seen your response, and thanks. No, even to this date, no applications have been made, at least as far as I know, as I have not heard from the court or the bank.
Should I be concerned, or just sit tight and wait. If court accepts my claim, net result would be I owe some money to the bank. I am paying monthly anyway, even though bank has not accepted (but they are receiving the payments).

If the case has been stayed then you need to know the basics, ie how long is it stayed for?
Once you know that then it will be easier to work out.

natweststaffmember

ujanjua wrote: »

I received a letter from my bank Barclays detailing that as a gesture of goodwill they will offer me 160 pounds to cover "periodic fees". I put in a claim through the financial hardship route against Barclays for overdraft charges and fees amounting to 2100 pound.

I contacted them via the phone this morning and was told that this was not negotiable. The question is shall I contact the ombudsman or should I call it a day?

Thanks in anticipation for any help

Financial hardship claims is about alleviating financial hardship, does this do so?
Furthermore when did the financial hardship begin and what was the cause and effect of this?
You need to put your own individual details and when the charges hit into your essential living costs.

HamsterWheel_3

Just a quickie and im sooooooooooooo sorry if this has been answered many many times ago.... but im about to do some reclaims for what i can but can i ask

If i have an overdraft facility and i go over it my bank do the whole £5 a day for going over it and £1 a day just for using it and then the good ole £35 per letter etc etc as im sure many banks do.

Am i able to claim these overdraft funds back pls? Majority of the time its their charges that have put me over my agreed o/d and they have transferred money themselves from my main account to the one with an overdraft without even letting me know !!!

thanks in advance xx

natweststaffmember

HamsterWheel wrote: »

Just a quickie and im sooooooooooooo sorry if this has been answered many many times ago.... but im about to do some reclaims for what i can but can i ask

If i have an overdraft facility and i go over it my bank do the whole £5 a day for going over it and £1 a day just for using it and then the good ole £35 per letter etc etc as im sure many banks do.

Am i able to claim these overdraft funds back pls? Majority of the time its their charges that have put me over my agreed o/d and they have transferred money themselves from my main account to the one with an overdraft without even letting me know !!!

thanks in advance xx

The £35 ones which is for consideration of an excess on the overdraft may be challengeable. The bank are using the Right of Set Off btw when they transfer funds into the other account which they can do without your consent as you have consented to it when the account was opened.

jobaby1

Hi All ! Just wanted to get a bit of help / input regarding a claim
i'm making with the HSBC. I have claimed under hardship & sent a income / ougoing form back but one thing I noticed when looking into my charges for the last 6 yrs was that I regularly went overdrawn by cash machine withdrawals then charged for it. From when I sent up the account I had small overdraft and for many years when drawing cash out if I asked for more than I had funds available it always refused until I brought it within my available fund, the balance function on cash machines isn't very accurate when you have money going in & out as most of us do. Then suddenly, without notice from the bank they allowed me to go up to £550 over my overdraft ... then charge of course. I am claiming that the fact they changed this was not in my best interest but wondered if anyone know if this could also be fought on the basis that it breached the Terms and conditions of the account as it does specfiy that they have to give notice of at least 30 days of any changes to the term ... or if any one has any other ideas of how I can strengthen my claim regarding this ? They have now changed it back to not allowing me to go over my overdraft so can clearly switch it "on & off"

natweststaffmember

jobaby1 wrote: »

Hi All ! Just wanted to get a bit of help / input regarding a claim
i'm making with the HSBC. I have claimed under hardship & sent a income / ougoing form back but one thing I noticed when looking into my charges for the last 6 yrs was that I regularly went overdrawn by cash machine withdrawals then charged for it. From when I sent up the account I had small overdraft and for many years when drawing cash out if I asked for more than I had funds available it always refused until I brought it within my available fund, the balance function on cash machines isn't very accurate when you have money going in & out as most of us do. Then suddenly, without notice from the bank they allowed me to go up to £550 over my overdraft ... then charge of course. I am claiming that the fact they changed this was not in my best interest but wondered if anyone know if this could also be fought on the basis that it breached the Terms and conditions of the account as it does specfiy that they have to give notice of at least 30 days of any changes to the term ... or if any one has any other ideas of how I can strengthen my claim regarding this ? They have now changed it back to not allowing me to go over my overdraft so can clearly switch it "on & off"

To argue the manner in which you want to would mean having to prove that this was not followed. HSBC would only have to offer the fact that they did send it out rather than it being received was the cause of this and the argument may be shot down. If you have already argued this then I would be interested in their response.

jobaby1

Hi Natweststaffmember,
Sorry to all for the long post ! I had a response from HSBC this morning :

I must advise that when any changes are made to the operation of an account, the bank do send letters to each of our customers to advise of the change. As this change was made a considerable amount of time ago, I no longer have access to the correspondence to be able to provide a copy, but please be assured that the bank do notify our customers of any changes.

The bank is aware that on occasion customers need to access funds in anticipation of a salary or other deposit. For this reason the bank will allow limited tolerance at cash machines and retail outlets in order to avoid embarrassment which rejection can cause. Nevertheless, it remains the responsibility of the customer to ensure that funds are available to cover transactions presented to the account.

Rambles on to say as it goes back to 2004 so I have been aware of the “tolerance” at cash points, that the cash points are in fact accurate, and a lie about if you withdraw money from a HSBC cash point then it warns you if you are going overdrawn that I have never seen & how they feel they have acted correctly in accordance with procedures so no refund is due.

So, they cannot prove they sent out a letter, they have also admitted to a “hidden limit” so surely that is a good case for the legal arguments that is in the bank charges guide under cannot opt out, charges snare & are designed to multiply, incomprehensible nature hidden limit, money management?

Wispa1

Hi all, I wonder if I could have a bit of advice as to where I could go from here. I previously put in a claim for bank charges with Lloyds and even though I was in arrears in my mortgage (which is with them) and had loads of other debts for both utilities & credit cards, the bank disagreed I was in hardship. The matter was referred to the FOS who agreed with the bank as a couple of months before, lloyds passed my account to BLS collections & froze the interest. Some of my charges go back to 2004 when my OH was made redundant & i was on maternity leave & am now out of work. This was done before the court case.

However, I was recently clearing out some paperwork & I found a signed, headed letter dated 2006 from a staff member at Lloyds where they have agreed that prior to 2004 our account was run satisfactorily with no charges. The letter also says that the charges have occurred due to erratic salary payments, which the employer was doing at the time. A copy of this letter was never sent to the FOS or Lloyds as I had totally forgotten about that issue at the time of the complaint. Do you think I would be able to go back to the FOS with this new evidence stating the bank were fully aware of our financial situation from 2004 and did nothing about it until 2009 and in that time they continually added charges and interest? It has been more then 8 weeks since I got the standard letter that all the banks were sending after the court case.

Between 2004 & 2009 my husband was made redundant twice, I went on maternity leave, we had a court case where we took my husbands ex employer to court for with holding salary so all the charges kept building up & we ended up in this cycle.

With many thanks for all your help in advance

natweststaffmember

Wispa1 wrote: »

Hi all, I wonder if I could have a bit of advice as to where I could go from here. I previously put in a claim for bank charges with Lloyds and even though I was in arrears in my mortgage (which is with them) and had loads of other debts for both utilities & credit cards, the bank disagreed I was in hardship. The matter was referred to the FOS who agreed with the bank as a couple of months before, lloyds passed my account to BLS collections & froze the interest. Some of my charges go back to 2004 when my OH was made redundant & i was on maternity leave & am now out of work. This was done before the court case.

However, I was recently clearing out some paperwork & I found a signed, headed letter dated 2006 from a staff member at Lloyds where they have agreed that prior to 2004 our account was run satisfactorily with no charges. The letter also says that the charges have occurred due to erratic salary payments, which the employer was doing at the time. A copy of this letter was never sent to the FOS or Lloyds as I had totally forgotten about that issue at the time of the complaint. Do you think I would be able to go back to the FOS with this new evidence stating the bank were fully aware of our financial situation from 2004 and did nothing about it until 2009 and in that time they continually added charges and interest? It has been more then 8 weeks since I got the standard letter that all the banks were sending after the court case.

Between 2004 & 2009 my husband was made redundant twice, I went on maternity leave, we had a court case where we took my husbands ex employer to court for with holding salary so all the charges kept building up & we ended up in this cycle.

With many thanks for all your help in advance

When did you initially speak with the bank and FOS?

When the mortgage payments were not being met what did LloydsTSB do to help at that point?
My gut feeling is that the letter maybe important from the timeframe in which the letter was sent out to the point your account went to collections if you can prove that LloydsTSB did nothing to help at all.

Wispa1

natweststaffmember wrote: »

When did you initially speak with the bank and FOS?

When the mortgage payments were not being met what did LloydsTSB do to help at that point?
My gut feeling is that the letter maybe important from the timeframe in which the letter was sent out to the point your account went to collections if you can prove that LloydsTSB did nothing to help at all.

Hi Natweststaffmember, thanks for coming back so quickly. Our charges first started in late 2004, we saw the bank in 2006 as charges had started. We initially went to them because OH's employer was not paying salary his salary on time, different days and sometimes by CHAPS, BACS or even cheques or dd's kept coming back returned so charges were being added on. The letter from the bank confirms this as we needed this letter to take to the court case regarding my husbands employers. The bank never offered to do anything as salaries were still coming in and no offer of help was given. At one point the only thing they did was to extend our overdraft to cover a direct debit to Scottish Widows for life insurance (their own policy). The letter is from 2006.

After that OH was made redundant twice & I was not working as I was looking after the little one. They sent the account to their collections department in 2009 (April ?). It was around this time that I found this website and asked them to refund charges. They said no, I then referred this to the FOS who said that because it was now with collections, they could not agree we were now in hardship. In 2009 we were in arrears on our mortgage to the point we were verging on repossession but we have now come to an agreement in that they switched it from a repayment to interest only mortgage again in April 2009. The mortgage fell into about 9 months arrears but because we had been making some payments to the account albeit for not the full amount, their computer systems did not transfer our accounts to the next stage of collections. I remember in one phone call with them that the assistant said they had not seen an account that had got into our state of arrears without being referred - do they keep copies of these conversations? Things got really bad for us but we are now coming out of it thanks to all the help I have had from numerous forums on this site. Any help and advice you could give me would be greatly appreciated. Also would I need to refer this back to FOS or do I have to go to the bank again?

With many thanks in advance again