MSE News: Bank charges crackdown included in coalition government agreement

davidgmmafan

"The OFT has already looked into bank charges and in March this year reported that 'real progress' is being made by the industry in making current accounts work well for customers," said a spokesman.

"Competition is driving down the cost of other accounts that provide a whole range of different features as part of the package," he added."

I am not convinced by the OFT's position and evaluation of the situation but they couldn't very well say well we've utterly failed in court and therefore there's really !!!!!! all we can do, they have to put an optimistic spin on it. It would be very difficult not to make progress when the 'market', such as it is, works so badly at the outset.

The latter part of this is pure make believe. If competition is driving down costs why did it fail previously? Why was it in fact that case that all banks steadily increased thier charges?

Caffiene_Addict_Barrister

Now I may be cynical, but I'm sure that we've seen this before under the NL banner??? And wasn't it very prevalent just before (and during) the campaign buses hitting the road???

I did read "review" the charges didn't I? - nothing about making the banks actually refund previous charges, just about making charges fair in the future... I personally don't think people should get too excited though (been there, done that, got the T-shirt, and been disappointed...).

It would be interesting to see the ECJ argument though - although can't see that that approach will be a quick result...