Bank Charges Reclaiming. Payouts may be cut. Act now! - IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION

feedering

Ok there is a lot of confusion regarding the report from the OFT on bank charges. I shall try to clarify things here.

Firstly the OFT set limit is April 06 regarding Credit Card charges. This was £12, this is the limit for a CC to charge any charges over this amount and the OFT will take action.
This is still not a true reflection of the cost to a CC company to administer a late payment therefore you can reclaim these £12 charges. I have personally done this.

The OFT are to give their figure for banks soon, this is likely to be between £12 & £18.
Again this is only the amount at which the OFT will take action. This does not justify the banks charging you this amount.

The overiding principle here is that a bank can not administer a penalty charge this is unlawful.
No bank haas yet provided a breakdown as to how much it costs to administer a faided DD etc. This is quite simply because they know their charges are disproportionately high.

When the OFT announce their decision it will make no difference to reclaiming your charges unless they give a very low amount around £4.

So to summerise.
The OFT do not make laws. They have no powers to make laws. They can make recommendations. Whatever they come up with in April, the banks & financial institutions will still have to justify that their charges are lawful. They are not permitted to make any profit or gain from their charges. Until such time they can prove their charges are true, fair and justified - NOTHING CHANGES

SonnyCash

Yesterday Morning I was watching the Wright Stuff and Martin was a speaking on the show. :beer:

I was of the opinion similar to you that nothing changes. I'm in the process of claiming form two CC's who and will be going for the full amount. I will also be doing this for banks even if my claims run into April.

I was however concerned by Martin's comments. He urged people to reclaim their charges quickly as things may change after April's decision. He used the example that if someone were trying to claim £3000 of charges now, then after the decision they may only be able to claim £2000 (taken into account a limit of £12). He implied this was not set in stone but that there is a chance of things changing.

All this has done is motivated me to send letters to the remaining couple of banks I have not contacted yet. I shall be doing this today.:D

Did anyone else see the show - it could be my interpretation. Although I had to record it as a friend of mine was in the audience so I watched it a couple of times! :shocked:

ukmonkey

This is exactly the sort of cunfusion that I'm talking about.

The OFT, will, essentially, make no difference whatsoever to claims. £12.00 is still disproportionate to the costs to the bank.

Just continue with your claims as usual.

Martin may not share the same opinion as me, but the OFT announcement about credit card charges made no difference with credit card claims and the same will apply with the bank accounts.

feedering

I have stated before and I will state again there is no reason to accept a settlement figure lower than the actual amount owed. unless you so wish to, the bank will pay all the charges owed to you.