Do you agree with reclaiming CC charges?

jamalfatty

The_Boss wrote:

£250 represents numerous account breaches. One or two could be said to be forgetful. Three or four is downright careless. When you get to 8+ then we are talking serious money management issues.

Do you honestly believe that?, £250 to me is equivalent to bouncing 6.5 cheques, which over 6 years is 1 cheque per year, this is nothing to do with serious money management issues, I can manage my money fine, 1 breach per year is hardly excessive.

When the OFT have ruled that the fines were approximately 50% too high why is it 'not fair' to refund only half of the persistent offenders charges to relfect this.

Where did you get this ruling from? As I understood it, they have not yet made public the results of their findings and not made it clear yet what they consider to be fair.

The_Boss

I thought the whole basis of the charges being lowered was down to the recommendation by the OFT.

jamalfatty

The_Boss wrote:

I thought the whole basis of the charges being lowered was down to the recommendation by the OFT.

I'm getting my forums mixed up :rotfl:

As the post above my last one mentioned banks and not credit card companies, thought I was posting in the bank forum as I was typing it

The_Boss

To be fair, my opinion would be the same towards bank accounts too.

So what is the current state of play towards bank account charges?

jamalfatty

The OFT is making there recommendations on bank accounts in next few weeks, widely expected to be somewhere in region of £12-£16 for a default charge. Have a look at the stickies in the 'reclaim your bank charges' forum - much more info in there.

The_Boss

To be honest, that forum makes me sick due to people celebrating their own stupidty/incompetence, so I avoid it.

Looks like banking charges will be the same as the credit cards then, Hopefully they will invoice the persistent offenders who have been refunded based on what they should have paid (seems to be about one third of the current costs).

aj3001

All interesting replies, the thing that really gets to me is the fact that this doesn't happen anywhere else, its like driving for example, think of the uproar if you speed, get caught, get 3 points, 6 months later you write a letter and get the points taken off! Wheres the sense of discipline? How are you supposed to teach?

If this approach is applied to many other "disciplinary" actions in life people would hate it and argue over it, like the driving example I mentioned, or if your a parent, your child gets 6 hours worth of detentions in 6 years, then they go and take a day off to get the 6 hours back? Would that be fair? No

The_Boss

I agree with that. My approach would have been to reduce the fees but not backpay them, or if so only backpay the difference in what was perceived as 'fair' and 'unfair'

aj3001

I'm not arguing with some of the points, I was once charged £30 for going overdrawn in a bank account (had returned a product so refund was going in on the same day I purchased something, was withdrawn by 30p for about 2 hours) and HSBC agreed it was stupid and removed the £30 fine so genuine mistakes like that I can understand, but not when you knowingly go overdrawn delibartly, then plan to claim back

Fungas

The_Boss wrote:

The other thing that gets me is that people scream blue murder if they claim back all these charges and the bank then wants to close their account.

They can close the accounts for mismanagement and this is what they are doing. Do people expect to run an account how they want to, make payments when it suits them and then to get angry because the lender doesnt want customers like them? These guys have serious attitude problems.

What's the problem if the bank does want your account shut? OK - they've taken hundreds if not thousands out of your account, under the guise that this is a true reflection of the cost of you going a few pounds - or pence - overdrawn. You complain; after all, unless they can demonstrate that that reflects the true cost, then they're potentially acting unlawfully. You rightly claim back those costs, expecting not to win. After all, banks can afford the sorts of legal representation that would get even Jeffrey Archer off the hook.

Hell, you win! Then the bank rejects you as a customer. No problem! Except, how do they reject you as a customer? Do they give you plenty of advice, and time to migrate your direct debits and salary over to a new account? Do they b*llocks. As ever, true to form, they bully you off their books by giving you absolute minimum time to comply. In some cases it seems, they don;t even give you any notice whatsoever.

No problem if I'm given the notice, big problem if I'm bullied. Oh, and if I do get bullied, then *that* will be the subject of action via the banking ombudsman, *too*!