You can sue your bank for unfair treatment

AliDB

For the past three years, bank customers in the UK have had an excellent set of legal powers to tackle their banks if they think they have been treated unfairly.

Unfortunately, hardly anyone knows about them, and the relevant authorities have failed to give the powers any meaningful publicity.

The rules were been laid down by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). They are known as the Banking: Conduct of Business sourcebook (BCOBS) and they apply to small businesses as well as to private individuals.

Most significantly, they give any aggrieved customer the right to sue their bank in the county court.

This explicitly links breaches of these rules to the right of individuals to take legal action under section 150 of Financial Services and Markets Act.

What is unfair?

Under BCOBS, your bank has a duty to operate your current account so the consequences are not unfair to you. Your bank cannot just go ahead and apply your contractual terms regardless of the consequences. It is obliged to have regards to your interests, when making decisions.

Your bank may want to say they are only obliged to treat you fairly within the limits of the account contract. However, fair treatment under BCOBS means you are entitled to receive fair treatment despite the limits of the contract (otherwise BCOBS would be rendered completely ineffective by the bank's terms and conditions).

If you discuss your bank's treatment of you calmly with a group of friends or colleagues and the general feeling is you have been treated unfairly, then the chances are you have been.
Unfairness depends on the circumstances.

British judges have been deciding what is reasonable or unfair for hundreds of years so it does not pose much of a problem for them.

My Bank, The Robbing Bankers of Scotland, are on their final chance via their Chief Executives Office and if they fail to resolve my concerns to my complete satisfaction this time I will be taking them to court and suing them for unfair treatment.

The Judgement can then be passed to the FSA and OFT who are obliged to act.

If enough of us do this then we can hope that FINALLY they take notice and treat us fairly.

maninthestreet

So how have the RBS treated you unfairly?

p00hsticks

You can sue pretty much anyone for anything

- whether you win or not is a different matter

Alpine_Star

AliDB wrote: »

For the past three years, bank customers in the UK have had an excellent set of legal powers to tackle their banks if they think they have been treated unfairly.

Unfortunately, hardly anyone knows about them, and the relevant authorities have failed to give the powers any meaningful publicity.

The rules were been laid down by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). They are known as the Banking: Conduct of Business sourcebook (BCOBS) and they apply to small businesses as well as to private individuals.

Most significantly, they give any aggrieved customer the right to sue their bank in the county court.

This explicitly links breaches of these rules to the right of individuals to take legal action under section 150 of Financial Services and Markets Act.

What is unfair?

Under BCOBS, your bank has a duty to operate your current account so the consequences are not unfair to you. Your bank cannot just go ahead and apply your contractual terms regardless of the consequences. It is obliged to have regards to your interests, when making decisions.

Your bank may want to say they are only obliged to treat you fairly within the limits of the account contract. However, fair treatment under BCOBS means you are entitled to receive fair treatment despite the limits of the contract (otherwise BCOBS would be rendered completely ineffective by the bank's terms and conditions).

If you discuss your bank's treatment of you calmly with a group of friends or colleagues and the general feeling is you have been treated unfairly, then the chances are you have been.
Unfairness depends on the circumstances.

British judges have been deciding what is reasonable or unfair for hundreds of years so it does not pose much of a problem for them.

My Bank, The Robbing Bankers of Scotland, are on their final chance via their Chief Executives Office and if they fail to resolve my concerns to my complete satisfaction this time I will be taking them to court and suing them for unfair treatment.

The Judgement can then be passed to the FSA and OFT who are obliged to act.

If enough of us do this then we can hope that FINALLY they take notice and treat us fairly.

This has been copied & pasted from the Consumer Action Group who have misunderstood what BCOBs covers. It has very limited application and only applies to the following banking activities:

*communications with banking customers and financial promotions;

*distance communications, including the requirements of the Distance
Marketing Directive and E-commerce Directive;

*information to be communicated to banking customers, including appropriate
information and statements of account;

*post sale requirements on prompt, efficient and fair service, moving accounts and lost and dormant accounts;

*unauthorised and incorrectly executed payments; and cancellation, including the right to cancel and the effects of cancellation

dunstonh

Have they perhaps mixed up those requirements and TCF (which is not a legal thing but an FSA thing)?

magpiecottage

Alpine_Star wrote: »

This has been copied & pasted from the Consumer Action Group who have misunderstood what BCOBs covers.

I think it is far from the only thing CAG has misunderstood.

If the OP's argument was correct then the OFT's action regarding bank charges would have been won but it was not.

In addition, whilst there is no doubt that BCOBS reflects FSA Principle 6 - "A firm must pay due regard to the interests of its customers and treat them fairly.", it also reflects Principle 8 - "A firm must manage conflicts of interest fairly, both between itself and its customers and between a customer and another client."

This means that a bank does not simply have to roll over and comply with the whims of a customer.

Alpine_Star

magpiecottage wrote: »

I think it is far from the only thing CAG has misunderstood.

If the OP's argument was correct then the OFT's action regarding bank charges would have been won but it was not.

In addition, whilst there is no doubt that BCOBS reflects FSA Principle 6 - "A firm must pay due regard to the interests of its customers and treat them fairly.", it also reflects Principle 8 - "A firm must manage conflicts of interest fairly, both between itself and its customers and between a customer and another client."

Notwithstanding the fact that the Principles are not actionable by a private individual, CAG also appear to be unaware that bank charges don't fall within the scope of the FSA and as such BCOBs.

''BCOBS does not contain rules on the level of prices''

http://www.fsa.gov.uk/doing/regulated/banking/bcobs/q_a

I find it incredible that the BBC give CAG a platform to peddle this nonesense and encourage people to litigate by citing completely inappropriate regulations.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19511542

JuicyJesus

It always amazes me how CAG's members seem willing and able to pore through legalese and threaten banks with chapter and verse, but completely unable to manage their own bank accounts.

Alpine_Star

JuicyJesus wrote: »

It always amazes me how CAG's members seem willing and able to pore through legalese and threaten banks with chapter and verse, but completely unable to manage their own bank accounts.

That also applies to the site team, one of whom actually claimed that ''I'm a lawyer'' when in fact he isn't and never has been.

http://www.independent.co.uk/money/spend-save/the-man-who-said-no-to-bank-charges-816114.html

Angry_Cat

AliDB wrote: »

What is unfair?

Under BCOBS, your bank has a duty to operate your current account so the consequences are not unfair to you. Your bank cannot just go ahead and apply your contractual terms regardless of the consequences. It is obliged to have regards to your interests, when making decisions.

Your bank may want to say they are only obliged to treat you fairly within the limits of the account contract. However, fair treatment under BCOBS means you are entitled to receive fair treatment despite the limits of the contract (otherwise BCOBS would be rendered completely ineffective by the bank's terms and conditions).

Where in BCOB does it say any of this ?

http://www.fsahandbook.info/FSA/html/handbook/BCOBS

You seriously need to read BCOB before shooting letters of threatening legal proceedings

Fizzy_Man

I know this is an old thread, but wow. I am impressed at the level of arrogance and ignorance displayed by the posters criticising CAG.

Nowhere, that I have seen, do CAG claim that bank charges are covered by BCOB. What I gather from CAG is that they are using BCOB to show that the application of the bank charges can lead to an unfair, and potentially illegal, situation such as where a customer has had bank charges applied and subsequently gone into an unauthorised overdraft and being charged for it.

In the situation above, it is clear that this is unfair as the bank could have resolved it in the customer's favour but didn't, and subsequently profited from their actions. This is the reason why BCOB is so open ended because it is to place power back with the customer, when applied correctly.

People on MSE name calling and proliferating ignorant comments is not going to help customers of bank be treated more fairly, so why not do the mature thing and provide some useful links to BCOB, or your own interpretation of how they can be applied?

The reason I am posting here is because I am currently in dispute with my bank and will be using BCOB as a reason for the dispute (independently of information from CAG). Until I mentioned BCOB the bank (Halifax) was flatly denying any liability. As soon as I mentioned BCOB, and showed how I believed they had breached it, it was escalated to their Customer Relations (not the usual Customer Services team) and I am 3 days into waiting for their legal team to look into it and get back to me with their response.

I will post the results on here once all is settled, however, the background to my complaint can be found below.

Halifax authorised payments which then made me go into an unauthorised overdraft, which I was charged for. I complained to Halifax as those transactions should not have been authorised due to having no money in the account. They apologised and refunded me the fees and assured me that these transactions (from Lovefilm) would no longer be taken (I had attempted to cancel my Lovefilm subscription but Lovefilm refused so I instructed Halifax to not authorise payments to them).

The following month, the same happened again and they authorised the Lovefilm transactions (which they had said they would stop) which again led to an unauthorised overdraft and charges. Again, they said they would refund them, apologised for the inconvenience and I was assured by the Branch Manager that it would not happen again.

Needless to say, it did happen again (a total of 3 times after Halifax assured me they would stop the Lovefilm transactions) and by this point I was a total of £190 out of pocket due to the charges levied (£5 per day for 38 days) and as this was out of my account I had subsequent financial issues, including the loss of £1200 in work.

Bearing in mind I had complained 4 times in branch about this and nothing was done, I then complained to Customer Services, who were nice enough, but didn't really take any responsibility for the unfair treatment. In the end, they offered me £190 "non-admission of liability" for the fees, plus, and this is the most important aspect in my case, a £40 payment by way of apology, including admission of liability for their failings, for the way I was treated by the staff in branch (i.e. that they failed to act on my instruction, which put me at a financial disadvantage).

They initially outright refused to reimburse me for the £1200 I lost (the client needed the work doing on a particular day and Halifax didn't refund the £190 in fees until after it was too late, hence I lost the job I had been contracted to do) saying it wasn't their fault it wasn't in my account by the day they specified, however, as soon as BCOB was mentioned specifically in relation to the failure of the bank to act upon my notification, they immediately escalated the issue to a team with more "authority" (read "legal knowledge"): their Customer Relation team.

It is currently with them and I have given them until Tuesday next week to come back to me with a satisfactory resolution (namely that they cover my losses) and if not I will file a claim with the court.

Now, I know that in reality they are probably going to back down and settle the claim, however, I am fully prepared to take them to court and will post a thread on how it all goes.