Bank Charges from early 1990s

coxst

In about 1995 I was a customer of Nat-West. I was skint at the time and had run up a credit card debt and an overdraft. Nat-West contacted me and told me I had to pay off all of my debts immediately or join their "debt management program" or some other such stupidly named scheme. This meant that all of my debts had to be converted into a loan at very hight rates of interest. I do not have details of these transactions any more and left Nat-West as soon as I was back on my feet financially. Is there any way of forcing Nat-West to expose the charges they levied on me and claiming back any unfair charges? At the time I felt that they had taken someone in debt and forced me to run up further debt.

National_Debtline

Hello there.

You may encounter a couple of difficulties.

Whilst it is possible to make a formal request to a bank requesting all of the information they hold about you (such as statements and computer records etc.), they would generally only go back six years. Some banks may go back further but it really does vary. This request is known as a 'Subject Access Request' and is a legal right afforded to you by the Data Protection Act 1998. The fee is £10, the bank would have 40 days to provide you with the information. I'm not certain that you will be able to get information as back back as the 1990s at all, sadly.

There is some good info on the Data Protection Act and the requests you can make here: http://www.ico.org.uk/for_the_public/personal_information

Your second hurdle is that the subject of bank charges and whether or not they are fair has been through a very signficant number of court cases brought by the Office of Fair Trading against a number of the large high street banks. The outcome of the case decided that the charges probably were fair. This means it is incredibly difficult to recover these charges.

I hope you find this information useful.

Best wishes,

David @ NDL.

dunstonh

Is there any way of forcing Nat-West to expose the charges they levied on me and claiming back any unfair charges?

The banks won the court case and since then, complaints about "unfair" charges are automatically rejected (with reference to the supreme court outcome given) and the FOS will not consider complaints on that basis either.

Nowadays, the only times you get refunds from the bank are incorrect application of charges or consideration given to current financial hardship (not historic).

Atidi

coxst wrote: »

In about 1995 I was a customer of Nat-West. I was skint at the time and had run up a credit card debt and an overdraft. Nat-West contacted me and told me I had to pay off all of my debts immediately or join their "debt management program" or some other such stupidly named scheme. This meant that all of my debts had to be converted into a loan at very hight rates of interest. I do not have details of these transactions any more and left Nat-West as soon as I was back on my feet financially. Is there any way of forcing Nat-West to expose the charges they levied on me and claiming back any unfair charges? At the time I felt that they had taken someone in debt and forced me to run up further debt.

The bank should have explained the charges 18 years ago when this all took place.

As you allege there were very high interest rates, presumably they did. (Can't believe they were anywhere as high as the current payday loan lenders, but there you go)

Anyway that was 18 years ago. I can't see any reason they would still have these records today. Do you have your copy of the loan agreement you presumably signed or otherwise agreed to?

If you were in the financial mess you claimed you were in, did you take any independent advice at the time? e.g from the CAB or other debt management charities? The bank were probably only authorised to advise you on the specific products they offered, and not anything available from a competitor.