MSE News: Is bank charges reclaiming back? Martin Lewis thinks it could be

colsten

Alpine_Star wrote: »

That's how counsel for Lloyds spun it. Alas the court concuded otherwise.


''There is nothing in either Exhibit CHAS or any of the
other documentation to which I was referred, including,
importantly, the wording of Conditions 15. 4 or 15.6, which
would enable the Court to see the "reason for and the method
of the variation" of the contract price as required by
Paragraph 24 of the ECJ's decision in Hatosag.''

Alpine_Star wrote: »

Indeed but the ECJ case law that the judge was bound by essentially ruled that the right to withdraw from a contract should be unqualified.

I haven't gone into the details of the case in hand, and don't intend to after listening into the account given by Mr Foster-Burnell. Suffice to say that not all solicitors and/or judges can really convince everybody but time will tell what has come of this case.

I remain deeply bemused by the "those evil banks" claims when the banks lay out in detail, before any event, what their charges are, and people then take the banks to court because people were charged what the banks said they would charge. Anyone complaining is basically saying if Joe freely decides to buy something that is marked as £100, Joe can go back later to say it should really not have been £100 (unfair price etc), it is the seller's fault that Joe bought it, and the seller should re-imburse Joe as the seller shouldn't have charged £100 in the first place (arbitrary declaration by Joe and his friends - unfair price, in case you forgot. Nobody told the price comparison sites yet, btw). Never mind that the seller might have incurred some costs by providing Joe with the goods, Joe declares their price unfair and Joe doesn't care how the bank recoup their costs, and Joe thinks the bank certainly shouldn't make make any profit, or pay those fat cat salaries to the guys who run the bank (anyone can run a bank, anyway, can't they....so why doesn't Joe open a bank? btw, whatever happened to the Bank of Dave? Hasn't he had enough years yet to go nationwide?). Joe also doesn't know banks pay referral money, so happily opens accounts by clicking from his favourite website and unknowingly pays money to his favourite website when, with a bit of lateral thinking, he could have got the money into his own pocket.

Joe is, somewhat unknowingly, a relatively uninformed socialist who was brought up in a capitalist society and he doesn't care, or even have a clue, how business works. He just wants to scream banks are bad and they should pay him compensation because that seems to be trending on Twitter. Any website that seemingly repeats his calls is welcome news to Joe. Never mind if that website has made £87m out of Joe and other Joes. Joe probably never knows what £87m is about.



We live in a great society, we have fantastic rights, we have brilliant access to information, we have excellent education facilities, we can communicate with literally anybody we want to communicate with, any time we like to....yet some of us still think we should stay in a "them and us" stereotype, uninformed, self-deprecating and degenerative state of existence. Why?

James_B.

It does seem strange, that a company can lay out in precise detail their fee structure, and stick to is scrupulously, and then be found to have acted unfairly.

The time to decide if a contract is fair or not is before you enter into it, not after. If an adult freely signs up, then I'd prefer to see that they are held to it. Punishing the other party seems wrong.

Thrugelmir

James_B. wrote: »

It does seem strange, that a company can lay out in precise detail their fee structure, and stick to is scrupulously, and then be found to have acted unfairly.

There's other factors that are personal to the individual case.

pollypenny

PeacefulWaters wrote: »

Rather than focusing on claiming back this that and the other he could do far more good by promoting individual responsibility, saving before spending, anticipating the unexpected and never going overdrawn.

He'd do far more good for society as a whole that way.

Not very fair. His mantra is on every email.

pt2537

OhReally wrote: »

You earned your notoriety, at least in part, due to the original success of reclaiming bank charges. Some would say you earned even more notoriety when the whole thing collapsed quite spectacularly with the decision of the Supreme Court back in 2009.

This is wrong, the Supreme Court ruling is not the end of the road for Bank Charges and their assessment for fairness under the UTCCR 1999. As we have seen many times, European law is supreme, the Factortame case shows this clearly.

The ECJ has given a ruling on the interpretation of the UTCCR and this was the basis of the Foster Burnell case.

Hanky_Panky

Thrugelmir wrote: »

There's other factors that are personal to the individual case.

This is a line often trotted out but in many years (in the past) working for a bank dealing with thousands of customers I can count on one hand the number who were genuinely not responsible for going overdrawn.

How many times have we read something along the line of - 'I lost my job and had no choice but to use my overdraft' - actually yes you did have a choice. Did you really think the bank was going to provide you with free money ?

indierocker85

michaels wrote: »

I agree - an unarranged overdraft is effectively spending someone else's money without even asking first if it is OK. If someone reached into my wallet and took out £20 without asking I would be pretty upset even if they assured me they were going to give it back later.

If we're speaking hypothetically, So in return, if somebody took say, £2, and it was paid back the next day, in return you'd take £35 of there money?

colsten

indierocker85 wrote: »

If we're speaking hypothetically, So in return, if somebody took say, £2, and it was paid back the next day, in return you'd take £35 of there money?

It is not as if the £35 (or however much) is a surprise out of the blue - it has clearly been specified that if you take money without first asking the charge is £35, or whatever the charges leaflet says. So it is down to you whether you want to help yourself to the £2 or not.

To argue that the cost of people helping themselves to £2 cannot cost the bank £35 is showing a fair bit of ignorance regarding the cost of doing business. If, however, you can do it cheaper/fairer etc, why don't you set up a bank and prove it can be done cheaper/fairer etc?

James_B.

indierocker85 wrote: »

If we're speaking hypothetically, So in return, if somebody took say, £2, and it was paid back the next day, in return you'd take £35 of there money?

If that was the agreement that we had in place, then yes.

Mersey_2

colsten wrote: »

The charges might be considered too high, but both method and reason is clearly described in the T&Cs / charges document freely available online and in print.

a customer can close their bank account any time they like, provided they have settled any overdraft on the account.

That's the argument that says it was ok to charge 30000% pa on a loan, as long as it's in the small print.


Thankfully the High Court ruled that was unfair a decade ago too.


Vulnerable people have the Courts for protection thankfully.


Also, just because you state x in a contract and someone agrees to it, that doesn't make it lawful. That's why UCTA exists. Otherwise employers would impose ridiculous financial penalty clauses in contracts to prospective employees. Yu can't exclude for personal injury for the same reason. Protection of the public and public policy.


It didn't cost the banks £35 to impose each charge and that's why they can't charge that rate anymore as it wasn't reasonable or proportionate.