Bank Charges Test Case Article discussion

natweststaffmember

jocourtney wrote: »

Thanks to this site I first put in my claim with Natwest in May 09 and have now gone down the financial hardship route, after filling in the forms etc and posting off relevant documents I rang the bank this morning and was told that my claim had been accepted and I should be receiving a letter from the bank with an offer, the thing is I'm not sure what I should consider to be a fair offer, I am claiming 6yrs worth of bank charges which add up to around £5600, can anyone advise me on this?

They will be assessing you on July 2001 to present which is how far you can claim back to. If an offer is being sent then I will wait until you receive the offer until I give more advice since the offer itself might be better or worse than you expect. No offers are in full and final settlements of cases but merely of the financial hardship element of the claim.

natweststaffmember

DataWraith wrote: »

Halifax owe me some charges money back and I was wondering are they including all the other banks that there is a economic crisis on and that all the money they were supposed to pay back is not available until the resession is over?.
Have we heard any kind of new news that would make the day a little brighter for us customers who have been ripped off by the thieving bank charge scam?
Is there light at teh end of the tunnel or are we waiting until the cows come home, after all we all know that the banks love to collect money but not give any out ( unless they profit from it).

We are still awaiting the half way stage in the OFT test case issues which is the whether the OFT can assess terms for fairness under UTCCR 1999. Once that is known we will know a little bit more as to where we are in the case.

Murph82

Hi,

I received a service charge for £28 along with my RBS bank statement yesterday, which is due to be deducted from my account on October 2nd. Now, I don't have an overdraft on my account (just a basic Interest Paying Account), and what RBS said is that I went over by £1.65 for 2 days. I used my card at a cashpoint abroad (I also spoke to a customer service person at RBS & he assured me the charges were minimal), and apparently the charges weren't debited from my account straight away. I withdrew money from my account when I got back to the UK & there were no problems until I received my statement yesterday.

My question is, do I have a case to challenge this charge of £28? I think it's ridiculous that;

A) Somehow I have been allowed to go over my balance even though I purposely have an account where this should not be allowed to happen - hence having no overdraft

The bank have initially said (over the phone) that as it isn't a bank error they can't refund or waive the charge. :mad:

A couple of people I know have been in the same position and have had their charges cancelled, but how should I go about it? I'm really frustrated about this, I have never had problems with them before. I know it isn't a lot of money to challenge but I don't think it's fair to be honest.

Any information will be really appreciated.

Paul

darren669

Are there any employers that do not use banks? Thanks to HSBC I no longer have a bank account.
I have been ill for about 6years, but now I am looking into the job market again. I have no way to open an account. I have no proof of ID what so ever. don't you think its time we all ditched the banks? We all got allong quite well without them before.:T

natweststaffmember

Murph82 wrote: »

Hi,

I received a service charge for £28 along with my RBS bank statement yesterday, which is due to be deducted from my account on October 2nd. Now, I don't have an overdraft on my account (just a basic Interest Paying Account), and what RBS said is that I went over by £1.65 for 2 days. I used my card at a cashpoint abroad (I also spoke to a customer service person at RBS & he assured me the charges were minimal), and apparently the charges weren't debited from my account straight away. I withdrew money from my account when I got back to the UK & there were no problems until I received my statement yesterday.

My question is, do I have a case to challenge this charge of £28? I think it's ridiculous that;

A) Somehow I have been allowed to go over my balance even though I purposely have an account where this should not be allowed to happen - hence having no overdraft

The bank have initially said (over the phone) that as it isn't a bank error they can't refund or waive the charge. :mad:

A couple of people I know have been in the same position and have had their charges cancelled, but how should I go about it? I'm really frustrated about this, I have never had problems with them before. I know it isn't a lot of money to challenge but I don't think it's fair to be honest.

Any information will be really appreciated.

Paul

The difficulty with using overseas ATM's is that they do not take into account the charges for using them which means that £1.65 over the limit charge has been caused by the charge for using it overseas. If it is the first charge you have had they might refund it as a gesture of goodwill otherwise you will have to go down the standard route of reclaiming. Perhaps, naivety of how much it would charge you for using your card overseas might be one argument.

natweststaffmember

darren669 wrote: »

Are there any employers that do not use banks? Thanks to HSBC I no longer have a bank account.
I have been ill for about 6years, but now I am looking into the job market again. I have no way to open an account. I have no proof of ID what so ever. don't you think its time we all ditched the banks? We all got allong quite well without them before.:T

Is your driving licence valid?
Do you have a passport?
Do you have utility bills?
Do you have DLA payments and letters stating the amount of them?

SpiderFreak24

Thank you for your many posts. I am new to this procedure but can you clarify if reclaiming charges applies to northern ireland? from what i can see seems to realte to england, wales and scotland. thanks for your help

Worried_in_Kent

Can anyone help me please?

A couple of years ago, before the hold was put on reclaiming, my husband and I tried to reclaim our bank charges from the previous 6 years. They totalled thousands of pounds. We sent letters to HSBC asking for repayment - only to receive identical reply letters telling us that they wouldn't be paying us back, and 'while we are sure this is not the response you wanted' we should take it up with the Financial Ombudsman if we didn't like their answer. We were in a lot of debt, and were terrified at the time they'd close our accounts and require imediate repayment of credit card debts - at the time, they could get away with closing accounts as revenge on people who tried to claim back charges and were doing so quite a bit. Also, at the time, help for going to the Ombudsman wasn't terribly complete - we didn't know how to proceed, and thought we'd have to pay to bring in a lawyer, which we didn't have the money to do - so we didn't proceed. We figured we 'd never get our money back and tried to put it out of our minds. But nowadays things have changed, online help is more complete and as I understand it, closing our accounts as revenge or demanding we immediately pay back our credit card debts is not something the bank is allowed to do.

Now you've waded through my tale of woe (cheers for sticking with me), can anyone tell me where to go from here? Should I start the whole process again, sending HSBC a letter asking for my charges from 2001-2007 back and allowing it to wait in line there? Or should I, despite the break of several years in between the last response from the bank, continue on to the Ombudsman and allow my claim to wait in their hands?

Our debt has dogged us for years, and we were yet another couple screwed over by redundancies and unemployment when the financial crisis hit, but now we're both earning again! Thing is, if we could get back the money HSBC owe us, we'd be about half as in debt (with them) as we are currently are.

So, experts and friends, please advise me, what should I do?

gfara

I've been trying to reclaim my bank charges from Halifax. I've used all the template letters and, due to redundancy and entering into a financial management agreement, went down the hardship route. Halifax couldn't have cared less and so I went to the Financial Ombudsman. Got a reply this morning - they have sided with Halifax - where do I go from here? Does anybody know?

natweststaffmember

ellie1764 wrote: »

Thank you for your many posts. I am new to this procedure but can you clarify if reclaiming charges applies to northern ireland? from what i can see seems to realte to england, wales and scotland. thanks for your help

Yes you most definitely can reclaim if in Northern Ireland.