Van Insurance late default charge unreasonable???

mikefox

mattyprice4004 said:

mikefox said:

mattyprice4004 said:

The time to let them know payment is going to be late is before, not after - they'll have been charged by their bank, and they also have admin time for the letter and the cost of sending the letter.
Why should this all be done for free when he couldn't be bothered getting in touch? 

Customers may on occasion be charged a reasonable estimate of charges against recovery of a default charge. However if the If the amount demanded by the injured party is excessive, they are "unjustly enriched", and the breaching party may have no obligation to pay this. Any clause in a contract which makes a provision by which unjust enrichment may occur may be unenforceable at law - that is to say that if the amount is excessive, the injured party will be unable to enforce the charge in court. Any clause which explicitly provides for unjust enrichment is considered unlawful at common law. The Office of Fair Trading investigated charges being imposed on customers across various industries and banks and in its report, the OFT said that many of their default charges were unlawful, as they constituted unjust enrichment. It stated that it may act upon receiving notice of any charge over a certain amount as a penalty, and therefore unlawful. Since the complex development of E-Commerce many default charges are online automated scripts. This means that the recovery of default charges amount to almost negligible costs by companies. With DEBT emails auto generated etc being active across their whole customer base.

That doesn't cover the charge the company gets for a returned DD instruction though - I know with my business account I was charged £15 and I'll be damned if I'm picking that up because someone couldn't be bothered to let me know, so I could amend the payment date  

These DD instructions are what I am talking about. Recently most banks now do not make any bank charges. If you are still with a bank that makes penalty charges for unauthorised overdrafts etc SWITCH Asap. thousands out there due to Covid will default on payments as they might have enough to cover some regular payments but not all. However what you will have noticed is that banks have increased 'Authorised' interest charges by a large percentage.