elephant.co.uk charging twice for renewal - bank charges grrrr

bearman3784

I have had so much trouble with elephant renewing this year. they messed up my renewal, therefore i had to get a 'new customer' quote for this years insurance. 3 times i rang them to check that only 1 payment would come out but much to my anger it seems they have taken 2 lots of payment :mad: :mad: :mad:
Basically can i reclaim the bank charges from a legal point of view, from them as they have now made me go over my overdraft limit :mad: :mad:

Alfie_E

From a legal point of view: yes, you can pursue elephant.co.uk for the financial loss you have incurred. However, there’s no legal requirement for the bank to return any charge.

I’d always assumed that, when a bank undid an error, they had to put you back to the position you’d have been in had the error not occurred. This turns out not to be the case. In the past, when a mistake like yours occurred, a bank would normally refund any charges. Now, with the High Court test case, there have been reports of banks digging their heals in, and refusing to refund charges, no matter how innocent the customer is. And, from a strictly legal point of view, they don’t have to. They’ve not made an error. They’ve not caused you to lose money. Your complaint is solely with the company that took the money by mistake.

Even so, you need to complain to your bank. You need to tell them that the transaction wasn’t authorised. In the case of a payment made by a debit card, you would ask for it to be reversed. In the case of a Direct Debit, you’d ask that the bank immediately replace the money, under the Direct Debit Guarantee. This is important, regardless of whether you automatically get any bank charges back. You want your bank to remove any record that you have gone over your overdraft limit.

Although I’ve said your bank isn’t required to refund the charges, you should expect them to. On the 16th-January edition of the BBC’s Working Lunch programme, a representative from the Financial Ombudsman Service said that, if someone with your problem were to complain, and the complaint were to go as far as the Ombudsman, the Ombudsman would force the bank to return the charges.