Bank Charges Reclaiming Guide discussion

aubs_2 · 19 May 2011 at 10:46AM

2008 overdrawn by £1 direct debit was returned unpaid .debt now £440.40 santander sold debt but saw manager 2008 and told him i was on benefit at time( and still am) as disabled and this would cause financial hardship now mackenzie hall want all the money .what do i do go to county court?as i havent paid anything so cannot claim back money but want this debt scrubbed.thanks aubs

ab3njp · 20 May 2011 at 9:38AM

Hi, I need some advice.

Over the past year we've had bank charges totalling around £150-£200, primarily for going over our overdraft limit. This was mainly because of the struggles of getting on the property ladder this time last year (i.e. all the associated money needed for solicitors etc!) and a change in job circumstances. My partner was unfairly forced out of his job in October 2010 (that's another story!) and was out of work for 2 months (on garden leave though). He luckily got a new job which started in Jan this year, but there was a period of 3 weeks over Xmas (where his paid notice stopped from his old job) where we only had my income. This job was a considerably lower income than his previous. I've been lucky and kept my job throughout the recession, but we've had a complete pay freeze. In planning our long term finances we'd hoped we would have had quite a few pay increases by now!

This has caused us to slip now and again, and usually it's me noticing the next day and moving money from our ISAs to compensate (we're trying to save for a wedding!).

So, we're not exactly broke, but at the same time it's been pretty difficult.

I know there's usually no harm in trying, however, I'm worried about what this will do to our reputation with our bank. We've put all our eggs in one basket so to speak. I've banked with them since I was born (family have worked there in the past which is why), and my partner since approx. 2003. We've both got good credit (had credit cards and paid them off) with them, we have had home insurance with them, and we have our mortgage with them (and never missed a mortgage repayment). We are also private banking customers due to our history with them.

I understand it doesn't affect our credit rating, but I don't want them to 'black-mark' us which could affect us renewing our mortgage with them in the future for example. We could really do with the money back, but is it really worth the risk for £200?

Has anyone else had the same predicament?

Thanks

podperson · 20 May 2011 at 11:20AM

aubs wrote: »

2008 overdrawn by £1 direct debit was returned unpaid .debt now £440.40 santander sold debt but saw manager 2008 and told him i was on benefit at time( and still am) as disabled and this would cause financial hardship now mackenzie hall want all the money .what do i do go to county court?as i havent paid anything so cannot claim back money but want this debt scrubbed.thanks aubs

On what basis would you be going to court? - there has been no success with the court route since the ruling, and they would not look at financial hardship claims anyway. If that is the way you are looking to go then you need to take it to the FOS but they will not look at it until you have exhausted the bank's own complaints procedure. Please also bear in mind there is still no obligation on the banks to refund and most people seem to be reporting a maximum of 6 months worth of charges back.

whizzy23 · 23 May 2011 at 9:16PM

My husband had an ISA with this bank and an advisor set up a direct debit for another customer from his account. £3000 was taken out before the bank noticed this mistake! Because it was last year they can't refund his money into this ISA and he has already used his allowance this year. What do we do? He is obviously never going to get this allownace back. Is he eligible for compensation?

barlowgirl42 · 24 May 2011 at 9:53AM

Hi I was just wondering if you could help at all?
Im also with Alliance &Leicester- now santander. Im a student and have still been using my current account as my main bank account, however in November last year they sent me a letter saying that I owed them £165 because I had gone into my unarranged overdraft by £30 plus it was a direct debit so they were charging me for that too. This is the first time it has ever happened to me in the four years I've had the account- it was due to a collection of things that were completely out of my jurisdicition. I had just left my job and they not only paid me on the wrong day but also did not pay me the full amount. Secondly the direct debit that came out was actually suppose to come out the month before and for some reason they skipped it.

I rang santander asking them why I was being charged so much, explain my situation and also to see if they would reverse it. The girl refused and said it was my own fault but as a 'good will gesture' she would reimburse £25. As this is my first time in having to deal with such things I accepted it as I was worried about what to do. When my parents found out, my dad told me to write a letter to them to investigate it. I did, and about 2 months later I got a letter stating that it was indeed my own fault and that they found the charges fair- after all they had taken off one of the £25 service charges. It then stated I had 8 weeks to reply or they would assume the matter was closed. By this time it was January and I was in the midst of my exams and away from home so, feeling rather dejected I left it and transferred my student loan over to pay santander.

It is only now, in May, that I have returned home and my parents have brought the issue back up. My dad seems to think that they were unfair. He is now suggesting I write to them again to reclaim the charges. My only query is- they gave me a letter stating that i needed to repsond within 8 weeks, does this then affect my claim? During that period I was relying on my savings and my parents to help me out whilst I was studying and volunteering in order to get work. That £145 would have helped me out a lot but I fear that in Santanders eyes, it was my fault.

Please help!!

podperson · 24 May 2011 at 10:46AM

You can try complaining to them again but tbh I don't think you'll get that far. Whether you were expecting it on that day or not you had authorised the direct debit to come out of your account and there wasn't sufficient funds for it. Also it sounds like you weren't keeping an eye on the account as £165 is not one charge it is quite a few charges so they have been building up. The bank has refunded the first charge, which is what they normally do, but have said they won't do the rest of them. They haven't done anything wrong so you are reliant on their goodwill - which it seems only extends to one charge

grazyme · 25 May 2011 at 12:31PM

Can someone give advice on reclaiming bank charges from natwest.The problem is it was my husbands a/c and due to financial hardship we entered a debt management plan 5 years ago and at the time my husband was told to close his natwest account and open one where we didn't have any debts.My husband did this and the debt management company wrote to natwest explaing my husband couldn't pay the overdraft of 4.850 pds the limit was 5,000 at the time so please bear in mind my husband hadn't defaulted at this point.we asked for interest to be stopped and made them a pro rata payment offer along with all our other creditors.However due to natwest simply not replying or responding quick enough my husbands a/c soon went above the overdraft limit and natwest then started adding charges after charges which amounted to alot of money.Anyway they took my husband to court after about 4 months of non negotiation on their part and he got a ccj which we are still paying.so if my husband reclaims these charges we could pay of some of the ccj balance but i'm worried if we do claim it will upset all the rbs group whom we owe alot of money too but are currently happy with our payment offers and we don't want to upset them all.sorry this is so long but needed to explain properly,we would love to reclaim but really worried it might result in bad reprocussions.Advice would be very much appreciated. Thankyou

mrs_grump · 31 May 2011 at 12:50PM

Hello everyone, can anyone advise me on how to dispute a £604 debt to the bank?? I tried to close an account (very unhelpful bank) but they said because I had £23 outstanding in charges I wasn't allowed to close it. Since then I have never had the cash (yes I know £23 isn't much but with the cost of living these days its a lot) to cover it. In over a year it has now reached £604 because they have put charges on the charge and kept going. Is there any way of wiping this debt off?? I had even changed my account beforehand for an overdraft facility (on their advice) then they refused it, which left me constantly going overdrawn, that's the reason I wanted to close the account, each time I was overdrawn I was charged £75 one time I went over by just 90p and the bank knew the funds would be in the next day but refused to pay the direct debit and charged me anyway. It's all very distressing for me at the moment. Thank you.

winner1973 · 31 May 2011 at 8:30PM

In 2005 i separated from my partner , and got into financial difficulty , i ended up owing 13k and i am sure a lot of this debt was bank charges and interest etc , since then i have been struggling to pay debt companies back and at one point even used a debt management agency which in hindsight was a bad idea. Can i reclaim any of these charges from so long ago even if the accounts are closed and the debts sold. cooperative gold card/bank virgin money /mbna and citi financial. I still owe around 4k. thanks

Chrisknght · 1 June 2011 at 12:51AM

Hi I currently suffer with mental illness and due to this I have trouble with money I am always been charged bank charges for going overdrawn or direct debits I live on 91 pound every 2 weeks and this month I have 100 pound in charges I'm upset that tomorrow when I go to the bank after being paid I'll still be 10 pound over drawn and they say they cant give me the money as it's not child benefit can I claim these charges back it must be thousands of pounds in the last how many years and I'm only 21 btw I am with h s b c any suggestions

Bank Charges Reclaiming Guide discussion

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