Bank Charges

IdleRich

IdleRich
(Apologies if this is old news)
Recent developments in the UK seem to suggest that punitive charges (beyond administrative costs incurred by the bank) applied to personal bank accounts in the uk for unauthorised overdraughts, exceeding overdraughts or bouncing cheques are illegal. This also appears to apply retroactively. I've heard that the large banks are unwilling for a test case to come to court as it could set an extremely expensive precedent. I have been advised that rather than allow a case to come to court the banks are likely to pay back any charges if demanded and threatened with the small claims court.
The procedure seems to be, first demand a record of any charges on your account under the Freedom of Information Act, second demand repayment and thirdly (as they will stall) demand payment again threatening legal action.
Although this could take quite a while and require an initial payment of £10 to cover FIA charges I'm going to give it a go because over the years the charges against me must amount to thousands of pounds.
There is more information about this on this website

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/

And there are also templates for the letters of the various stages of the process if anyone is interested in trying this.
 

adruu

This Is It
do you have any idea how far ahead of the u.s. or canada this is? i think the way this is worded is a little misleading though, because it's not that banks can't charge you for overdrafting, but what they were doing was manipulating when certain charges would clear as to maximize the penalties they could get.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"do you have any idea how far ahead of the u.s. or canada this is?"
In what way?

"it's not that banks can't charge you for overdrafting, but what they were doing was manipulating when certain charges would clear as to maximize the penalties they could get."
No, I don't think so, it's exactly that they cannot charge you (apart from the administrative costs that they have incurred) for going over your agreed overdraught limit.
 

bassnation

the abyss
IdleRich said:
Although this could take quite a while and require an initial payment of £10 to cover FIA charges I'm going to give it a go because over the years the charges against me must amount to thousands of pounds.
There is more information about this on this website

do you reckon this also applies to business account charges? my bank charges me 20 quid every time i transfer money to pay myself. if so, i'll get on it today see if i can claw back some cash from the bastards.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Dunno, have a look on the website I'd say. I'd read in the Guardian that a change to the law might be on the cards but I hadn't heard this thing about trying to get your money back yourself until a couple of weeks ago when someone mentioned to me that he had seen a daytime tv money programme about it, then a guy in my football team put me on to that website. I don't pretend to be an expert but for ten pounds I'm going to try especially as the templates are already there so it shouldn't be too time consuming.
This is the first letter they recommend sending.


Data Protection Act 1998
Subject Access Request



Dear Sir/Madam


ACCOUNT NUMBERS:

Please supply me with a complete list of transactions and charges relating to my banking history with your organisation. Alternatively, a complete set of statements for that period will be acceptable.
Additionally, where there has been any event in my account history over this period which has required manual intervention by any member of your staff, or any other person, I require disclosure of any indication or notes which have either caused or resulted in that manual intervention, or other evidence of that manual intervention in relation to my banking business with you.
If you are unable to supply this data because there has been no such manual intervention, then please be so kind as to confirm this in your response.
I enclose the statutory maximum fee of £10. You have 40 days in which to comply. Furthermore, if I discover that you have levied disproportionate penalties against me, then I shall be reclaiming them, and also reclaiming the enclosed £10 Data Protection Act subject access request fee.
If there is specific information which you require in order to satisfy yourself as to my identity, please let me know by return. However, please note that the above address is the one which you normally use to communicate my private business to me and which you have hitherto found to be acceptable.
I would be happy to collect the Data from my local branch.


Yours faithfully,


Obviously I haven't tried it myself yet so I don't want to whole-heartedly guarantee that it will work but I will certainly report back my results and those of my other friends who are trying it.
 

tryptych

waiting for a time
Caution here folks.. a couple of legal people who've talked about this say that it's legally pretty shaky - the reason you get your money back is cause the bank would rather pay that than have to deal with the court case (which obviously costs a lot more money for them). I don't know the truth of this, not being expert on legal matters myself... I don't imagine that many lawyers post on Dissensus, for some reason...

More importantly, if you have an overdraft - be warned - I have heard several reports of people writing to their banks with exactly the same letters etc that Idlerich mentions, to receive a letter back saying, fine, persue this if you wish, but if you do we will be demanding your overdraft back, in full. Banks can of course do this at any time...
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"the reason you get your money back is cause the bank would rather pay that than have to deal with the court case (which obviously costs a lot more money for them)"
I'm sure you're right.

" fine, pursue this if you wish, but if you do we will be demanding your overdraft back, in full."
Yeah, that sounds about right. Luckily I have just received an inheritance that allowed me to more than clear my overdraughts and I am in a position of strength regarding the bank. I am probably going to close my accounts with them anyway due to the incredibly poor service I've had from them over the years but I'm going to give this a go first.
Let me say again, I don't know whether or not it will work so I can't exactly recommend it but I thought that it might be interesting to people - you can all make up your own minds. I'll post back on my experience and that of my friends who have already set the wheels in motion.
 

sufi

lala
any news idlerich?

myself i just experienced immense joyous feeling of empowerment and satisfaction submitting that data request by hand at my local branch of hsbc after reading about some successful applications on http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk & another trusted forum,
i'm hoping they have got thorough notes of all the 'manual interventions' they have carried out on my account - particularly that time i called them dastardly blood-sucking vampires....

fuck you hsbc, revenge will be mine
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
No, unfortunately no news yet. I posted the first letter thing the day after putting this up on dissensus but that letter does give them forty days to reply (I think that's the terms of the Freedom of Information Act). If they don't reply by then I will follow the instructions for the next bit. Will definitely let you know if/when I hear anything.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I just checked with one of my friends who also did this. He said

"I noticed that the£10 cheque for requesting the information has been cashed by one of the
banks but as yet I haven't heard anything back. They have 40 days to respond so I'll give them another couple of weeks before I start to chase them up."

That sounds promising anyway. I must admit that I completely forgot to check whether or not they had cashed my cheque...
 

sufi

lala
never mind about DPA i got all my statements off the internet banking & delivered this by hand today:
To: HSBC Bank PLC
PO Box 230
27/32 Poultry
London EC2R 8DR

Tuesday, 18 July 2006

Request for repayment of charges

Dear Sir/Madam,

ACCOUNT NUMBER: XXXXXXXXXXXXX

My request
I am writing to ask you to refund to me the charges which you have levied from my account over the last 6 years.
I now understand that the regime of fees which you have been applying to my account in relation to direct debit refusals, exceeding overdraft limits and so forth are unlawful at Common Law, Statute and recent consumer regulations. If you say that they are not, then will you please demonstrate this by letting me have a full breakdown of the costs to which you have been put as a result of my breaches, in order to reassure me that your penalties really do reflect your costs.
Additionally, it has now been confirmed that your particularly high level of penalties are considered to be unfair per se by the OFT who reported on the 5th April 2006 and are therefore presumed to be unlawful in the absence of specific proof to the contrary.

Your responsibilities
I would draw your attention to the terms of the contract which you agreed to at the time that I opened my account. It is an implied term of that contract that you would conduct yourselves lawfully and in a manner which complies with UK law.

I am frankly shocked that you have operated my account in this way as I had always reposed confidence in your integrity and expertise as my fiduciary.
I consider that your repeated representations that your charges are fair and reasonable are deceptive and that they have deceived me into agreeing to pay them.
Your concealment of the true nature of your charges has prevented me from asserting my right until now.

What I require
I calculate that you have taken £2363.00 (not including previous refunds which I have deducted from this total)
I enclose a schedule of the charges which I am claiming with this letter

My targets to resolve this matter
I hope that you will enter into a sincere dialogue with me about this matter and I am writing this letter to you on the assumption that you will prefer to do this than merely respond with standard letters and leaflets.

I will give you 14 days to reply to me accepting, unconditionally, my request in principle and letting me know a date by which I will receive payment.

If you do not respond, or you do not respond positively, within this time period, I shall send you a letter before action giving you a further 14 days in which to reflect. I believe that these targets are more than sufficient for a large company such as yours with dedicated staff and departments. After that, there will be no further communication from me and I shall issue a claim at the expiry of the second deadline.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that I have been a faithful customer of HSBC for the last x years and that at no time have I defaulted on any payments to HSBC or conducted my financial affairs irresponsibly and that these charges have caused me an unreasonable amount of stress, unhappiness and aggravation. I trust that this request will be dealt with efficiently and with a minimum of delays. :p :p :p

Please feel free to contact me if you require any further information,

Many Thanks,

Yours Sincerely,




sufi the vampire slayer
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Any news on this Sufi? I just got my list of charges through the post on the weekend - just got to add them together and then I'll send off my letter.
 

sufi

lala
no news yet, in fact total silence, no calls or acknowledgement or nothing.....
i delivered a second polite request after 14 days, the clock is ticking, next tuesday is the day i go to small claims court ... :)
watch this space
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Wow - keep me posted.
As an aside, the thing that they sent wasn't just a list of charges it was loads of printouts of statements from the last five years. It's quite interesting the way that a simple printout saying "cash point withdrawal ABN Amro Dam Square" or suchlike can take you back to what you were doing a few years ago so powerfully. Without being too wanky it reminded me of those Adrian Piper (is it?) telephone conversations where only one side is written down and you get half the picture.
 

sufi

lala
update for y'all:

i just got a polite letter offering me £1998.87 to shut up & leave them alone :mad: :confused: :D :p

am i gonna accept ??

hell no, they missed my deadline so i already took them to court for £2980 including interest... watch this space ;)
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Brilliant. I would have been tempted to take it myself but I guess you know what you are doing.
I've been so busy I haven't added up all the things that they sent me yet - I meant to take it to work this morning but forgot but I'll definitely get on it tomorrow.
 
Top