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Bank Charges - How To Get A Refund UKInformation on how to get a refund for unlawful bank charges for the last six years in the UK: In 2006 the Office of Fair Trading declared that some bank charges were unlawful as well as being unfair. This was during a ruling that credit cards should only charge no more then a £12 annual fee. This opened up opportunities for people to reclaim unlawful bank charges. To date the banks in the UK have not challenged this decision and have refunded the unlawful bank charges to their customers. People who believe they have been charged an unlawful bank charge can legally and rightfully claim back bank charges as far back as six years. The website Claiming Back Bank Charges can help you claim back such bank charges and get you a refund from your UK bank account. Just fill out the Claiming Back Bank Charges online form and they will help you get your cash back. Money that you believe is rightfully yours, but what your bank won't give you too readily - but Claiming Back Bank Charges know how to get your money for you. They have over seven years experience in the banking and financial sector. Claiming Back Bank Charges has already helped thousands of bank customers reclaim millions of pounds of unfair and unlawful bank charges. What Is An Unlawful Bank ChargeThe law in Britain does not permit a penalty clause. Yet when you may have been overdrawn in the bank, even by a penny, banks have automatically sent you a letter telling you that you are overdrawn - and charged you anything from £20 to £40 just for sending this letter. This is in addition to any interest charges for being overdrawn or having an unauthorised overdraft. There are other unlawful bank charges, and these are being successfully challenged by individuals in the courts, and banks are refunding these unlawful charges. Examples of unlawful bank charges include:
If I Claim Back Unlawful Charges Will My Bank Take Me To CourtAt the moment banks are avoiding going to court because they do not want to set a precedent in legal history. Instead they are refunding, some with interest, any unlawful bank charges. But only to those customers who claim them. Though the Office of Fair Trading have declared that some bank charges were unlawful - if a High Court Judge declared this then the banks would have to refund an awful lot of money. For the moment they are only refunding bank charges to those who take the time and effort to chase up their bank charges. This is so much easier with the help of the team at www.unfairbankcharge.co.uk Why Are Banks Refunding Claims For Past Bank ChargesBanks are now settling claims, though making it as hard as possible to get unlawful bank charges refunded - but they are still refunding the bank charges. With a bit of effort you can reclaim your money back. If the High Court were to rule that bank charges are unlawful then they may rule that banks have to make more of an effort to refund unlawful payments taken from their customers bank accounts. Banks do not want this to happen, it could cost them billions of pounds - it is easier and safer for them to settle now and not challenge any claims. They can delay claims, for example by delaying sending you any copies of bank statements which you are legally entitled to have under the Data Protection Act, that can help you calculate your claim. However, in this example, they must legally send you this requested information within forty days. If not tell them in writing that you will report it to the Information Commissioner for a breach - that usually motivates them to action! If a case of unlawful bank charges did go to court then the bank would have to publicly reveal their charges, profits and losses so that a judge could decide if a charge has been unlawful. Banks do not want this information to be made public. Nor do they want their competitors to know this information. Imagine if a rival to someone like Lloyds, TSB, First Direct, Bank of Scotland, Halifax, Royal Bank of Scotland, Natwest, Co-op, HSBC, Abbey National, Woolwich, Alliance & Leicester or Barclays knew these figures. So for the moment they are refunding any claims of unlawful bank charges. There may come a time that banks decide to challenge claims so that if they win they can continue to earn from bank charges. Until then if you have been charged any bank charges in the last 6 years ( 5 years for Scotland due to the Scottish laws) do please consider requesting a refund. Visit the site unfairbankcharge.co.uk for help and advice. How To Easily Reclaim Bank ChargesIf you would rather seek a refund from your own bank for any unlawful bank charges then the following advice and information may be useful: Do put everything in writing and send it by recorded delivery. Keep copies of everything. In your letter give the date and amount of any bank charges you consider to be unlawful, using the list further above. State any given reason for the bank charges. If you have them and have access to a scanner or photocopier, make a copy of any letters of charges sent by your bank and include the with your letter requesting refunds of bank charges. If this page has not answered your questions or you need some more advice then please feel free to e-mail me. I would also welcome any advice to increase the information on this page to make it more useful to others. So feel free to e-mail me your thoughts. I would also appreciate it if you were to send the url of the www.findextrawork.co.uk to your friends, forums and websites. Automatically Add www.findextrawork.co.uk To Your Favourites Folder - Bookmark Us. The site is updated weekly with new earning opportunities. Bank Charges Song In November 2007 Martin Lewis the Money Saving Expert announced that he had produced a bank charges song with the singer Dan from the group Oystar. Martin Lewis hopes that it will get to the top ten in the UK singles chart, and even number one. He has predicted that 15,000 single downloads are needed to achieve a place in the top 10 and about 30,000 to get to number 1 - MoneySavingExpert.com has over a million and a half subscribers to the newsletter so this is achievable. I fought the Lloyds To help his web site visitors MartinLewis has subsidised the costs of the bank charges song download which is called I fought the Lloyds. So the bank charges song will cost 50p (plus any network charges) to buy via mobile phone text. Martin Lewis, the record label Tonedef Tunes nor Oyster or any band members will make any profit from the bank charges protest song. The aim of the bank charges song is to bring more media attention to the campaign, generate public interest and hopefully make the FSA, the Government and the banks take notice. Dan of Oystar I fought the Lloyds is now available as a pre-release but Martin Lewis and Dan of Oystar are requesting the help of those who have downloaded the template bank charges refund letter from www.moneysavingexpert.com to download the bank charges song to help support their cause. Any pre-releases will count towards the general release of the 7 January 07 for the records chart week of 13 January 2007. This date has been chosen for the release of the bank charges song because it is expected to be the day before the court trial date. At the time of writing this findextrawork.co.uk article mobile phone users could text bankers to 82822 to get the bank charges song and to support Dan of Oystar and Martin Lewis but do please check for an update at www.moneysavingexpert.com/bankchargessong where you can also hear the lyrics to the bank charges song I fought the Lloyds which begins with they lyric words: Cos I fought the Lloyds and the Lloyds lost They even paid the interest and the court costs At first they sent me letters saying ‘Dear Sir/Madam, get lost’ But I fought the Lloyds and the Lloyds lost. You can watch the music video to I fought the Lloyds at the same website url. Over 4.4 million visitors to moneysavingexpert.com have downloaded the bank charges reclaim letter so even if a small percentage give something back by donwloading the bank charges song then it could easily get to number one in the singles charts and make a pop star out of Martin Lewis! He plays the role of a Sensei preparing his student for a big fight. The singer of the bank charges song I fought the Lloyds was written by the singer of Oystar Dan after he won £530 of bank charges back from overdraft charges from Lloyds TSB. He had used the Money Savings Expert bank charges template letter. Dan then posted the song onto the moneysavingsexpert.co.uk forums where it was seen by Indie Mobile and Tonedef Tunes the music producers in the moneysavingsexpert newsletter. The song was then professionally produced to the instrumental music of I fought the law by The Clash. Dan of Oyster entered the UK charts top 40 in position 25 with I fought The Lloyds. This made the song the second highest new chart entry for that week. On Monday 14 January 2007 Newsnight played the song. Disadvantages To Reclaiming Bank ChargesYour bank may close your account. Overcome this by opening another bank account with another bank before submitting a claim for unlawful bank charges. The banking code may prevent some banks from closing your account unless they have a valid reason. Which? ran a report on this practice in January 2007 and found evidence that some banks are indeed closing the accounts of customers that pursued a claim. If your bank does close your account because you made a claim against their unfair bank charges then do complain in writing to the Financial Ombudsman. People who have done this have received financial compensation for the inconvenience this has caused. Some have argued that reclaiming bank charges may negatively affect a credit score rating. Banks should not put a note of this on your credit reference file, unless you have been overdrawn. Your bank may not be so accommodating and helpful in the future (if they ever were) if you have sought help to get a refund of unlawful bank charges. That said do you really want to stay with a bank like this? There are plenty of banks in the UK and many offer great customer services and can be quite helpful. Another disadvantage to reclaiming bank charges that may affect everyone with a bank account one day is that banks will no longer be able to profit from these unfair bank charges and will have to raise a profit in other ways. One option for the banks will be to charge their customers to keep their bank accounts open. Some may also have to charge a monthly fee or will have to drop interest rates for savers. 2007 could be an interesting year for banking. Others claim that banks will not want to put off savers and investors by making bank charges. They rely on their money to pass onto borrowers. The banks make money from people when they borrow money, buy a mortgage, take out credit cards, etc. They will not want to jeopardise this important cash flow. So they argue that customers who stay in credit will remain bank fee free. If you are making the claim against your bank yourself, say at the Sheriff Court, Civil Court or the Small Claims Court, then you may need to appear at the hearing and this could cost you a day or days off work. Some banks do not let claims go to this stage and may settle out of court whilst other banks will say they will defend the case and settle at the last minute to save lengthy court disputes. Though some may consider this to be the bank calling a person's bluff to see if the customer will drop the case first. By far the easiest way that we know about to reclaiming any unlawful bank charges is to use the help of the website Unfair Bank Charge and visit their url at www.unfairbankcharge.co.uk for a hassle free way to reclaim your unfair bank charges. They aim to make the process as simple as possible. They have over seven years experience of working within the banking industry. Unfair Bank Charge will manage the complaint on your behalf from start to finish. Their experience will ensure that your claim is submitted and managed correctly to avoid the bank’s delaying tactics. Saving you time, money and frustration. Their fast track relationships with selected banks ensure your claim is expedited without raising court summons. If necessary they we will underwrite any necessary court fees and represent you in court. Unfair Bank Charge are so confident in their abilities to reclaim your unfair bank fees that they operate a no win – no fee service. But don't take their word or our word for it. Financial wizards like Martin Lewis the Money Saving Expert, the BBC Money Programme, TV Programmes like Tonight with Trevor McDonald, newspapers such as The Daily Mail and The Sunday Post and even specialist bank charge websites like penaltycharges.co.uk etc are discussing and encouraging people to reclaim unlawful bank charges. Don't worry about reclaiming bank charges or making a complaint about your bank over excessive and unlawful bank charges. You are not alone. In 2006 over 100 people a day telephoned the Financial Ombudsman Service to complain about high penalty bank charges. This rose to 5000 call a day to the helpline in 2007. So far the banking industry has not revealed how many people have reclaimed bank charges nor how much bank charges refunds have cost. The Money Saving Expert website run by financial expert Martin Lewis gets over 50000 hits a day from people looking for his example template letter for claiming back illegal bank charges to download. This can be easily printed off and your own details added to make reclaiming bank charges easy. Martin Lewis considers what motivates people the most to reclaim bank charges is learning about the high profits made by banks, some of which is made from taking money unfairly from customers bank accounts. So far the banking industry has not revealed how many people have reclaimed bank charges nor how much bank charges refunds have cost. But in 2006 in was estimated that the top six UK banks made approximately £4.5 billion from penalty charges. This all dates back to the 2005 landmark ruling in an English civil court that found bank charges did not truly reflect the cost of administering charges and ruled that they were unfairly imposed. As an example a bank charge for a bounced charge may cost the bank just £4-50 to process yet banks have been charging between £25 and £39 to the their customers. Stephen Hone, then a law student argued at Plymouth County Court in 2005, that the £800 charges against his £840 overdraft were excessive and breached the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations(1999). The bank did not defend the case and the District Judge stated that bank charges should not exceed the actual administrative cost of the charges and found against them. Stephen Hone was awarded £2000 which consisted of a refund of his bank charges, interest and compensation for the time spent on the case. This landmark case led to the 2006 Office of Fair Trading investigation and ruling described at the beginning of this unfair bank charges article. Stephen Hone now runs the website www.penaltycharges.co.uk with a team of volunteers where they help others get penalty charges back from banks, building societies, store cards and credit cards. Useful features include a forum, chat room and a guide to work through to help you get back penalty charges. In Easter 2007 The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) will make a ruling over bank charges. They are working with the British Banking Association (BBA) to make bank charges and banking fees more transparent. It is highly recommended that if you do wish to reclaim unfair bank charges that you should do so before this date. The reason for this is that the OFT my well consider some bank charges to be legal and set costs at say £12 to process an unauthorised overdraft to take into consideration that the bank has to make a number of credit checks on a customer to consider their risks and then write to the overdrawn customer. So at the moment if a bank charges say £25 for this the customer can usually reclaim this total amount as an unfair bank charge. When the OFT and the BBA set a fair bank charge then the customer can only claim any actual overcharge and in this case will only get a bank charge refund of £13. Visit www.unfairbankcharge.co.uk for help and advice on reclaiming unfair bank charges. In 2007 it is estimated that British banks will make about £38 billion in profit. In 2006 British banks made an estimated £33 billion profits. In March 2007 The Royal bank of Scotland announced profits of £9 million and in February 2007 the Halifax Bank of Scotland recorded profits of £5.7 billion. On Monday 5 March 2007 HSBC saw a 5% rise in their 2006 profits to £11.48 billion which saw their share prices soar. This brought the pre-tax profits of the major five banks to £37.3 billion. The largest pay out for unfair bank charges was £17,900 according to Martin Lewis of the website moneysavingexpert. Another page of interest is the claiming a tax refund article. On Friday the 13 April 2007 Nat West customer Tom Brennan took the bank to the City of London County Court over penalty fees that he claimed to be unlawful. He claimed that overdrawn customers only cost the bank £2-50 but they have charged up to £39. The court case continues. Just under £36,000 was recovered by a businessman only known as Bob and reported by the BBC. He challenged the NatWest over alleged unlawful bank charges from bounced cheques from his company. Bob started legal action using the Government Money Claim Online service and the bank gave him the contested amount without admitting liability. In June 2007 a judge in Hull threatened to strike out claims of unfair bank charges by 20 claimants who were suing their banks for refund of unlawful bank charges. This started another precedence and some court judges have now found in favour of the banks. So sadly it is no longer 100% guaranteed to get a refund of unfair bank charges so much so that MartinLewis of www.moneysavingexpert.com is now advising his web site visitors to go to the Financial Ombudsman after approaching the bank directly for a refund. This is a free service and will act to settle disputes between banks and individuals. On Friday 27 July 2007 The Office of Fair Trading began a High Court bid. The OFT wanted to prove that bank charges for unauthorised overdrafts were unfair and that they would not accept the rules of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations nor accept a voluntary compliance. This test case, heard on legal principle, involved many high street banks and building societies such as the Royal Bank of Scotland group, Nationwide Building Society, NatWest, Lloyds TSB, HBOS, Barclays, Abbey National, Clydesdale and the Halifax. However the banks considered their charges for unauthorised overdrafts to be fair and have agreed to attend the High Court in an effort to settle the debate about bank charges. It is thought that the OFT and bank case may last over several years as it may well go to the Court of Appeal. The test case may even go to House of Lords so could take some time. In the meantime financial experts are advising that customers who feel they have a case should still apply for a refund of their unfair bank charges. This can take some time though because the Financial Services Authority (FSA) have given the banks and building societies permission to put on hold any unsettled claims until the court case is resolved. Offers from banks can still be accepted but any that are rejected will have to wit for the ruling before being settled. The Financial Ombudsman Service decided on the 27 July 2007 to suspend its work on overdraft cases until the outcome is known. The Citizens Advice Bureau are advising people to still make a claim so that their application is in the queue and will eventually be processed a little bit faster when the decision is known. Financial Journalist and money guru Martin Lewis who runs the MoneySavingExpert.com website estimated that the banks will save about £500 million each year that claims are put on hold. Experts are predicting that if the banks win then customers may not receive a refund and if the banks lose that free banking may end. On Thursday 24 April 2008 a High Court judge agreed that consumer contract regulations do apply to bank charges This means that fairness does count and that the OFT (Office of Fair Trading) can now assess is bank charges have been unfair. If this proves the case then the OFT will try and broker a deal with the banks over bank charges. If the two parties cannot agree then another court case may ensue. A case management meeting will take place on the 22 May 08 and the banks may well submit an appeal. Financial experts are hoping though that the regulator will remove the holding of the reclaiming unfair bank charges which was put in place to protect bank account holders from inconsistencies of law. |
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