How to Claim Charges - Legal Beagles - Guarding your Consumer Rights

How do I reclaim unfair bank charges?

This is a very simple guide to the basic procedures involved in reclaiming your penalty charges from the banks.

Please be aware that each claim will be different, and the forums are here to enable you to collect information and ask for help and advise on aspects of your claim.

These first steps are the same regardless of the waiver and the test case.

Simple Bank Charges Claim
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STEP ONE

In order to reclaim your charges back from the banks you first need to know how much they have charged you.Charge Descriptions

The best way to retrieve this information, if you don't already hold records of all your bank statements, is to send a Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act 1998.

Dear Sir/Madam

SAR (Subject Access Request)
FULL NAME : FULL ADDRESS : POSTCODE
Any past names/addresses
Account numbers (if you know them)

I formally request that you forward me a true record of any Data held by your organisation relating to myself for any and all accounts held currently or in the past with your company. This should include, but not be limited to all transaction lists, agreements
This request should include any Data held for more than 6 years as under the Data Protection Act there is no time limit for information requested.
If you do not hold Data for a period longer than 6 years I also request confirmation of this in writing along with your methods used for disposal of such information to comply with the Data Protection Act stating the name and contact information of your registered Data Controller and Code Compliance Officer.

I enclose the statutory maximum fee of £10. You have 40 days from receipt of this request in which to return to me the information requested , securely and in legible condition.

Please note that the above address is the one registered with your organisation and which you have previously found to be acceptable.

Yours faithfully,

(signature)

(name)

This entitles you to receive ALL data held by the bank about YOU as an individual.

It will include TRANSACTION LISTS, but does not specifically cover BANK STATEMENTS - however you will often receive copy statements in fulfilment of the Subject Access Request

The banks are allowed to charge a maximum fee of £10 in order to fulfil your request. We recommend sending this amount, by cheque made payable to your bank, with the initial request. This is regardless of how many accounts you have with the bank.

The bank has, under the Data Protection Act 1998, a maximum period of 40 days to comply with your request.

We would recommend obtaining a proof of posting. If the bank do not comply within this period you will be able to take further action and report the bank to the ICO Information Commissioner's Office

A template letter is available in the templates library >>> Non Compliance Letter

Further reading about the Data Protection Act 1998 and can be found Here

Click for a Full copy of the Data Protection Act 1998<<Click

ADDITIONALLY - we now recommend sending a seperate letter at the same time to request copies of your terms and conditions from the bank at the time of opening your account. These are not covered by the DPA but we believe a request at this stage, followed up at court stage with a more formal request will stand us in good stead to counter arguments should we go to hearings.... template letter for this is Here

STEP TWO

Once you have received your data from the Bank you will need to work out what you have been charged throughout the history of your account(see Charge Descriptions)

Sit down with a cup of tea Refund

(save the wine for after Overdraft Fees

) and a highlighter pen or two and go through the main transaction lists. We wouldn't recommend relying on CHARGE NOTIFICATION summaries.

All banks differ in the way these charges are displayed on the statements. There is a full list Here of charges titles and what you can and can't claim. For simplicity you can claim the standard £25 - £38 charges incurred by you when you have had a payment returned, or paid from your account when funds were not available. Returned Direct Debit Fee / Paid Referral Fee / Returned Cheque Fee are the most obvious ones to claim.

The standard time period for reclaiming is 6 years, although this can be arguable.

You cannot claim back fees for a particular service on your account. Examples would be a monthly fee for having a special kind of account that entitles you to ''benefits'' Bank charges

- such as an Advantage Gold account fee. You should also ignore any debit interest for the moment.

Once you have highlighted the charges the bank have taken from your account you will need to enter them in a Spreadsheet

When you write to the bank to ask them to return this money to you, you will need to include a list of the charges you are reclaiming. The simplest way to produce this list is to use a Schedule of Charges

There is an example spreadsheet and a library of different spreadsheets you can use Schedule of charges

Enter your charges in DATE ORDER, with the description of the charge as notified by the bank, and the amount.

The list should total itself up at the end.

STEP THREE

Write to the bank and ask them, nicely Reclaim

, to repay you the charges they have taken from you.

There is a TEMPLATE LETTER for this Here - this is your Preliminary Request For Payment

Dear Sir/Madam

Refund of Insufficient Funds Charges Request

ACCOUNT NUMBER (S): xxxxxxxx

I request a refund of the various unauthorised overdraft charges which you have taken from my account over the last XX years.

Further to recent publicity covering the High Court Test Case between the Office of Fair Trading and the Banks, I am now aware that these charges may be considered unlawful.

The High Court has decided that recent charges applied to my account can be assessed for fairness under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999.

I believe these charges to be unfair as the terms which apply them fall under the remit of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999, Schedule 2 - paragraph (e) which states that contract terms which have the object or effect of ''(e) requiring any consumer who fails to fulfil his obligation to pay a disproportionately high sum in compensation'' may be regarded as unfair.

I calculate that you have taken £ XXXX from my account in these charges. Additionally, you have charged me interest on those charges which I estimate at £XXX. As I believe I have been deprived of this money I also expect an interest element to be added to each sum, at a suitable rate and using a suitable calculation method, as a compensatory gesture. I have calcuated this sum at 8% per annum, as you will see from the attached schedule of charges, therefore the total that I require you to repay to me is £xxxx.

You have 14 days to reply to me, accepting unconditionally my request in principle and letting me know a date by which I will receive my refund.

Yours faithfully,

We recommend sending TWO letters to the bank asking for your money - in the Civil Procedure Rules (the procedures which the courts and claims are governed by) - Pre Action Protocols state that they are '' to enable parties to avoid litigation by agreeing a settlement of the claim before the commencement of proceedings'' - It also states that a period of 21 days is considered a reasonable period in which to negotiate settlement and inform the other party of the intention to take court action should the issue not be resolved.

This first letter allows the bank 14 days to respond to you before you take further action.

If they have replied without offering a full refund, or not replied at all, within the 14 days, you should move to Step Four - Letter before Action

If the bank reply to your letter with the standard complaints procedure asking you allow 8 weeks for their internal complaints team to fully investigate your claim - still continue and send the second letter after 14 days.

The bank may well at this stage reply to you quoting details of the OFT v Banks test case and infoming you that your claim will be on hold until the outcome of the test case.

If you feel you are suffering from financial difficulty then you can write back to them and ask them to consider your case under hardship. This will mean they have to continue investigating your complaint. If you are in hardship then we strongly advise posting on the forums and we can help you with trying to get your case heard.

GUIDELINES FOR HARDSHIP CASES

If you are in financial difficulty then the bank should still look at your complaint in a timely manner as outlined by the FSA. This is generally 8 weeks to a final decision.

You may be considered in hardship for the purpose of reclaiming charges if;

Quote:

FSA Waiver Guideline for recognising Financial Difficulty

WAIVER JULY 2008 to JANUARY 2009

2.In making an assessment of financial difficulty the firm will take into account:

a.evidence of changes in lifestyle, including loss of employment; disability; serious illness; imprisonment; relationship breakdown; death of a partner; starting a lower paid job; parental/carer leave; and starting full-time education;

b.evidence of the following events:

i.items repeatedly being returned unpaid due to lack of available funds;

ii.failing to make loan repayments or other commitments;

iii.discontinuation of regular credits;

iv.notification of some form of insolvency or court proceedings;

v.regular requests for increased borrowing or repeated rescheduling of debts;

vi.making frequent cash withdrawals on a credit card at a non-promotional rate of interest; and

vii.repeatedly exceeding a credit card or overdraft limit without agreement (and, in this regard, where a complainant has incurred over £500 in unauthorised overdraft charges in the previous 12 months, that is to be treated as indicative of financial difficulty).

If you fit this criteria you should write a personal letter to the bank asking them to look at your case.

The bank does not HAVE to refund you any charges because you are deemed in hardship, they may chose to offer a refund, however they also may stop future charges on your account and assist you with any difficulties managing your account you may have. The should also, as the account is in dispute, back off on any collections activity regarding overdrafts.

The best advice we can give is to make your own thread outlining your case and the team here will help you in any way they are able.

If you complain now your complaint will be recorded and stored by your bank but you will not receive a response until after the test case is completed. It is currently at the House of Lords and the next hearing is the 23rd June.

Even if the OFT wins, banks may not be required to automatically give refunds to all customers so we recommend that you still put in a claim for a refund now even though it will not be dealt with until later. You should also keep all your bank statements as a record of any unauthorised overdraft and returned item charges applied between now and when the test case is resolved.

If you have questions about making a complaint or during the reclaiming process, please feel free to visit the free support forum where you will find hundreds of other people reclaiming their charges and dealing with all manner of other debt and consumer issues.

We're Happy to Help