financial independence

Bank Charges

Bank charges are like a penalty for a breach of contract imposed on you by the bank, when you opened your bank account you signed to say you accept these charges.

The reason these charges are unlawful is the sum imposed on you must reflect actual costs incurred by your bank the office of fair trading say this is about £1, most banks charge about £30 which far exceeds damages the bank suffered due to the breach of contract, making these charges a penalty.

When your bank charges you £30 for forgetting you had to pay the £5.00 Direct Debit for your sponsor a dog scheme the bankers are punishing you and this is unenforceable by the courts.

Heres the procedure to recovering bank charges

1. Find out how much your owed, get your last 6 years worth of bank statements and add up all them fees for bounced direct debits, if you accidentally went £1 over your overdraft limit you will probably find a £30 fee and then interest charged on top of that aswell.

2. Call your bank and tell them how much they owe you, tell them you want the fees refunded or you are willing to pursue the matter further. It is unlikely their going to give you a full refund, they might offer a part refund but they will deny their fees are unlawful.

3. Write to your bank letter templates can be found from the Consumer action group.

They will probably ignore this letter, write back trying to perspone the matter or write back saying their charges are lawful and you should accept it. You need to ignore them.

4. Final letter Write a final letter threatening court action, if they don't pay you will have to take them to court a small claims court for cases below £5000. Court is unlikely, if you lose you the case in the small claims court you will not need to pay costs.

If your bank do want to go to court and the claim is over £5000 you run the risk of having to pay the banks legal costs should you lose.

Heres the HM Court service website

Bank charge Solicitors

There are companies that will take care of the whole process for you and work on a no win no fee basis, this means you run no risk of incuring any additional cost and stand a much greater chance of getting the charges back from your bank.