talkmagic.co.uk

Yes, got a letter from me bank saying I was £3.82 overdrawn...

so they fined me £27...

so then I got told I was £30.82 overdrawn

Vicious circle eh?

It's also an unfair amount to charge as many customers have found out when they challenged these level of charges. The banks won't want to be taken to court so will settle beforehand. There are standard letters on places like the GMTV website which you can use to make this challenge and you should get all the fees cancelled with, perhaps, a bit of additional credit for the inconvenience. Go for it Tiger!

Or through prudent financial planning he could have not gone over drawn.

Markdini wrote:Or through prudent financial planning he could have not gone over drawn.

True .... but what's done is done .

An excellent website that I used in the past, to help a friend claim over £800 back fron the bank, is:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/bank-charges

I really can't praise that website enough...http://www.moneysavingexpert.com for general financial advice for free

However in terms of bank charges reclaiming I found more in-depth advice at
http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/

There's lots of reading and writing to be done but if like me you've been diabolic with money management over the years it's worth the hassle!

Beware though, I think there's a trial case on-going at the moment which may change the way you do the reclaiming the two sites should cover this though.

Cheers.

It's true that there is currently a test case going through between the banks and the Office of Fair Trading into bank charges.

Until the case is settled you now cannot begin the process of reclaiming charges from banks and whether you can in the future will depend on the outcome of the test case.

The outcome will make National news and is expected towards the end of January so anticipate hearing something around February to March.

If the banks win then they won't need to reimburse any charges made but if they lose then it's possible that they will have to repay every penny of the charges to everyone, whether they have submitted a claim or not. As a minimum they will need to repay those who have claimed and in full - not some reduced amount that they have plucked out of the air. hold fire for a few weeks to see.

Finally, get the £30 into your bank asap as if you are still £30 overdrawn after a few days then they can often add more charges up to a maximum of £170 per month, depending on which bank you are with.

You can also reply to the bank and charge them for your time.

markdini is right in a way but it's rare to get lost time settled in these cases...but if you don't ask...you don't get...with a minor indiscretion such as this, I'd contact the bank directly and explain their charging structure is what's causing the current state of your account I got the charge reversed this way.

As for the test case, they have done the same with Credit cards a few years ago and the test case proved that at max they should be charging 12 for fees so they had to repay everyone back the money for each indiscretion charge, however they were well within the right to charge; the point of the law is they are not allowed to profit from the charge, I still think £12 is higher.

In my mind all this action, although definitely worthwhile, will eventually lead to us not having free banking and us operating more like Australia and I'm not sure, but I think the US is the same you have an account fee monthly...Ozzie banks seem to charge you left, right, and centre from my brothers recent experience!

That's right. If they can't charge people for going overdrawn, everyone will end up paying more for banking. Shame we can't have a system that simply stops them making so much money.

My rant about 'virtual monopolies' will have to wait for another time, but in brief, there are certain services where there is no effective competition. This is either because the market is effectively stitched up (like banks), or because there simply isn't any chance of genuinely competing businesses (you couldn't have two different rail companies running services on the same line, competing for similar times of journeys).

The concept of the free market is used to hold off full regulation, but in truth there's no market at all. If you need to travel by rail to, say, Manchester from London, you need Virgin Rail. If you want to get paid your salary in many jobs, you need a bank account.

It's very different from brands of cola, where you could just refuse to drink them.

Oops, not that short, but I'll leave it there.

Heh, no, I agree. But the other option is enforced national communism

Beard - you're going to uni, right? So surely you're old enough to open a student account, which gives you £1600 overdraft to play with and you can forget about it all until 3 years down the line...!

Farlsborough wrote:Beard - you're going to uni, right? So surely you're old enough to open a student account, which gives you £1600 overdraft to play with and you can forget about it all until 3 years down the line...!

At which point you get reminded by the debt by it gently brushing into your face like a juggernaut

Kidding...hey it's just money right...can't take it with you when your gone so I've started spending someone elses!!!! Ahhhh now I see the flaw in my logic!

I would highly recommend First Direct. They'll treat you right, yes, sirree.

Can;t open a student account until june/july