Bank Charges - who has claimed them and have you been successful?

I requested my statements for the last 6 years a while back. I got them last week and have just gone throught them. On a few of them, I have had direct debits refused and a £25 charge levied. But get this, there was more than sufficient amounts on the dates in question to cover the direct debits. Also, I have had charges levied against me in the past which I have had refunded, but because the original charge took me into an unathorised overdraft situation, I have had £25 charges levied for that which were not refunded.

I also got a letter last week saying there was "suspicious activity" on my account. I rang the bank and they have suspended my account as a result. Nothing goes in, nothing goes out. I got a letter today to say a direct debit was refused. The payment was for £17 but I was charged £34 for the payment being refused.

Up until now I was sceptical about this "reclaiming bank charges" lark, but I am just about fed up to the back teeth with the way I'm treated by my bank, so I'm going ahead with my claim, which will total almost £1,000 before I add the 8% interest on.

Has anyone else here reclaimed their charges? How did you get on?

[dazzafact]

Been discussed loads mate.

Try the search tool at the top, it's loadsa help.

[Jules]

My Bank is also my employer.
They have returned an unbelieveable amount of money in unjustified charges over the last few months. It's truly scary!

It would be unsusal not get the money back.

There's a down side though.... they have today announed 1000 job cuts 'cos they ain't making enough money!

I saw this coming, and I'm very likely to be affected.

[danmc_82]

My girlfriend claimed about 2 weeks ago, they owed her £1,600 but they wrote to her and offered £1,400, so she took it. Ive wrote a letter off to my bank in the last couple of days, not sure how much id get, maybe only £200 but better than nothing. Hope things go well for you Jules.

[markdugdale]

Use the instructions on here.
Sent about 3 letters and made 1 phone call and claimed back 100% of the charges.

How does it affect future charges if your reclaim is successful?

[markdugdale]

It dosn't. The bank refunds the money to avoid a visit to court, where it may have to prove that each charge was just.

You could keep repeating the process again and again. Read the information on the Money Saving Expert website, lot's of people have had plenty of experence of obtaining refunds.

[stevefish69]

I recently tried to claim £610 back from Abbey. They have responded with a £50 "Good will gesture" which i have refused.

I have now taken my complaint to the Financial ombudsman service instead of jumping straight in at the deep end with court costs ect.

[rude-dog]

abbey are the worse to get your money back from! i recently got £2400 back from them (total claim £2600) i settled out of court early due to getting hacked off with waiting for them to cough up

it took me 8 months in total and i was pretty prompt with all letters at the various stages of the claim.

don't give up! they pay out eventually! my advice would be to push it to the moneyclaim site asap, thats the only way they'll take you seriously


good luck

[LFC_SL]

How do people get fined so much? Or is an agreed overdraft limit not worth the paper its written on or something? Please do enlighten me

[markdugdale]

Lot's of direct debits and poor money management did it for me, but I'm much better now. Not had a charge for over two years.

[stevefish69]

Originally Posted by rude-dog

my advice would be to push it to the moneyclaim site asap, thats the only way they'll take you seriously

The claim form was filled in and sent off within an hour of their letter landing on the doorstep

Originally Posted by LFC_SL

How do people get fined so much? Or is an agreed overdraft limit not worth the paper its written on or something? Please do enlighten me

All of my charges were due to the extra time that it took Abbey to transfer funds from my Barclays account to the Abbey account. Normally the mess up happened around Bank holiday weekends where they took up to 7 or 8 days to process the transfer the funds.

By the time i noticed that they had taken £165 in one month, it had already created a knock on effect for the next month and so on.

Strange thing is that Abbey were actually earning interest on my £1500 standing order from the 27th of each month when the funds were taken from my other account. I do have an agreed overdraft, but not for the amount that they were delaying.

I too have not had any charges for over 3 years now, as i soon clocked their game and moved a lot of direct debits further into the month to allow for them being slow.

[signs]

There was a program on the Jeremy Vine show a few months ago about this, and the financial guy (can't remember his name) said if you do go down the route of trying to claim money back from the the bank, make sure you open an account somewhere else first as the bank you are getting the money back from will almost certainly close your account .

[rude-dog]

Originally Posted by signs

There was a program on the Jeremy Vine show a few months ago about this, and the financial guy (can't remember his name) said if you do go down the route of trying to claim money back from the the bank, make sure you open an account somewhere else first as the bank you are getting the money back from will almost certainly close your account .

the laws changed on this one now and the ombudsman are now stopping the banks from closing your account after claiming