What Amount Could You Be Claiming Back In Excessive Bank Charges? Background To Reclaiming Bank Charges
Basically, you can reclaim unfair bank fees you have incurred within the previous 6 years. This includes unfair fees for being overdrawn, letters informing you about bounced cheques and failed direct debits and the likes. If the action probably only cost the bank a small amount and they have charged you a lot more, then there’s a chance of a claim. If these charges have caused you to be debited with further charges or interest, then you will also have a case there.
Further to this, you can claim for interest on the amount you are claiming – the interest you would have been credited on the money had it been in your account.
But how will victims uncover how much the bank has charged you?
First, if you have kept your bank statements for the past 6 years then you just need to flick through them. If you haven’t kept them all, if you are registered for online banking (or can register) then you may be able to determine the fees from there.
Finally, if all of these are not possible then you have to ask your bank. Asking for copies of back statements can prove quite costly (and these charges DO NOT count as unfair!!!). But if you know exact dates of charges, then this might be an alternative. But the normal way is to write to the bank, quoting the Data Protection Act 1998, asking them to tell you for all charges on the account:
• what the offence was
• the date of the offence / fee
• the amount of the fee
The bank has, by law, only 40 working days to get back to you. But it is allowed to charge you a fee of up to £10, so it is worth while including in this letter the full £10 fee made payable to the bank.
If your bank tries to send you a copy of your statements they can try to charge you for that. So, take care that you tell the bank you are using the Data Protection Act 1998 to get a list of all fees.
Expenses
You can also claim expenses incurred in making your reclaim, although this can be best left in case the claim gets as far as the court stage and then used as a bargaining tool to prevent that. Simply put, if the bank is warned that you will accept repayment now, or repayment plus costs if they don’t accept that, then there’s a financial incentive to them to settle.
Reasonable fees include court costs and a case has also included costs of preparing the case. To reclaim this, keep a record of how much time you spend preparing your case then include a charge at £9.25 per hour (the legal entitlement).
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