Has anyone reclaimed their bank charges?

[Big_Dave]

Just curious. I did for the last 6 years and it worked out to a tidy little sum

Alot of press at the moment about bank charges being illegal. The banks can charge you, but it should not be a penalty and should reflect the cost to the bank. For example £30.00 for a bounced cheque cannot be justified when it costs the bank more like £4.50 to process this transaction (if that).

It took one letter to the HSBC requesting all my statements and one more letter requesting them to repay all default charges and unauthorized over draft charges for the last six years.

[RuralWeb]

I do it on every charge - the always pay up.

[george]

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/

[Big_Dave]

I'd urge anyone else to give it a go. Just review your statements for the last 6 years. If you don't have them then write to your bank and ask for them. They can't charge you more than £10.00 and must supply them within 40 days. If they try to charge you per statement then ask for a computer print out instead.

Add up all the charges for bounced cheques, unauthorized overdrafts etc and request it back. In every case so far it appears the banks agree to refund as a goodwill gesture.

You can find more info at :

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com

[acompton]

Are we talking about company accounts, personal accounts, or both?

Alan Compton
www.greenknightgames.co.uk
Great board games and cards games you won't find in the High Street

[Big_Dave]

For me I did it with my personal account. Might be worth doing it for other accounts too. The main drive seems to be getting refunds from personal accounts at the moment though. Be interested to hear from anyone who has achieved refunds from business accounts. The principal is the same.

[runningwolf]

I recently had a problem with my bank charging for processing cheques when I had insuffient funds in the account.
THis happened when I started to use Streamline for my payments, the bank accepted money for 2 weeks then someone there decided that the wrong sort code was being used and started to refuse the payments. They failed to inform me so I only found out when Streamline called to explain what what happening, meanwhile I had just sent a load of cheques out. I rang the Bank, they told me they would put some notes on the account so they would not bounce the cheques or charge me. They whacked me with 3 £20 charges the following week.
I rang them to complain and was told I would have to write a letter, a month letter they refunded the money but stated in a letter that they were in no way at fault but were doing it as an act of good will.

Cheers

Paul
www.theorderofinitiative.co.uk

[Legends]

If you are a sole trade then technically your bank account is a personal account.

I am in the process of claiming back my bank charges from Barc****

But I understand it can take several weeks if not months.

The trick is according to Martin Lewis (Money Saving Expert) is to not give up even if it means going to court. The banks do not want judgements in court as they will have to show their costs and prove that their charges are not unreasonable compared to their costs (estimate of bounced direct debit cost to bank £2.50, charge to customer £35.00) this will set a president so they will settle before it goes to court. Read the site in big_daves post its a mine of information and useful resources.

Its worth doing even after all its only a bit of time and a few stamps.

And lets face it if you can get something out of the bank - RESULT

Cheers

[runningwolf]

My charges were on a business account, I was surprised it only took a month to sort out