What Amount Could You Be Reclaiming In Bank Fees?
December 31st, 2008What Amount Are You Entitled To Be Reclaiming In Bank Fees? Background To Reclaiming Bank Charges
In brief, you can reclaim your bank fees you have incurred within the previous 6 years. This includes unfair charges for going overdrawn, letters informing you about bounced cheques and failed direct debits and similar. If the action was likely to have only cost the bank a low amount and they have charged you a lot more, then there’s a chance of a reclaim. 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 reclaim for interest on the amount you are reclaiming - the interest you would have been credited on the money had it been in your account.
But how should you calculate how much the bank has charged you?
First, if you can refer to your bank statements for the past 6 years then you just need to go 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 unfair charges from there.
Finally, if all of these are not possible then you have to request the information from 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 not too expensive. But the final way is to write to the bank, quoting the Data Protection Act 1998, requesting them to tell you for all charges on the account:
• what the offence was
• the date of the offence / charge
• the amount of the charge
The bank has, by law, only 40 working days to get back to you. But it is allowed to charge you a fee not more than £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. To stop this, be sure that you tell the bank you are using the Data Protection Act 1998 to get a list of all charges.
Expenses
You can also reclaim expenses incurred in making your reclaim, although this can be best left in case the reclaim gets as far as the court stage and then used as a bargaining tool to stop that. Simply put, if the bank knows that you will accept repayment now, or repayment plus costs if they don’t accept that, then there’s a financial benefit to them to settle.
Reasonable costs include court costs and a case has also included costs of preparing the case. To include this, document 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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