Hi everyone. Just so you know, this is not a "repost". This is me, Nik, Nicola, Black Sapphire, whatever you want to call me, giving you some really good advice.
I'm sure loads of you have heard about this. A short while ago the government stepped in to say that the charges banks lay upon their customers on a monthly basis is unfair and unlawful. They stated that the banks should oly charge what it actually costs them in admin costs to process the situation. This is usually no more than a couple of quid.
As you know, every time you go over your overdraft limit you incur a charge, however the amounts the banks have been charging for unarranged overdraft usage are ridiculous.
For instance at one point I was being charged £125 a month.
Now some of you may have heard that there is a way to get this money back. All you have to do is get a copy of your bank statements for the last SIX YEARS and work out exactly how much the bank has charged you. This may seem daunting, but it will only take you about half an hour and IT IS WORTH IT.
Then all you have to do is write to your bank, listing each charge and the date it was incurred . Here is a template of the letter you should write:
template letter 1
The bank will then write back to you. Often they will try and fob you off, trying to convince you that you have no case and they had every right to make those charges. This is not true. They don't have a leg to stand on.
If at this point they do not co-operate, then you can threaten to take them to small claims court. A letter like this should be written:
template letter 2
At this point they fold. They don't want to go to court coz its not worth the court fees. They also know that they aren't going to win, which means not only will they have to pay your court fees for you, but that they will have lost face in the public eye. If one person can beat them in court, so can lots of other people.
So this is when they send you a nice letter with the heading "Dear Sir/Madam, without prejudice", which is their way of denying any responsibility. That's one the thing the bank won't do. They will not accept any blame at all. But they will do is make you an offer. Sometimes if you are lucky they will offer you the full amount, but in most cases they will offer you a reduced amount.
It is then up to you whether you accept it or not.
Ok, now for the example and PROOF that this works.
This is me. You know me. This isn't some scam that gets circulated around CherryTap every day. This actually happened to me, Black Sapphire; Nicola Rosemary Dalton.
I asked my bank to send me details of the bank charges I had incurred over the last 6 years. At first they didn't want to co-operate and told me they couldn't pull that information up on the screen. Instead they send me a hard copy of every statement over the last 6 years. That was a heavy envelope I can tell you. Why did they do this? Easy. They figured I probably couldn't be bothered to trawl through it all.
They were wrong.
So I got me a highlighter pen and sat down one night went through every single transaction, higliting every single bank charge. It took me about half an hour and the total was a staggering £941
So I wrote a letter to the bank manager. At first I heard nothing. Then a few weeks later I had a letter saying that they were under no obligation to process my request, as I had given them the information in the wrong format. You have to list each charge seperately for them you see.
I left for a few days meaning to get back to it later.
Another couple of weeks went by and completely out of the blue a letter arrived from my bank saying that
"We feel we had every right to charge you said amount, it is in the terms and conditons and that if you take us to court, we feel sure we would win."
However in the very next paragraph
"However in the interest of commercialism and in good faith we can make you the offer of £829"
Or worst to that effect.
Basically they had caved. They were giving me the bulk of the money back.
SO PLEASE if you've had ridiculous bank charges, do something about it. Ask for it back. It DOES work.
