How Much Could You Be Reclaiming In Excessive Bank Fees?
What Amount Are You Entitled To Be Claiming Back In Bank Charges? Background To Reclaiming Your Bank Charges
In brief, you can reclaim unfair bank charges you have incurred within the previous 6 years. This includes excessive fees for being overdrawn, letters informing you about bounced cheques and failed direct debits and similar. If the action could only reasonably have only cost the bank a little amount and they have charged you significantly more, then there’s a chance of a reclaim. If these fees have caused you to be hit by further fees 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 do victims calculate 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 excessive fees from there.
Finally, if none of these are possible then you have to approach your bank. Asking for copies of back statements can prove quite expensive (and these fees DO NOT count as excessive!!!). But if you know exact dates of fees, then this might be an alternative. But the usual way is to write to the bank, quoting the Data Protection Act 1998, requesting them to tell you for all fees 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 respond. 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. To prevent this, ensure that you tell the bank you are using the Data Protection Act 1998 to get a list of all fees.
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 see 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 fees include court fees and a case has also included costs of preparing the case. To reclaim this, make 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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