Is it fair to charge an OAP £39 because his account went 65p into the red when his pension arrived a day late? Or to grab the state benefits paid into an unmarried mum’s account leaving her £5 for food for the week? We think it's a scandal.

Penalty charges are widely believed to be illegal and banks have paid out a billion pounds already in compensation. Now that the banks have lost the first round of their High Court lawsuit and have had to appeal against the judgment of Mr Justice Smith we will press on with registering as many complaints as possible. We specialise in every type of penalty charge complaint and in payment protection complaints as well.

 

 

BANKS TAKEN TO COURT: CURRENT ACCOUNT COMPLAINTS ARE PUT ON HOLD

Compensation for your bank charges before the end of the year? The Court of Appeal’s recent judgment against the banks now makes this at least a possibility. Since July 2007 the outrageous default charges British banks take from a customer’s account when it goes 10p into the red or a cheque or direct debit bounces has been fought over in the High Court. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) who brought the action says they are unfair and the banks deny it. The first Judgment published in April 2008 smashed the banks’ arguments that consumer legislation did not apply to what you probably regard as unfair penalties but what your bank now calls “fees for services” or “unauthorised overdraft charges”. The banks immediately appealed but on 26th February 2009 the Court of Appeal upheld the earlier judgment and refused leave to appeal to the House of Lords. The banks still intend to appeal to the Lords which would delay a final judgment for another year.

Even if the Lords refuse to hear the case, the issue of what a fair charge should be is undecided. Until there is legal agreement on this point which the OFT has been investigating for over two years there will be no pay-outs so the legal delays are likely to drag on for at least 6-9 months. However if you are now in circumstances of acute financial hardship and have had about £500 of charges in the last year we might be able to treat your case as an emergency. Call us, if this is the case. CLAIMS has been at the forefront of the consumer fight-back on this issue for years and has already won hundreds of thousands of pounds for our clients who have been treated unfairly by their banks so the appeal verdict was very good news.

OTHER LATE PAYMENT PENALTIES HAVE NOT BEEN PUT ON HOLD

Only the default charges on personal current accounts were put on hold. We are still winning compensation for clients who had charges applied to business bank accounts (not affected by the court case at all) and also for clients who had credit card penalty charge claims. We are also winning claims against penalties on mortgage accounts, bank loans and store cards. None of these have been slowed down by the High Court action. We can push ahead and win them for you.

WHY YOU SHOULD COMPLAIN ABOUT BANK CHARGES AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

If you act fast we will lodge your complaint and force the bank to provide us with the last seven years of bank statements. We can then work out roughly what you are owed. When the High Court case is finally settled at the end of 2008 or perhaps a bit later (assuming, as we do, that the banks will lose and assuming that the OFT has ruled that current penalties are unfair which seems a foregone conclusion) the courts will probably lay down some compensation guidelines. We can then go for the jugular asking your bank to pay you the exact amount of money you are entitled to inclusive of any consequential loss that may apply and compound interest calculated at your highest borrowing rate.