How Much Are You Entitled To Be Reclaiming In Excessive Bank Charges? Background To Reclaiming Your Bank Charges
In short, you can reclaim your bank charges you have incurred within the previous 6 years. This includes charges for being overdrawn, letters informing you about bounced cheques and failed direct debits and the likes. 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 incur further fees or interest, then you will also have a case there.
As well as these, 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 find 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 charges from there.
Finally, if all of these are not possible then you have to approach 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, asking them to tell you for all charges on the account:
• what the offence was
• the date of the offence / charge
• the amount of the fee
The bank has, by law, only 40 working days to reply. 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 supply you a copy of your statements they can try to charge you for that. Therefore, take care 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 claim gets as far as the court stage and then used as a bargaining tool to prevent that. Simply put, if the bank is warned that you will accept repayment now, or repayment plus costs if they don’t accept that, then there’s a financial inducement to them to accept.
Reasonable costs include court costs and a case has also included costs of preparing the case. To reclaim this, keep 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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