What Amount Could You Be Reclaiming In Unfair Bank Charges? Background To Reclaiming My Bank Charges

Basically, you can reclaim your bank fees 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 similar. If the action could only reasonably have only cost the bank a small 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 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 earned on the money had it been in your account.

But how do you find how much the bank has charged you?

First, if you still have your bank statements for the past 6 years then you just need to look 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 none of these are possible then you have to ask your bank. Asking for copies of back statements can prove quite costly (and these charges DO NOT count as !!!). But if you know exact dates of charges, then this might be an alternative. But the normal 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 / fee

• 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 send you a copy of your statements they can try to charge you for that. Therefore, ensure 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 is told 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 accept.

Reasonable costs include court costs and a case has also included costs of preparing the case. To include 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).

Start saving money with auto loan calculator right here, right now. Just few tips can help you a lot.

Filed under: Finance

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!