Don’t pay through the nose to claim back your bank charges

Experts have been urging bank customers to think carefully before allowing charge reclaim companies to deal with reclaiming bank and credit card charges, stating that often the customer ends up paying a huge chunk of the amount reclaimed in fees to the company. Experts state that some customers are being charged hundreds of pounds but all the company does is fill out some forms that the customer could very easily do themselves.

Bank charge reclaim companies typically charge between 15% and 40% of the amount reclaimed, and this can come to a huge amount for those reclaiming large sums of money. However, officials state that all the companies do to earn this chunk of cash is fill out a few forms and write a few letter where necessary, which can be done with ease by the claimant using the variety of resources available online.

One woman who was reclaiming her bank charged explained that she used a reclaim company called Charge Claims to try and claim back her money, as she wanted to save herself time and hassle. She did receive returned charges of £950 from the Halifax, but was shocked to receive an invoice for £380 from Charge Claims. She stated that the company only filled out a few forms and it took a year for the claim to be sorted out.

She stated:  ‘…I’m still angry that they didn’t advise me of their level of charges from the outset when my claim was first initiated with them. I feel a 40% charge is an extortionate amount to pay, just for having them write a few letters on my behalf. My claim never went to court so I really do not feel that the work Charge Claims did on my behalf warranted such a large fee. I now just wish I had been more circumspect when I was signing the original agreement. If I had known then that I could have handled the whole claim myself in a couple of hours, I would never have gone through a third party agency.’

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Tags: company, sums of money, pay, online, agency