Bank charge firms to be investigated

On the back of current investigations that are being carried out into the charges applied to customers’ accounts by banks in the UK by regulatory bodies, a further investigation will now be carried out into the various firms that have sprung up claiming to be able to help consumers to recover these charges – for a fee.

Regulators will now be looking into and scrutinizing these firms amidst fears that many consumers may be wasting their money on paying unnecessary fees for a task that they can carry out themselves free of charge, other than paying for copy statements.

UK regulators have been looking into unfair and unlawful charges that have been charged to customers’ accounts by banks for some months, and as a result of this many consumers have managed to claim back charges and fees going back up to six years, which in some cases has amounted to thousands. However, in light of the increasing number of people attempting to claim back fees from their banks a number of companies have sprung up with offers of assistance in exchange for fees.

These companies will now be investigated by the Ministry of Justice, and amongst the practices that will be looked into by the ministry is cold calling, where company representatives phone up consumers to try and talk them into letting them help claim back charges. However, consumers can just as easily do this themselves for the cost of a duplicate statement, and without having to pay any further charges.

In a recent case Lloyds Bank won a case where a man had tried to make a claim for his charges, and this was the first case to be won by a bank in relation to these charges. In other cases banks have failed to justify the charges, and consumers have been able to reclaim them. 

Tom Smith
24th May 2007

Tags: regulators, unfair, won, reclaim, case, charges

Bank accused of wasting court’s time

One of the leading UK banks has been accused of wasting time by a judge, and has been ordered to pay the court costs of a woman that sued the bank after trying to reclaim unfair and unlawful charges that the bank had applied to her account for going overdrawn, returned cheques, and unpaid direct debits.

Lloyds TSB will have to pay court costs of £85.41 after the Bristol County Court judge, Andrew Kearney, accused the bank of ‘acting unreasonably’.

The plaintiff, Vivien Lloyd, had tried to reclaim fees that amounted to £655, but wrote to the judge after the bank spent a year wasting time before offering to refund the fees. The judge stated that the bank had no intention of defending its charges in court, and therefore accused the bank of wasting time and ordered it to pay the court costs incurred by the plaintiff.

The plaintiff had initially written to Lloyds TSB in March 2006 to reclaim her charges, many of which had been accrued by her son, Gary.

She stated: “The terrible stress it put me through – it was driving me mad. I’m absolutely ecstatic – it was our living money, our food money.”

She added that the bank had continued to refuse the refund until earlier this year, with just one week to go before the court hearing, at which point Lloyds offered her a full refund of charges. 

A spokesperson for the bank stated:  “We are surprised by this judgement as we firmly believe we have the right to lodge a defense in any legal action brought against us. We have been unable to trace any notification from the court about this application for a further payment of £85 and so did not have an opportunity to challenge it before it was made.”

Tom Smith
4th May 2007

Tags: unfair, refund, appeal, defense, court, legal