Claim Back Your Unfair Bank Charges Today
Banks normally set a charge, between £20-£35, when you go into an “unauthorised overdraft.” They will also charge you £20-£35 for allowing a payment to go through such as cheques, standing orders or a direct debit when you do not have sufficient funds in your account and on top of that they may charge you rates of interest as high as 25% while you are over your overdraft limit.
The other problem that people face is that some banks only tell you that you have gone over your limit or a direct debit or cheque has bounced at the end of the month. In the meantime charges for bounced or authorised payments plus interest have been mounting up. Banks also, do not give you any grace period in which to pay off the amount of your unauthorised overdraft before they charge you.
Banks told the Treasury Select Committee last year that they had to pay for pursuing and collecting debts, speaking to customers and chasing payments. The fees charged to customers were decided by totaling all of these costs and then making assumptions about the number of customers that are going to incur charges during a specified time period.
Therefore, you as a customer can argue that the charges applied to your own account do not reflect the actual cost of running your account, but are a method of recovering global losses on personal banking. Banks can only impose charges, which are in proportion to their costs.
Remember that you could be a mere 1p over your limit and you’ll be charged, and even if it’s more you will pay the interest anyway. However, when looking at the banks costs you know and I know that it does not cost a computer £25 to write and send out an automated letter? Therefore the cost you are paying is not the cost of administering your account, instead, you are sharing the cost of every other customer of the bank has who goes into the red.
If the banks costs are not proportionate then it’s unlawful, and therefore you have the right to ask the bank for your money back.
