[maxeh]

Well I saw this topic and signed up just to post as I thought I might be able to help.

You are correct to say that the bank charges over and above the cost of your contractual breach is in fact illegal. There are many people currently making claims to banks for charges dating back as far as 6 years by requesting statements for the last 6 years using the £10 Data Protection Act method. full details are on the bank action group site; http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/

My boyfriend is currently in the process of claiming £790 from HSBC, of which they have already offered 95% of this back in settlement but without admiting liability. (if they did that they would have to refund a lot of people without question :wink: ) As this isn’t the 100% he has issued them a Letter Before Action now, and intends to start small claims court proceedings against them for the full amount. Once this claim is in, he is also entitled to something like 8% interest per year, pro rata from the day each charge was applied, this for him is another £120 or so.

The nature of small claims proceedings means that the worst case scenario is that they bother to pay for a soliciter to attend (which is highly unlikely anyway) to which they can’t claim the cost of the soliciter even if they do win, therefore he would only lose the amount it cost to put the court action through (£50 for small claims court iirc, and u can start the action online using moneyclaimonline).

If you head over to the bank action group site u’ll see lots of people whove claimed THOUSANDS from various banks and credit card companies for “illegal” charges. 99.99% of the time the bank will settle out of court for the full amount it seems!

Hope this helps :)

max

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