First Trust Bank

[burkey38]

Hi

My wife and I have a joint account with the First Trust Bank in Northern Ireland.

I have obtained 6 years statements and the charges amount to £5500 before interest is added. Are charges older than 6 years from say July 2003 exempt? This is over the small claims limit of £2000 for Northern Ireland.

I already went to the small claims court in 2007 and had charges refunded on an account I held on my own, can I make another claim on this account since I signed some sort of "agreement" then?

Can my wife do it on her own or are both parties required to be named as claimants?

Should I claim just as I did before or go down the hardship route since we have mortgage arrears and other sebts and my wife is not working?

Sorry for all the questions but I'm a bit rusty on this!

Thanks


Gareth

[steven4064]

In England, you could claim back charges older than 6 years because you would claim that s32 of the limitations Act 10980 applies - ie you paid them by msitake thinking they were lawful and the bank concealed the fact that they were not. THe 6 years limitation period therefore starts when you discovered the mistake and concealment. NI may be different, sorry, I don't know.

[burkey38]

Right, received a reply from First Trust Bank in relation to financial hardship/overdraft charges.

This is what it said:

We acknowledge receipt of your financial hardship complaint and your unarranged overdraft charges complaint.

Your complaint about financial hardship

The matter is receiving our attention and is currently being investigated by this Department. Should you wish to provide additional information in support of your claim please complete and return the enclosed Common Financial Statement. If we do not receive the completed Statement within 10 days our investigation will be based on the information we currently hold.

We hope to be in touch with you shortly and for information purposes we have detailed below our complaints procedure:

1. You may express your dissatisfaction eithe orally or in writing.

2. Your complaint will be recorded and you will receive a written
acknowledgement within 5 business days at most, unless your
complaint is resolved within 1 day of receipt.

3. We will investigate your complaint promptly.

4. We will write to you within 4 weeks with either the result of our
enquiries or to advise that more time is needed to complete our
enquiries.

5. As a maximum we will write to you within 8 weeks with the results of
our enquiries, which will represent our final response.

6. You may pass the matter to the Financial Ombudsman if you are not
happy with our final response or if we have failed to advise you of the
outcome of our enquiries within 8 weeks of having received your
complaint.



Under the heading of Your complaint about unarranged overdraft charges the letter goes on to advise me of the OFT and test case but there is a paragraph thus:

As previously agreed with the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Financial Services Authority, the normal timetable for dealing with customers' complaints about unarranged overdraft charges will continue to remain on hold until January 2010 or until the courts have reached a decision, which ever is sooner. The FSA agreed to this, as long as the banks meet conditions that protect your rights.


Obviously I will complete the forms they provided me with and return them alng with further proof of payments were are making. I have already provided proof of mortgage and loan arrears in my claim letter.

What does everyone think will happen now?

Seems like they're saying yes you may be in financial hardship but you're gonna have to wait till the court case is over anyway?