Thread: Rights over where refund is paid??

Hi

I'm in the middle of an ongoing battle with Halifax to reclaim bank charges, they have started to make offers of settlement but are sending forms for the refund to be paid directly into my suspended Halifax account.
I am on a debt management plan and as a result changed from Halifax to Barclays to prevent Halifax offsetting anything, my Halifax account is open as I am repaying them an overdraft on my dmp but it is suspended. If I accept an offer of settlement from Halifax can I insist that it is either paid into my Barclays account or sent by cheque? I am in financial hardship and if possible would rather have use the settlement money rather than have it swallowed up in my suspended account.
Any help would be appreicated as I'm not sure where I stand on this.

Thanks

Martin, unlike First right of appropriation, you do not have the right of appropriation on a bank charges refund. The Right of Set Off over rides this, however it might be worth seeing the final response letter and working on the basis of that with the fos or bank.
The argument is to start with about how there were insufficient funds in the account at the time that payments bounced, ie loss of hours/job and the way the charges took money away from priority creditors and the effects that had on the ability to pay them.
I would say that the approach is one where you are claiming the full amount but asking for say priority debt arrears to be paid plus any amount that takes the account under the limit and suspension of the charges for say 3 months to allow you the chance to budget without charges and reorganise your finances. If they say NO, then depending on the final response it can be arguable with the FOS(if you have final response) then approximate timescale is 12 weeks tops on a clean case where all the paperwork is submitted.

Originally Posted by MARTIN3030

YB I did not say there was an automatic right to appropriation-I said if it was in Court they would be given it automatically-and it would be up to the bank to counterclaim in their defence.
I said "You have the option to consider"

The questions asked were meant to determine if the overdraft is made up of charges or parts of it are.
If this was the case then the OP can offer good reasoning as to why they should be given ROA.

Why not ask about priority debt arrears? They are the cornerstone usually with Hardship claims and the way the charges have worked against the individual by taking funds away from them.
fos consider Right of Set Off above right of appropriation on bank charges claims.
If the bank lowered the overdraft at the same time as they refunded then yep that is challengeable with FOS but their view is that refunds under hardship should go into the account they came from.

Just for clarification, I spoke with an ombudsman who asked that I not name them specifically about appropriation of refunds cos it annoyed the living daylights out of me that banks took the first bite of the cherry under hardship and didn't give a stuff about the priority debt arrears. In fact I had a couple of conversations with the fos specifically on this topic which moved onto how the FOS deal with hardship, timescales, and paperwork involved and their overall view as to how hardship works and what they would be looking at. I appreciate that you have had a claim which is something I haven't done.

Thank you for the responses. I'm not claiming under financial hardship at the moment. I am trying to claim back about £1000 in charges and am currently being offered about a third which I am not sure I will accept at this point. My overdraft is about £3500 and I am paying it off at just over £100 per month. I have not incurred any bank charges in the last year or so meaning the overdraft wasn't caused or increased by any bank charges, they are older charges I am claiming back. If I did accept an offer it will not clear my overdraft. I do appreciate it is better to have this debt reduced than get nothing at all but I have some family debts which would be nice to pay off. I don't feel that it is right that they can dictate what a 'settlement' should go towards.