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I have been reading this forum with interest for a while and while I will not bore you with the details of what RBS as The One Account have done to me over the past 12 months, it is safe to say that getting my money back would not come close to making me happy. I have therefore started a different approach with the bank which you might find interesting and with my solicitor we are working on getting them in to court to admit how much their charges cost rather than a refund.
By the way I didn't go down the route of getting statements, I just ask the Bank to tell me how many times they have charged my account. This they did in writing within 48 hours.
If you are interested I will let you know how it turns out
Letter sent this week:
Dear Sirs
Our Clients:
Account number:
We are instructed by xxxxxxxx to recover unlawful charges that have been levied on their account over the last 6 years.
We have been handed your letter dated 30th June 2006 which confirms that charges have been applied to this account on 224 occasions in relation to direct debit refusals.
The charge applied on each of these occasions is a flat rate of £20.00. This means that you have taken a total of £4,480.00 since the account was opened in October 2000.
As you know, on the 5th April 2006 the Office of Fair Trading announced that default charges which are set at more than £12.00 will be presumed to be unfair and unenforceable under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 in absence of any specific proof to the contrary.
It is accepted that a direct debit refusal will result in certain limited administrative costs but we do not see how you can justify charging £20.00 on each occasion.
We are therefore prepared to offer you £1.00 for each direct debit refusal to reflect your costs in return for a full reimbursement of the balance (£4,256.00).
If you are not prepared to accept this offer, please can you provide us with a full Breakdown of how your charge is calculated together with your written reasons as to why this is justified? We can then assess whether the penalties levied on our clients’ account do reflect the bank’s actual costs.
Please refund the balance charges to our clients’ account within the next 14 days.
Alternatively, if you are not prepared to accept our request, please provide your written calculation of the administrative costs of refusing direct debit instructions by not later than [calculate 14 days].
Please note that if we do not hear from you in the specified time period, we will have no alternative but to commence court proceedings without further notice to you.
If Dave and Bankfodder have tried to get it into court and failed, I cant see what difference it will make, unless a Judge sees fit to forward it for a test case it will not set a precedent either.
Also im guessing you are paying a handsome sum to the solicitor too, do you think you could handle the claim yourself? Just thinknig out loud that you are paying someone when you can do tis yourself with the help here (and its free)
But I am not looking for them to refund the full amount, we are looking for them to refund the overpayment amount. I am being very understanding and saying that I know there is a real cost to them, all they have to do is let me know how much it is and I will pay it.
If they settle out of court for the amount I am claiming, then I will expect all charges for my account in future to be not more than a £1 per charge which is the amount I have offered in my letter plus I will not be signing any kind of non disclosure agreement so if they do, do this I will ensure that it gets a lot of notice.
I am not saying that this will work, but it has to be worth a try
Hi Lou,
Thanks for your email, I did look through the site and couldn't find an approach like this, if I am wrong please point me in the right direction.
The solicitor help is free, as they look after my company's legal stuff they are providing me with a little assistance with letters and stuff for nothing as they are very interested in this as well (if it does get to court think of the publicity for them)
They will not disclose their charges, the last time a judge ordered a bank to disclose within 14 days they paid up and cra**ed themselves. They would never tell anyone, infact I bet they dont know themselves, can you imagine what would happen if the disclose this? They have huge teams of legal bods working to stop this sort of thing.
Also If you do not agree to their charges they will either close you account or advise you to go elsewhere, as all banks charge no matter where you go.
I expect you will get quicker reloution to this as you have use a solicitor, but at the end of the day they will pay up and that will be the end of it like so many on here.
The only way to change it permanently is to set a precedent or for the government /OFT to get involved.
Worse case - they close the account and demand we repay.
We have other bank accounts which wages can be paid to, so no concerns for day to day living.
They will then have to take us to court to get money back for mortgage. But for what - over refusal to agree to their charges?
But I am not refusing to pay their charges I am only asking them to provide me with the information to prove that they are keeping within legal guidelines. If they can do that and it is that same amount as they currently charge me then I will pay it. It might make for an interesting court case if they wanted to go down this route.
A different way - aiming to go to court
for a while and while I will not bore you with the details of what RBS
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