Thread: Donny84 vs HSBC

no advice?!

Donny no advice not because no one wants to answer,but morseo very likely because most would not know HOW to answer.
From what you are asking I can clearly see that you have not done any reading nor studying of the situation in relation to unauthorised charges on business accounts.
For you to be thinking about issuing a Court claim in the absence of this is ludicrous and very dangerous.
In short,the test case was primarily concerned with personal current accounts and unfair consumer terms.
However, in the second part of the main case,the Judge ruled that he did not consider that charges were capable of being regarded as penalties under common law.
These findings were after looking at terms and conditions from a number of banks including HSBC.
In the Case of HSBC,those terms related to periods from July 2001 to December 2006.
I must stress that these appear to be terms and conditions and associated price lists for personal current accounts,student and graduate accounts,
and premier price lists.

I have always advised that business account holders need to read the judgements that Judge Smith handed down in their banks case,together with looking at those clauses and wording that his decisions were based on.
It is then your job to compare these with those terms and conditions (if applicable) that applied to your business account and see if you can show distinction.
We have also suggested looking at other areas outside the charges themselves with may offer a further route to follow-these include unfair relationships,conflict of interest,and fiduciary duty.
I understand all this will be a lot to take in-but before you even think of filling in any N1,you need to be clear of how to proceed.
Sorry that unfortunately I cant say much more.
Maybe you could give a little more info about your charges.
1.When did you open your account ?

2.What sort of account was it ? ie sole trader/limited ?

3.How much are the charges ?

4.Is the account still open ?

5.Has there been any recovery actions and if so who by ?

6.What paperwork have you got insofar as statements/letters from your bank maybe from when the charges were imposed /a copy of your original agreement/terms and conditions /etc etc.

Hello, thanks for your reply.
I have done some reading on this but to be honest at the moment I am just so fed up with trying to get this issue sorted. I have spent months fighting with HSBC and get no satisfaction at all. I have even asked if they could freeze the charges for a couple of months to help me get on top of it all again, no need to say they refused.

1- I opened the account in Jan 08
2- It is a sole trader
3- the charges are £2004 (not a large amount for most businesses but to me it is a HUGE amount
4- The account is still open
5- Not sure what you mean by recovery actions, I have sent countless letters to the bank asking for my charges back, and have also spent many hours on the telephone to various people of various levels at HSBC
7- I have got all my statments from the date my account was opened, I have a letter from the bank saying they will under no circumstances refund my charges and the best they can offer is to close the account. I also have my original paperwork from when I opened the asccount, including the T&C's

Ok fair enough.
Your account was opened in 2008 ? So this was well into the test case and therefore its likely that your account would have been running under new terms and conditions that we saw the banks putting out in an effort to thwart the OFTs arguements,
You should have a look at these and see what it says in there about charges-how do they refer to them ?
Does your terms and conditions appear specific to how your account was operating ?
Is there any distinctions within the terms of consumer or business ?