My wife has just received settlement for bank charges levied against her. She went over her overdraft limit by only £50 (although her statement never showed more than £12 o/d). She was overdrawn for less than 24 hours, until her wages were paid in. Her wages are regularly paid into that account at the same time each month.

For this crime she was charges £148! A large proportion of her monthly income.

After getting nowhere with the branch, and 2 letters to the complaints centre in Dunfermline, she filed a small claim.

They then settled for £158 plus £28 which had previously been returned. Thus also covering the fee for the small claim.

Easy...although the paperwork for the Scottish courts is a bit of a pain, having said that the Shrieffs clerk was very helpful.

HBOS inefficiency worked to our advantage!

After recieving the settlement, she then contacted the court to dismiss the claim. She then recieved another letter from HBOS, saying that if we withdrew the claim they would settle for the full amount plus court fees plus interest. Obviously a different person was dealing with the court summons, and they did not communicate with the department which had already paid out the settlement.

She just ignored this letter, after all she had recieved the money and had already withdrawn the small claims action.

HBOS have obviously checked to see the claim had been withdrawn, and have just credited her account with the full settlement plus interest FOR THE SECOND TIME!!!

Our advice would be, at the letter stage, send the first letter requesting the return of your bank charges. You will recieve the standard 'will shall get back to you in less than 6 weeks' letter after about a week. Don't wait 6 weeks, write again saying that you will take action in the small claims court if the money hasn't been returned within a week and give an exact cut off date. You will probably get the same '6 week wait letter' again. After a week issue the summons. The whole process from letter 1 to summons will take about 3 weeks, which really is a fair time for them to repay. By the time they get round to acting on your second letter the summons will have been served.

Good luck.

Hi jarvis, congrats on your victory. i`m waiting on my statements to add up all my charges before taking action against BoS. Think my total will come to around £1,800. Good to know of someone else who has been successful against same bank so if you are able to give me any help or advice i`d be gratefull.

Ali

A site that we found very useful was The Govan Law Centre Unfair UK Bank Charges Free help from Govan Law Centre, Glasgow, as we are based in Scotland it is more Scottish specific than the adive you get at say MoneySavingExpert.com ad-free, free to use, Consumer Revenge!

We used the Govan letters as templates, although we did adapt it a bit as at least one of their example letters is rather long winded.

The Govan site gives a example of a first letter and then a follow up letter. If you get to the stage of writing a follow letter (which you will!), put a date in it when you expect HBOS to settle. This puts the ball firmly in thier court.

Keep copies of all letters, and if you threaten to take them to court if a suitable settlement isn't reached, follow it through.

All the best.