I noticed on my January statement mint charged me £12 for a 2 day late payment, with the Christmas post I guess.

I sent a nice letter asking for the £12 back.

A big NO from Mint telling me they had charged me £12 on 7 occasions all within OFT guidelines and in the terms and conditions .

I sent this to them.

Your Ref: XXXXXXXXXX

Account Number XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX

Dear XXX XXXXXXX,

Thank you for your prompt response to my letter of 12th February 2009.

Your letter indicates you believe your charges are in line with the Office of Fair Trading Guidelines. In order to make it clear to you that OFT did not give you permission to charge £12.00 I include these quotes from OFT “We are not suggesting that default fees should be set at £12, and a court will certainly not consider that a default fee is fair just because it is below the threshold”. “We consider that a contract term is likely to be unfair if it requires consumers to pay more as a result of a default than the court would order them to pay if they were sued for breach of contract. This means that a default charge should not exceed a reasonable pre-estimate of the administrative costs that the consumer ought to have realised would be likely to be incurred by his or her card issuer in dealing with defaults”.

In order for you to charge me £12.00 you must demonstrate to me that it cost Mint £12.00 by you receiving my payment two days late.

I was only asking you to return the one £12.00 charge to my account, however as you have pointed out in your letter to me of 18th February 2008, you have charged me £12.00 on seven occasions.

English Law is very clear the House of Lords held that a contractual party can only recover damages for actual or liquidated losses incurred from a breach of contract. Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Co Ltd v New Garage and Motor Co Ltd (1915) AC 79.

I now require you to repay these seven £12.00 charges in total £84.00 to my account within 7 days.

If you do not comply I will commence court proceedings to resolve this matter and give Mint the opportunity to explain to a County Court how every time a customer makes a late payment or goes over their limit, costs Mint £12.00.

Should I need to commence court action I will include interest and costs.

I trust this makes my position very clear.

Yours sincerely

Now a letter from Mint £84 back + 8% interest

Well Done

wow nice work there rev.

It goes to show they know full well they cant even charge £12.00

any developments on this

I think the rev got the response.. small writing at the bottom of post 1. Easily missed....

Now a letter from Mint £84 back + 8% interest

Give it a try.. can't hurt

Sorry yes MINT paid back in full + interest

They paid the interest @ 8% even though you didn't ask? :-? Makes you wonder what they're hiding.

Yes it does, It goes to show they know full well they should not charge even £12.00 and no way they want to go to court about it.