Well I just had a lovely chat with the phone banking bods. Phoned up and went through the usual press this button rigmarole before speaking to a real person. This is not verbatim, but it is the gist

Operator: Hello, my name is xxx, how can I help you?

Me: Hello. I've heard a lot in the news about bank charges being unlawful in that they are excessive and as such amount to a penalty. I'd like to arrange for the charges I have paid to be refunded.

long pause...I kept quiet and waited for her to decide what to do

Operator: Please hold.

piped music for ages. New voice on the other end.

Manager: Hello MrsMiggins, my name is xxx, I'm one of the managers here. I understand that you want to talk about charges on your account.

Me: Yes. I understand that the law says that you are only allowed to charge for actual losses incurred by the bank. I believe that the charges applied to my account amount to a penalty and I would like them refunded.

Manager: The charges you have paid are listed in the terms and conditions so you have agreed to them.

Me: If the charges are unlawful it doesn't matter whether or not they are in the T&Cs, they are still unlawful so I'd like you to issue a refund.

Manager: But if you got a parking ticket and overstayed for 5 minutes you'd still have to pay.

Me: I'm sorry, but parking tickets are issued under the Road Traffic Act; we're talking about contract law so parking tickets are irrelevant. Can you explain to me how the £30 charge is calculated?

Manager: The charge covers our costs in returning a payment, looking at the account, deciding what to do.

Me: As far as I can see your system pays a DD and then automatically issues a letter and charges me. Are you saying that it costs the bank £30 to do that? If the £30 charge covers your costs I'd like an invoice for those costs please so I can see what I'm paying for.

Manager: I'm sorry, I can't give you that.

Me: Why not?

Manager: I don't have it.

Me: But surely you can get it? Someone at the bank obviously worked out the charge, so it must be possible to say what it's made up of?

Manager: Sorry, but I don't have this information and I can't get it for you.

Me: Why not? It's not reasonable for you to provide a service but be unwilling to give me details on exactly what that service is. If you can't tell me what I'm paying for I think you should refund the charges.

Manager:I'm sorry, but I can't do that. Your branch manager might be able to do that for you.

Me: So you're telling me I should speak to my branch manager and he might be able to agree to refund the charges?

Manager: Yes.

Me: OK, I'll do that.

call ends

The call went exactly as I thought it would with him constantly justifying the charges as reasonable and referring to the T&Cs. I was on the phone for over 5 minutes and almost had him admit that the charge was a penalty but he stopped himself in the nick of time :twisted:

I'm now going to steal bits of Falkirk1298's letter and write to the manager of my Branch. This is fun.

VERY nice. I don't suppose you recorded that call, by any chance? I particularly like the "I don't have the info and can't get it for you" piece. And to think we entrust all our money to these people!!!!

No recording unfortunately. The funniest bits were firstly the prolonged silence from the person who answered the phone as soon as I told them why I was calling. I nearly said "hello, are you still there?" but I thought it'd be better if I waited for her to decide what to say instead.

Secondly the amount of squirming, uuhming and aahing was unbelievable. I'd imagine that manager-bloke will be doing some research and possibly some role-playing to practice his obfuscation techniques.

Their complete refusal to provide a breakdown of the charges wasn't a surprise but I laboured the point anyway just to make him squirm. This forum is a bad influence!

Interestingly I've just had an almost identical conversation with BoS, they kept referring me to the T&C's and told me it was an administration charge. When I asked them how this was calculated I was initially told that they didn't have that information and then that they were unable to disclose it. I was then referred to my local branch manager (I think in their attempt to get rid of me!). We agreed that we were going round in circles & I voiced my concern that they didn't really understand their job - I was getting a little frustrated at this point!!!

All this for being £6.30 overdrawn for 24 hours!!!! Am now determined to persue them for refunds for the last few years!

Feel better now for venting my frustrations.

No recording unfortunately. The funniest bits were firstly the prolonged silence from the person who answered the phone as soon as I told them why I was calling. I nearly said "hello, are you still there?" but I thought it'd be better if I waited for her to decide what to say instead.

Secondly the amount of squirming, uuhming and aahing was unbelievable. I'd imagine that manager-bloke will be doing some research and possibly some role-playing to practice his obfuscation techniques.

 

Their complete refusal to provide a breakdown of the charges wasn't a surprise but I laboured the point anyway just to make him squirm. This forum is a bad influence!

You may not have a recording - but they will have. Ask for a copy under terms of DPA.

Good idea.Please let us know if you try this and their response.

I tried this with a debt collector who claimed that they don`t put anything in writing and don`t have to prove the debt either.Naturally,when asked,they claimed not to have a recording and to have not said any of this.

I could actually do with a forum's eye view of what I should do next. I am aware from reading here that they might continue to claim that the charges do only "cover their costs", so I'm now thinking that instead of hitting them with a demand for repayment on threat of action I might be best to do the DPA thing and get something in writing from them noting any 'manual interventions' or lack thereof before I go further. This would, of course, delay things but I'm not in a hurry so it might be the prudent course of action? Any thoughts?

With reference to the conversation I had with them, while it was fun I'm not sure it would actually be much use, other than as evidence that they won't tell me what they are charging me for. Surely the DPA request for charges/manual intervention info gets me what I need in that regard anyway?

I'm afraid the banks won't do anything if you ask them nicely...get your DPA letter off, tell them you are counting downwards from 40. When you get DPA info, calculate what you have been charged and come back to the forum

I agree. Furthermore, when you get the info, please could you let us have a copy anything that would show manual intervention? (tricky, that, since there won't be, lol, but you know what I mean, I hope)

MrsMiggins, i would just like to say that i thoroughly enjoyed reading the above transcript! Highly entertaining! Go you! I shall be having a similar conversation with one of my telephone banking advisors....

LOL, I have had loads of conversation like that over the years, they still make me chuckle. Wish I had written them down like yourself.

With regards to the audio recordings of the conversations. I have tried in the past to obtain these (via telephoning), but came up with the run around. I think it would be best if you could record the date and time and where you phoned and the person, them write to the DPA and quote this asking for them. Although if they discard of them every 30 days, that takes you out of the 40 day period and they can just claim that it has been discarded

Well, after some work-related delays I've finally got around to making my DPA request. Easy enough - I phoned the phone-banking service and asked for a note of the charges on my account going back 5 years. After a short while on hold the woman on the other end of the phone said they'd send me a letter with them all listed. No mention of a charge or anything and I didn't even have to use the DPA to get them to agree to send the details. (Am I paranoid if I start to think there are notes on my file saying "warning, customer knows we are at it!!)

Incidentally, as part of my job I have to send letters to customers. These letters are automated to a lesser extent than I believe the banks' are. Our procedure is:

1. Order is updated resulting in a system 'flag' changing status from 'No' to 'Yes' (this is done as part of a separate updating process, not manually for each individual order)

2. Report is run to capture the orders requiring a letter (this captures customer name and address data and anything else that goes on the letter)

3. System decides the which letter will be sent depending on the results of point 2 above. For example we send different letters depending on whether or not our customer has an outstanding balance

4. Letters are printed

5. Staff member puts the letters through the letter folding/envelope stuffing machine

6. Staff member puts envelopes through the franking machine and into the mail bag

Now it takes 1 person 2 hours as an absolute max, start to finish, to do about 1000 letters. Add labour, costs for postage, paper and envelopes together and I'd estimate the real cost per letter for my company at 35-40p. Even if it's double that I reckon that's a more reasonable estimate than the exorbitant rates the banks are charging, particularly given that their process is most likely fully automated.

I would love to stand up in court and question the bank about the actual cost of sending me an excess OD letter. :twisted:

This topic was closed on 03/06/19.

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