I don't think it makes any difference. The existing legislation says that a consumer cannot sign away their rights. If a condition is unfair, it doesn't matter if you agreed to it or not. This is quite a big plank of the mechanism being used on this site to counter the claim by the banks that we "agreed" to the charges.

No! That's not the one! That's something entirely different... This is the one you want; http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=516 But, Gareth, it sounds like you need to read the FAQs and generally lurk around the site a bit before jumping in. It could get a bit messy if you make these sorts of mistakes. Edit : The letter templates are all in the 'Libraries' section at the top of the folder list (http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/index.php). The letters are in the third group down called "Bank templates library". The FAQs are here; http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=5 The step-by-step guide (the minimum you should read) is here; http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=243

Hello new person *waves* You need to read the FAQ and get familiar with the whole process. The thing you are looking for, however, is called a DPA (data protection act) SAR (subject access request). The FAQ and the templates folder has full details. Good luck!

Keep going! This is just a standard "bugger off" letter, which everybody gets. The whole idea is that you are in dispute - you think "yes" and they think "no". After trying to reach an agreement, via exchange of letters, you allow the courts to decide who is right and who is wrong. So far, it's never got that far because the banks pay up. Send 2nd letter!

It was during an interview on the Radio 4 MoneyBox program on Saturday. The A&L spokesperson said; (paraphrasing) "we will continue to pay claims because it's not worth our while defending the claims because we can't get our legal costs back. But we will close accounts if someone claims". She also said, in relation to the overdraft charges; "the £50 is not what it costs, but it is fair". Nice admission! Because I am due to go for the A&L soon (hopefully this month) I have been wondering about including a "do not close the account" clause in the N1 claim. Even if we agreed on the money side, we presumably couldn't agree on this and that would *force* A&L to enter a defence and turn up in court...? Any thoughts? Would this work?

I assume you've got three seperate accounts? I don't believe you need to split them into 3 seperate claims - I'm fairly (99%) confident that you can group them into a single claim. Good luck.

Yup, spot on. The only exception, which some people are trying (or talking about trying) is where 100% of the overdraft interest accrued was as a result of the charges. It's so hard to work out, unless you are a maths guru, that the majority of people aren't even trying to work that one out! Good luck!

It was on the radio programme! Broadcast nationally and 100% un-deniable!

If people hadn't already realised, you can listen to this on "listen again" service from the bbc website. I think it only stays up until the next program, but if you missed it - you've still got about 24-hours to listen. Maybe I'm suffering from hearing problems, but when asked if the £50 od charge was truly the cost to the bank, the A&L lady clearly said "no, but it is fair". Is that a public admission? And also; Their position is that it would be too expensive to fight these cases, on the basis that it would cost them too much to defend individual cases. According to the survey, A&L have handed over (for no reason) £31,942 to people on the BAG survey. If they had spent £20,000 defending the first claim, they would have saved £12k... And possibly much more. Does that make business sense to *anybody*???

I hadn't thought of it that way; I would have imagined that each charge was a seperate offence rather than a continuous offence, so the 6-year rule would apply individually to each charge. It's probably academic anyway, I thought the 6-year rule only applied from when you discovered an offence had been committed? If this isn't true, how do people get convicted twenty-years later for child abuse?..?

https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk/csmco2/index.jsp

My RBS visa card has a payment address of; The Royal Bank of Scotland plc Milton Keynes MK77 1LJ That is the address I intend sending my DPA to...

Result! If nothing else, you now know the score - let your friends know; spread the word.

I *think* the data protection act allows a data subject to request any information held, regardless of how old it is. This issue isn't what data they hold, the issue is the statute of limitations which, in essence, says you must claim on an offence within 6-years of it occuring. There are, however, some exception circumstances which allow this timeframe to be extended and this thread is about testing those rules.

Money Box, Radio4 : 12:05pm today (Sat 10-Jun). Listen via the interwebnet; http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/index.shtml?logo

I asked about the etiquette of sending a draft N1 with the LBA and got the impression that this is now forwned on. Best not to bother, apparently.

I think the two issues for paying the £10 for the DPA letter are; a) the request for manual interventions. b) the online requests don't often go back 6-years. (a) Shouldn't (hopefully) make any difference as it's unlikely it will ever get that far. MondeoST24 : I'm already loving "Uncle Alan". This may well be my favourite claimant name ... ever!

All the best Scudster ... and welcome *waves* Keep us informed (on this thread) of how you get on. It's always nice to watch the progress of other people, esp. noobs.

I'm just in awe of anybody who has kept 35 years worth of bank statements! (we're not worthy ... etc). I understand the issues of going back more than 6-years are quite complex. I hope you're done your homework? Good luck!

Top banana. This trickle is turning into a flood... Well done ESB.

Don't worry. You haven't gone wrong. Plenty of people have done ok doing the same thing. The only difference with the DPA template letter is that it asks for details of manual interventions. In the (hopefully unlikely) event that it goes to court and they suddenly produce evidence that there staff spent days and days manually monitoring your account (ha!) then the costs would look reasonable.

If nothing else, this confirms something I've long believed to be true; Judges are not the senile, blundering buffoons so popularised by the tabloid press. I've had dealings with 2 judges in the past and both had minds of razors. As a friend of mine said at the time - 1% of people go to law school, 1% of those become QCs and 1% of them become judges - these people aren't fools. And long may judicial independance continue, despite the meddling of politicians. Good work Whizz. You'll be dining out for years on this story (or boring the bejesus out of people...)

Are you sure you haven't been checking the time? (Sorry: this is an in-joke. A friend of mine was given a share tip, with the quote number. When he checked it in the morning, the price was £7.40, buy lunchtime the share was over £11 and mid-afternoon, when the price hit £15 my mate tried to buy, only to discover the "quote" number was in fact the system clock....)

Than can most certainly apply for set-aside, pretty much whenever they like. So far, it's only been done as another delaying tatctic and to save face; ie "we never lost the case, we just settled out of court because of the costs".

First off, I’m not trying to give the banks any good ideas, but there was a post the other day saying, “where will this all end?” and I managed to get into a heated argument with a colleague who thought what I was doing was immoral on the grounds that he carefully micro-manages his finances every week and has never had a charge, but my actions would put his “free” banking in jeopardy. It’s a common refrain and the banks like to push this in the negative PR along with account closures. All of this set me thinking about what the banks actually would do about penalty charges and would it really be harmful to either us or the “good boys and girls”. The perfect solution for the banks actually harks back to the pre-deregulation days of 20-years ago and I clearly recall getting hit very badly in my youth by The Midland Bank (now HSBC). For out younger viewers; a quick history lesson: The way the “free banking” back then worked was quite simple; All transactions, including cheques, cash machine withdrawals, paying in cash, etc, etc accrued a small charge, my recollection being that a cash withdrawal from the ATM was about 30-40p. As long as you maintained the account in good order, the bank would not apply these charges, but as soon as the wheels fell off, they applied all of the charges for the previous 3-months under the heading of “activity charges”. They also sent you a stern letter costing £10, but this came from your local branch and was invariably signed by somebody in the branch that you could go in and discuss the problem with. Ultimately, if you continued mucking about, they just gave you notice they were closing the account. There was far less competition on the high street back then, with only four major banks offering current accounts. Being chucked out of one bank was not looked on favourably if you wanted to open an account with another and after you’d chewed through all four you’d be looking at a passbook account with a building society. Post deregulation, key building societies like A&L, Nationwide and Halifax converted to banks and these newcomers had also become early adopters of computer technology, (the big four still had nothing more complex than a calculator), massively reducing headcounts both in-branch and at head office. Because so much was centralised, the quality of staff was noticeably lower (no offence – but the majority of big-bank staff seemed to have been in the job for 20+ years). By having reduced overheads, they could offer interest bearing current accounts which had previously been anathema to high street banks. The headcount reduction, however, brought it’s own problems – if you got a letter from the nouveaux-banks, it was computer generated from some data centre and the local branch had much less discretion when it came to applying charges. The new banks also didn’t apply activity charges, which seemed like a blessing at the time – they simply charged a flat-rate for *some* failed transactions, though I can only recall there being charges for bouncing cheques. For less than brilliant financial gods (like me), this new regime was ace because the charges were obvious, transparent and predictable – everything the hated activity charges weren’t. Having had their quadopoly smashed by the smaller, nimbler ex-building societies, the big four banks fought back quickly as their market share of consumer accounts tumbled. As the big-four embraced new technology, they became me-to organisations, slimming down their branch network, moving branch activity to central locations and de-commissioning their local managers who had their discretion slowly eroded to nil. They were also forced to introduce interest bearing current accounts and to scrap the activity charges in favour of fixed penalties. And that’s how we got to here. So, here’s my prediction for what will happen next: The competition for bank customers is too sharp in the UK (witness if you will the £2bn advertising spend, which excepting young adults, can only be churn). The barrier to entry for new banks is considerably lower than it used to be since the big boys shut all their branches during the computerisation days and consumers have gotten used to electronic and internet transactions, so there can’t be a collective “toys out of pram” moment where they try to screw us all over with stupendous service charges. What seems most likely is that interest rates on current accounts will drop slightly and overdraft rates will increase slightly. “Free” banking will continue, but if you exceed the T&Cs, expect those transaction fees to be called in just like the good/bad old activity charges of yore. For the good girls and boys, this won’t make a heap of difference. For silly sods like me, being a bit crap with money is going to become expensive – but probably no more so than the current penalty regime, with the added benefit (for the banks) that these charges are fair and can’t be challenged like we are all doing at the moment. From a process point of view, the banking systems will only need a very small amount of change to bring this about and it will result in the continuation of the status quo, which is good for the banks, good for people who manage their accounts properly and pretty dire for bad money-managers who don’t mend their ways. /Begin the flames!