pun excused. Both loan and contractual interest. i felt we had more of a case to get the loan interest back but in the end we decided we'd be happy to settle just for the charges. and they've offered us all the charges back, which seems fairly rare for a first offer. simon

not updated this for a while but have good news now. Due to a holiday we only sent our LBA on the 2 december, we recieved a letter on the 16 december offering, as a goodwill gesture, to refund all the charges we were claiming for though minus the interest we had requested. after talking it over we decided to accept the offer, as we did this in the interest of righting an injustice not for financial gain (but financial gain is good of course). the only issue is they offered to pay the money back into the account, the account we defaulted on 12 months ago (mostly due to charges). Anyway we've sent a letter accepting the offer and requesting that it be paid by cheque. anyone else had a similar experience, and how did it pan out? simon

Thats exactly the same letter i got off them about 3 weeks ago, so pretty standard i guess.

Having sounded so confident of the decision to use Mr McLean's response as a cue to send off the letter before action i'm now having second thoughts. What are peoples thoughts on this, is it better to wait for the 14 days to be up or is it fine to send the lba on reciept of a response to the prelim? thanks for any light you can shine on this.

Well we recieved our 'go take a running jump' letter this morning, just 5 days after sending the initial request for repayment. In line with the majority of opinions on here we've taken this as a cue to go to the next stage the LBA, rather than wait for the 14 days to be up. For your reference below is a scan of the letter we recieved off Mr McLean. Dear ***** Thank you for your letter of 6 November 2006 and I apologise for any dissatisfaction caused by the application of charges to your account. We believe that our charges are fair, reasonable and transparent. We consider that the amounts debited to your account have been applied strictly in accordance with your agreement with us and our published tariff, which we are satisfied, complies with all applicable laws and regulations. We are also committed to ensuring the transparency of the information that we give to our customers about the operation of our products. We have considered and responded to the Office of Fair Trading's statement of 5 April 2006. We do not accept the Office of Fair Trading's findings in relation to credit card fees. We are concerned that the Office of Fair Trading has publicly called into question the setting of charges applied to other products, including current accounts. The Office of Fair Trading has restricted its investigation to credit cards and made no attempt to consult with RBS or the industry in relation to other, entirely different products. Consequently, against that background, we must differ with the views expressed in your letter and will not be refunding any of the charges applied to your bank account. Again, thank you for taking the time and trouble to write. Yours sincerely Tommy McLean Customer Relations

Well that's the initial request for repayment sent off, direct to our friend Tommy himself. As well as the charges which total £1845 i've requested contractual interest at their current authorised rate of 15.10%, even though i feel entitled to the much higher unauthorised rate. i've done this as a 'gesture of goodwill' on my part. i've also requested the interest i paid on £680 of a consolidation loan they provided to cover a £1700 overdraft i ended up with a few years back due to a period of 'financial difficulty'. £680 was the total amount of charges they had taken from me up to that point so i feel it unfair that i've paid interest on money i should't have had to pay in the first place. i'm off on holiday in two weeks so am hoping to have had a response back, even if its just a rejection, before then. s

Thanks for that, yeah that was my train of thought exactly. if they hadn't charged me £700 i wouldn't have had to borrow it and therefore pay interest on it. simon

Hello Just working out how i can squeeze every possible penny back out of RBS. Most of the charges on our account come from two periods when things went abit wobbly, once at the end of last year(which lead to the account defaulting) and once in 2002. In 2002 we had a £800 overdraft limit and ended up £1670 overdrawn of which £700 was charges, this was resolved by us talking a loan of £1700 off them to clear the balance, the loan was the only option they gave us to resolve the situation and ended up costing us £3509 over 5 years. My question is would we be entitled to claim back the interest charged on £700(the amount of charges) of the loan? my partner thinks that we would maybe to be able to claim all of the interest back because if it wasn't for the charges we would not have needed the loan, but i think that this would be pushing things too far. any advice on this would be gratefully recieved. Simon

Hello Just got my statements off the RBS this morning and in the process of putting all the charges on the spreadsheet. The account i'm claiming for was closed in January this year due to a complete christmas f**k up (what can i say)? we ended up about £1000 over our overdraft, most of it charges of course. They took £125 off us as a card recovery fee and sent someone around to collect our cards and chequebooks off us, this was a day after i'd rang them acknowledging things had got a bit out of hand, and after having my request for a loan turned down had made an appointment to come in and discuss the options to sort out the situation. We had not recieved any kind of communication requesting return of our cards etc, prior to the baliffs visit. anyway sorry to ramble but my simple question is can i reclaim the £125 card collection fee or not? Thanks for any advice you can provide. Si

Just wanted to say hi to everybody. am about to embark on a great bank charges claiming back adventure. first stage complete 168pages of bank statement popped through my letter box this morning, wish me look going thru them. simon