Claiming charges from a Business account?

[MemmaJ]

Hi everyone

 

After successfully claiming back my Bank Charges from Alliance & Leicester, I have been spreading the word!

 

A friend of mine has a Business bank account because he is self employed and has his own small plastering business.

 

Is it possible to claim charges back from a Business account?

If so, would you do it in the same way as a normal bank account, or would it have to be done differently?

 

Thanks for your help

[katesage]

Hello Memma

 

Congrats on your win against Alliance and Leicester.

 

The process for reclaiming business charges is the same as for personal accounts apart from the removal of all references to consumer law from the letter templates and particulars of claim.

 

Here is the link

 

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/bank-templates-library/486-sample-letter-your-bank.html

 

I reclaimed £800 from Natwest on my business account after only sending the prelim letter.

[Destinyofsouls]

Except of course it is a Ltd company, then the DPA does not come into it.

[katesage]

Being a Ltd Company only means that the person applying for a DPA must be the/a director. I got all my biz statements for my Ltd Co absolutely fine.

[ladeyshalley123]

Hello Everyone. We are waiting for our court date for reclaiming Business bank charges against Lloyds. They have made me an offer but have deducted the £50 Lloyds Partnership Fees/Routemap per month that we were tricked into along with their other services. For this Partnership Service, we received 2 visits over the period before Lloyds themselves scrapped this service as it wasn't working and Customer's were complaining. Does anyone know if these are relevant to our claim or are they right and we just say good bye to £2500. Hope someone can help. Thanks, Shalley

[katesage]

Hi Ladeyshalley

 

Welcome to CAG:)

Could you firstly start your own thread in the Lloyds Bank Forum.

 

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/lloyds-bank/

 

As for those charges, I'm afraid they sound like 'service charges' which are not reclaimable. They have not resulted from any breaches, therefore they are not penalty charges. (even tho they feel like it!)

 

Good Luck

[davidgoliath]

Thank you for your help. Will try now to do my own thread on the Lloyds Bank Forum. Sorry, am new to all this and was finding it difficult to know where to start. Shalley

[Lancer]

ladeyshalley123 vbmenu_register("postmenu_791030", true); can you please advise the Lancer what you did to get the sucess you seem to have as Lloyds turned me down cold heartedly. they cited something about the charges claim ponly related to consumsers and not businesses

[davidgoliath]

Hi There. Regarding Lloyds TSB and attempt to reclaim business banking charges. Sorry, this is a bit long winded and complicated but if you have a Business Account with Lloyds, it may sound all too familar.

 

Lloyds TSB have made it so difficult. I feel for you. Our original claim was for well over £17,000, however, we included everything. We received the usual 'looking into it' standard letter and then heard nothing , so went onto moneyclaim to register our claim with the court. They came back at the eleventh hour and contested it saying we had claimed for charges that weren't allowed, ie/services, overdraft arrangement fees, partnership fees, unauthorised fees etc. We then received a letter from their Solicitors offering us just over £6000 which included just the usual, bounced cheques and direct debits, interest and court fees.

 

We looked at this very carefully and saw that on every occasion, had they not taken their additional excessive monthly unauthorised fees , that we would have been able to pay our direct debits and cheques so we decided to revise our claim. We then took out the Service Charges, Authorised Charges and left everything else, wrote back and said we would settle for this reduced amount of just over £12,000. They came back with the same offer but without any explanation of how they reached their figure. They still won't budge and we cannot see how they have reached this figure even with just the penalty amounts alone. If we take just those and enter them into the calculator on Money Saving Expert site with the date of the first entry, we still get a figure of over £9000 without even the additional fees.

 

The enforced Partnership Programme which totalled over £2000. All we had to show for this 'partnership' was a single piece of lined A4 paper with the Business Manager's scribbling on, sales v stock etc in a very nice folder, that was it.. Lloyds themselves, scrapped this service in 2005 as it wasn't working but they state now that we cannot ask for our money back, it's so unfair. The only one to benefit from this Route Map was the Bank themselves and they scrapped it before more people complained

 

As well as the standard overdraft penalties, they show, on Business Accounts, additional overdraft charges, which you see on your statement, authorised £xxx/unauthorised £xxx. The interest is shown seperately. We left out the authorised and interest and just entered the unauthorised entries. I put all these on an excel sheet, with dates, description, statement no and amount in seperate showing catagories. Totalled them all up at the bottom and this is where we are at now, confused as to what we can claim for.

 

Lloyds closed our Business account with a 2 week notice when we first put in our claim and demanded repayment of the Business overdraft which is now up to £10,000 as they are charging interest at an alarming rate each month until we repay. Now, something very strange is happening. We keep receiving letters from Lloyds saying how they are delighted to offer us an overdraft of whatever the amount is at the date of their letter for the next 8 weeks. This amount increases to cover their interest but they still charge us for this facility even though they 'closed' our account down in writing so each month, we owe even more. It's all so confusing and to be honest, Lloyds seem to do this on purpose so you will give up.

 

We would have settled for an amount to cover our overdraft and close the account and put an end to this highly stressful situation to which has taken it's toll on both our health. During our time with them, I received a transplant operation and they still didn't show any compassion. We are now having to close this Business, the stress is too much, which is a shame as we had just turned the corner but their heavy charges meant that we could never grow it without finanical backing which, they wouldn't give as we had to hold stock. We have had the same amount of overdraft now as when we first began 6 years ago which they kept calling in and then reviewing every couple of months at between £75 and £175 a time. Their aim is to turn each overdraft into a loan and then get you to start again. We managed to pay our loan off with them, by remortgaging so we only owe for the overdraft.

 

We have written back, yet again, to their Solicitors asking for a breakdown of how they reached their figure and interest. Everything they send is 'without prejudice' of course.

 

We have now received a court date for end July. I don't know at what stage you are up to but can only recommend that you keep going but if there is anything else that I can help you with, then please let me know and if there is anyone out there in a similar situation, that can offer us some advice, then we would be so grateful to hear from you. Good Luck and let me know how you get on. Shalley

[PPI Insurance]

Do you think its easier doing a business claim or a personal claim?