Banking Ombudsman says NO to closing accounts

[Snorkerz]

Abbey have threatened to close my account if I take them to court, so I did a little research and came up with this (which I have copied from my letter to them)

With regard to your threat to close my account as a punitive retaliatory measure, I would advise you that the Banking Ombudsman adjudicated in February of this year as follows:

The Financial Services Authority includes in its Principles for Businesses: “A firm must pay due regard to the interests of its customers and treat them fairly”. Mr A, like any other customer, is entitled to bring a complaint if he feels he is being treated unfairly. He should not be prevented from bringing a legitimate complaint by the threat of having his account closed; nor do I consider it fair or reasonable of the bank to respond to his complaint about charges by closing the account. The bank appears to me to have used the closure of the account as a retaliatory or punitive measure.

In addition to the above comments, the ombudsman made a financial award to ‘Mr A’. I think the fact that this adjudication has already been made, and that I am reminding you of it before action and before the threatened account closure would give sufficient grounds to ask the Financial ombudsman to not only adjudicate on your actions, but to also impose a much higher level of compensation.

 

I would urge you to look again at my request to refund these unlawful charges. In view of your mis-understanding of our initial complaint, we shall suspend action for a further 14 days.

 

The actual award was £200. I'm not a lawyer but hope it will be enough to at least protect my account - I like Abbey when they're not acting unlawfully!

[nicsussex]

What stage of your claim are you at? and for what ammount? When you say thery have threatened to close your account - what wording have they actually used?

 

And by the way it is unlawful not illegal - there is a difference

[Snorkerz]

What stage of your claim are you at? and for what ammount? When you say thery have threatened to close your account - what wording have they actually used?

 

And by the way it is unlawful not illegal - there is a difference

 

Quite right about unlawful/illegal, should have picked that up myself.

 

I have written to Abbey requesting that one bounced DD fee be refunded and one monthly 'Unauthorised Overdraft' fee not be charged.

 

They have responded with

If the claim escalates into a claim in the County Court, we will review each case individually, and if we feel that our relationship with our customer has broken down completely, we may decide to give notice to close the account under the Terms and Conditions.

[nicsussex]

So the total sum of your claim is?

[Snorkerz]

Oh, about £60.00 - why?