Clydesdale Bank refuse to refund Unlawful charges applied to my account

[reded]

After waiting over 110 days for the clydesdale bank to send me my bank statements and over 21 days for a reply after my letter advising them of the charges i wanted re-imbursed i received a letter stating the banks terms and conditions as reason for not refunding my charges.

The letter reads:

Re Charges Claim

 

I refer to your recent letter, regarding the charges applied to your account.

 

During this time, the relationship between you and the bank was governed by the banks standard terms and conditions. Yhose terms and conditions provided that:

 

(1) Free banking is available whilst your account remains in credit or within an agreed overdraft limit.

(2)You must obtain the banks agreement before overdrawing on your account.

(3) If the bank made payments from the account or paid cheques which were guaranteed by the associated cheque guarantee card when they were insufficient funds available, any overdraft created or any overdraft which exceeded an agreed overdraft limit would be unauthorised

(4) If you drew cheques or authorised or made payments without sufficient money available in your account, taking account of any overdraft limit and allowing for uncleared cheques, the bank might return the payments and make a charge for doing so.

(5) Charges and interest applicable to the account were published in the form of tariffs and up-to-date tariffs were available in branches and from time to time enclosed with bank statements.

(6) Where apppropriate, written details of overdraft charges, and debit interest inccured on the account during the previous charging period (i.e, the previous month) would be send to you at least fourteen days before the charges and interest were deducted from your account.

(7) If the account had an unauthorised overdraft, additional charges might be levied which would be debited to the account on the day on which the unauthorised overdraft was created.

(8)If the bank increased a charge for a basic account service, the bank would give you at least 30 day's notice.

 

I would note that the terms and conditions complied with all relevant requirements of the banking code.

 

As i am sure you will appreciate, you are responsible for the running of your account, and for ensuring that sufficient funds are in your account to meet the standing orders, direct debits and cheques which you have created or drawn on the account. As stated on the terms and conditions governing your account with the bank, you have been made aware that charges will be incurred if insufficient funds are in your account on the dates the payments you have instructed are debited. The charges applied to your account were applied in accordance with the terms and conditions, as a result of your operation of the account.

 

Further, the terms and conditions were fair having regard to the following matters:

 

(a) The cost to the bank of maintaining administrative systems relating to unauthorised overdrafts, unpaid cheques and direct debits and abuse of cheque and debit cards for the purpose of keeping the level of overdrawing under review and controlled as far as possible.

 

(b) The need to operate standard procedures and to set standard charges in order to avoid the substantial costs of individual assessement in relation to each particular case.

 

Taking all of the above into account and having regard to the information you have given, I regret to inform you that i am unable to refund the charges on your account.

 

If you have any additional information that you wish to provide please do not hesitate to contact us quoting the above reference.

 

Yours sincerely

Advice Quality Unit Charges Section

 

 

Well that's the letter.

 

I FEEL THE BANK IS MAKING THIS AS DIFFICULT AS POSSIBLE, WHAT DO I DO NOW ?

 

EDIT. Title edited to read "Unlawful charges"

[hedgey06]

Hi reded,

 

If this was their response to your prelim, send them the LBA and give them another 14 days to give you a positive response. If this was their response to your LBA, you've exhausted 'polite requests' and your only option is to start court action to recover the charges. Make sure you have a parachute account opened also.

 

Good luck

[jimbo2007]

Hi Reded,

 

I'm at exactly the same stage as you and have not long ago received exactly the same templated response. This is simply to try and stop you from going further with the claim and it obviously works as some people see this and drop out of the chase. DON'T!! Keep going and claim what is yours.

 

I've sent them my 14 day letter before action and I'm completely prepared and ready to take it to court. In fact, I WANT to take it to court cos then I get my interest back as well!!!

 

I'll watch your thread and see how it develops.

[bobtail]

(6) Where apppropriate, written details of overdraft charges, and debit interest inccured on the account during the previous charging period (i.e, the previous month) would be send to you at least fourteen days before the charges and interest were deducted from your account.

 

What do you make of that statement?

It seems to read that even though your statement reads that the charges have been withdrawn they aren't (you have 14 days to sort things out?)

[jimbo2007]

The way I read it, they're just saying that they informed you of their intention to charge thereby maintaining their side of the deal as per their terms and conditions. I don't think it makes one iota of difference to the overall challenge though (unless someone else can enlighten us further?)

[martynh99]

same stage for me with YB. Rang them up today and they said write in saying you're not happy and the Claims Investigation will review it - no timescales as they have a big backlog. My LBA is going tomorrow.

[reded]

I have today posted my LBA to the bank. I thought I was finished thankyou all for the advice. Will keep you .posted

[reded]

(6) Where apppropriate, written details of overdraft charges, and debit interest inccured on the account during the previous charging period (i.e, the previous month) would be send to you at least fourteen days before the charges and interest were deducted from your account.

 

I believe this is the bank saying we are going to apply these charges to your account you have fourteen days to come to us if you disagree with them, if this happened to me now i would visit my branch and ask for these charges to be waived as i now know these charges to be unlawful, of course the bank will charge you £25 for sending out the letter to tell you these charges are going to be applied

p.s. what started me re-claiming bank charges was when i went over my overdraft limit the bank sent me a letter telling me they would be applying charges to my account, my pay went into my account, the bank took the charges, just before my pay was to go in the next month they applied charges for sending the letter sending me beyond my overdraft again and then they started to repeat the process. Taking the **** or just a coincidence that the charges for the letter were applied the day before my pay was to go into my account.