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In this section |
The claims process Until the OFT/Banks test case was initiated, the process of reclaiming penalty bank charges from a bank was relatively straightforward and, almost always, successful. The process followed by thousands of bank customers was: 1) Obtain all the information from the bank about what charges had been imposed on the account and put together a summary of the data. 2) Write to the bank demanding a full refund with a threat of court action if the bank did not refund the charges. 3) Submit a County Court claim. 4) Sometimes the bank would pay up in a short time; sometimes it would fail to respond in which case the claimant could get judgment by default; sometimes the bank would file a defence. 5) If the bank filed a defence, the claimant would complete an allocation questionnaire and send this back to the court. If the bank had still not paid up, the court would set a date for a hearing. 6) Before the court hearing date, the bank would inevitably pay up saying that it was not worth their while going to court. However, since the Test Case was announced, the Courts have put all claims on hold. This means that thousands of existing claims are caught in the logjam in the court system; and any new claim that has been made since last August has been put on hold immediately. So should people continue to file new claims? That has to be a decision by the individual. The maximum time that you can claim back to is 6 years from the date the claim is started. So, as at July 2008, you can only claim back until July 2002 at the earliest. If you leave your claim until December 2008, you will not be able to claim back anything for the second half of 2002. If, therefore, you have no charges, or very few charges in that period, you will probably not lose out by delaying a claim until later in 2008. If, however, you have a significant amount of charges in that period, you may wish to put in a claim soon in order to avoid the charges falling out of the claim window. In either case, my recommendation to anyone thinking about the possibility of claiming back charges is at least to compile all the information on the charges that have been made to any account that you have had in the past 6 years, including those accounts that may now be closed. Have a look at the page on obtaining the information and see how you go about doing it. |
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Published and promoted by Bob Egerton, TR2 4RS |
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