to think that people should shut up about their bank charges? You incurred the charges, so pay up.

[AitchTwoOh]

honestly, i've got a friend who just got £5500 back and he's off on holiday with the proceeds.

he's absolutely USELESS with money and knowingly incurred all teh charges, so why exactly does he deserve to get the money back? it's not a bloody savings account he's been paying into...

Beacuse the banks are ripping folk off with these charges, they are profiteering from customers bad luck/management.

Of course they should pay up, what they are doing is wrong and they know it or they would not pay.

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'from the customers' bad luck/management...'
if you can't do the time, don't do the crime. you don't get thousands of pounds of charges without ignoring a good few letters.

Agree with October.
If you go over your limit then you should expect a penalty - but I think (not an expert) that the gripe comes with the amount that the banks charge.

definitely unreasonable ! The banks have been ripping peol eoff with thie unlaewful charges - if they weren't running scared they would only pe paying out the difference (ie. they cahrge £35 - should have been £12 - but they've paid the whole £35 back not the £23 !)

You're just jealous !

YABU for the reasons mentioned, also banks and building societies make it very very easy for people to run up debts and go overdrawn. Its a lot easier to borrow money now then it used to be. The banks themselves should behave more responsibly with this regard.

Where's he going - anywhere nice?

funny you should say that aitch

dd said exactly the same thing to me as I was informing ds2 how to go about getting some cash back!

I agree with Aitch. I've never incurred a bank charge in my life, and don't have much sympathy with people who do, (although there are always exceptions and genuine bad luck stories).

I've got a nasty feeling the backlash of all this is that banks will start to charge just for the privilege of having an account. That, to put it mildly, would really piss me off.

but its not so much about the charges as the excessiveness of the charges and charging £35 for sending a letter out - that's just robbery

The problem is Aitch that it only costs the bamk something in the region of £4 to send a letter yet they charge us £30 and then an extra £30 for going overdrawn. I am ususally good with money but we had a bad year with dp's job and struggled to keep our head above water. The bank wasn't interested however and continued to charge us and i was once charged £60 for going £4.55 overdrawn I agree that some people are claiming back thousands and thousands but then it's up to the bank to say your a bad customer and shut the account afterwards. imo they have ripped people off and they deserve the extra £25 per transaction back

of course i'm jealous. i've got a £100 overdraft that i rarely go into. i've tried very hard never to incur any charges, gone without thigns i've wanted and lived within my means. why? because i knew i'd be charged an exhorbitant amount of money if i didn't.

and yet all those people who didn't do that are now getting a big bung back on something that they knew they were being charged? who wouldn't be jealous?

Sounds like your jealous.

I don't have any bank charges but i can see why people are doing this, yes fair enough if people can not be bothered to make sure there is anough money in there banks for one thing or another but tha banks charges are wrong totally & utterly wrong it is robbery, they are only allowed to charge £12 but they charge between £30-£40 a time, it's all wrong.

We changed bank accounts - hsbc didn't transfer the money when they said they had, so we went £8 overdrawn for one day, and were charged £25! Rotten Robbing Grubby Robbers!

who is disputing the wrongness of the charges? not me. that's why i struggled to avoid them.
and yes, rabble, we're all going to lose free banking cos of this so the banks will claw back the money from the good customers.

A friend of mine has just got £500 back from nearly 1k of charges. On one occasion they held back her DD payments because of her overdraft and charged her £30 for each one that was delayed. Then allowed them to go out the day before her pay was due to go in so pushing her over her limit and then charged her for that too. She is due a cheque for over £50k in the next month from the sale of her house and they are aware of that - in fact they tried to force her to guarantee she would pay the cheque in to them but only agreeing to refund the charges if she did.

I sympathise Aitch, I am not sure whether you are being unreasonable or not, but I've had similar thoughts about friends.

I am also cross that at the moment banks are only able to offer free banking to "good" customers because we are (or rather were) subsidised by the charges levied on "bad" customers. Because the banks are being prevented from charging high fees on unauthorised overdrafts it may mean an end to free banking.

I am only held back from gnashing my teeth by the thought that many of these people will have incurred these charges through no fault of their own and that it is wrong for the bank to use people in dire financial straits to subsidise the already-well-off.

Ooooh get you people... "I've never incurred a bank charge in my life..."! Well BULLY FOR YOU.. AND your life!!

The fact that most of us normal (imperfect!) people incur bank charges at some point in our lives DOES NOT MAKE IT OK FOR THE BANKS TO CONTINUE TO BREAK THE LAW!!

They are not ALLOWED to charge more than £12.00 a time... it's unlawful but they continue to do so.. hence WE (normal imperfect people!!) get the opportunity to claim the whole charge back..!... Get it????

No f orf back to your ivory towers!!

becuase its kinda like false advertising, had the banks said " if you use this account and end up being completely useless, then w will charge you £35 for each time you show your complete and utter financial shambolicness"

however what they did was say " it costs us this much when you are shambolic o send a letter telling you you are shamolic"

When actually the financial online websites have made what they consider to be pretty good guestimates and they say £12 is being over generous.

Therefore the banks are being financially greedy and lying. they should be punished or be straight with us.

It is their own fault for lying.

by the way, i have gone overdrawn etc over the years when there have been screwups on my account, but every time i've phoned the bank and they've taken them off at the time because they've recognised that i'm a good customer who doesn't take the piss.
so it's the pisstakers that i object to, and thousands of pounds is a definite pisstake.

AND YES YABU! What's it to you what the Normal Imperfect People do?? You carry on managing your financial affairs wonderfully.. and mind your own business!

It's not the charges that are the problem, but they way they manipulate to ensure they get the most they can.

I don't have an overdraft on either account. DH does in his business account - otherwise he couldn't buy the moreexpensive bits of kit he needs. The tax rebate pays it off once a year. He doesn't get charged too much as long as he doesn't go over his limit but when he does it's a nightmare. If he needs a new drill or work done on his van at the wrong time of the year for example. It's not just fecklessness in all cases.

ooooh CONTENTIOUS!

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Well Shiny, if we're going to discuss the subject of LAWFULNESS how about the idea that taking money out of the bank when you do not have any money in there or permission to run up an overdraft is just as unlawful? You are in effect stealing money from the bank.

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