Just wondering who on here has reclaimed their bank charges. It's really worth it i've just been offered £300 to settle!! Would have been happy with £50!

i know someone who is trying to get £1200 back

interesting to see how he gets on

Ha thats nothing! My brother knocked up 3200 in less than 2 1/2 years! Some months he was paying £300 just in charges! I've just started trying to get his back. Should be very interesting!

Surely it's much more sensible not to incur any bank charges by running your account properly?

Your legally allowed to claim back 5 years worth, which luckily for me went back into my student days.

I had about £700 worth of charges and they offered me 475 to settle

The letter they sent after was funny though, something about how we don't think this is fare but there ya go anyway with our big pet lip on. Since changed banks cos they get a bit crappy with offers once you've done it i.e overdrafts and loans, insurance etc

It's actually 6 years, hope you didn't miss out on too much cash that you would have got from that extra year!

I dare say that some people have been badly treat by the banks & are getting just compensation,but a lot of people ended up with bank charges because they kept on spending money that they havent got.
I feel aggrieved at all these windfalls being dished out yet people who lived within their means get nowt.

valid points

But it's not a windfall is it! Fair enough if you go overdrawn without authorisation, there should be a charge for the cost involved in administering it. But £38 a time, do me a favour, the banks have been laughing at us for years, and making 100's of millions profit from the charges. which are way in excess of the actual cost to them. I say get as much back from them as you can. I might even get around to it myself one of these days.

How do you go about claiming these charges back ?? I might aswell try it if everyone else is, Might get something ya never know .

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/

Has all you need to know about bank charges. Like BillinghamPoolie says it isn't really a windfall. Many people get charges because they don't have the funds to cover the excessive charges the banks have. So they may of bounced one or two checks and that causes a snowball effect with the charges causing other things to bounce. The bank charges also have no logical relation to the amount of the missed direct debit or bounced check.

I'm in the process of doing it. I've heard it can take as little as 4 weeks or up to 6 months to get your money back......

£38 a time for unauthorised overdraft sounds fine to me.

If there wasn't a penalty what would the deterrent be?

Why should I end up paying (by way of interest rates on savings accounts and stuff) for idiots who can't add up or look after their money properly.

I'd charge £100 a go for unauthorised expenditure.

But you would have no customers in your bank though.

Like I said,there are people who have been treat unfairly & deserve to be compensated,that I have no problem with,but a lot of cases are just down to spending money that you dont have,usually to go out on the lash.

Halifax are the worst, i had my car insurance payment by direct debit and due to a cock up with the bank's computer, it paid out the same direct debit twice when i only had enough funds for one payment. This left me 3 PENCE overdrawn. The charged me £30 for not having the money to pay a direct debit and £28 for going overdrawn. Also, because i didn't know that this was going to happen, i still expected £50+ to be sitting in my account and bought some new shoes, for which they charged me £39 for having no money in the account, even though it was their fault. I expected them to say, oh i'm sorry Mr Matthews, here's your money back, but that's not quite what happened! £97 Quid in a day!

Direct Debits are covered by an indemnity guarantee.

If they take them out at the wrong time or for the wrong amount you just have to tell your bank you want to claim under the direct debit indemnity and they should immediately refund all of your charges pending investigation, and if it is proven that the company taking the payment was in the wrong they will become liable for all of the charges.

Sounds good, shame it doesn't work out that way. If they can find a way to weasle out of it they do.

Different scenario. What happens when a direct debit is due on a Monday, your pay is due to go in the same day, so you've got it covered. On the Saturday, two days before payday, so you've only got a small amount of money left in the account, and you go to draw it out, but you can't because you find an entry on your mini statement saying they've taken the Monday DD already, the mini statement dates it with Mondays date, but it's still gone from your balance, and you're f*cked for the weekend. The banks are closed, and they don't want to know on the Monday. Why can't we charge them 38 quid for taking our money, when they shouldn't ?