Hands-on guide to taking on the banks - and winning!

[Lee H]

Avoid TSB like the plague then Trig as they are doing exactly the same to me with their excessive charges and then charging me for the charges taking me over my overdraft

[[GSV]Trig]

Aye, got some bits to sell on eBay to get some funds but its nearly xmas n no bugger wants to buy owt lol

[8bit]

I've been charged by natwest for being over my overdraft.
IE
Say you have £23 in your account, they'll happily bounce a DD or SO for £25 but then charge you £30 and actually take it out of your account putting you over your overdraft, they will then charge you there fee..
Also, my finances are tighter than a duck arse, I have ~£30 a week to spend after bills are paid, thats £30 to spend on fuel, food etc..
Now for the last few months they've been charging me £40 for being over my overdraft and taking the money, which has put me back over my overdraft again, so they've charged me again, which has put me over, so they charge me again and so on and so forth...

Worth me seeing if I can get my money back out of them?

Trig,

Until recently that was almost exactly the position I was in. In the short term you need to do something to break that cycle. I know money's really tight for you but if you could borrow enough just to keep you from going into the red for a month so you don't get charged next time that will help in the short term. Sounds obvious I know but getting a claim out of the bank can take months so it's not a quick fix.

Update on my claim: Still waiting for the bank to respond to my request for all charges under the Data Protection act. My colleague who first put me onto this stuff did tell me about one of her banks that wrote to her and told her that they were setting their charges at a flat £12 rate which would seem to comply with the OFT regs, I'll ask her again today which bank it is and post here.

Worth pointing out that (in Scotland anyway, maybe different elsewhere so do check) is that as I've been informed, a bank cannot legally give you a bad credit rating for anything other than reneging on the T's and C's of a credit card that they have issued you so going past your overdraft limit technically cannot affect your credit score with anyone other than the bank with which you hold the account in question. That said, these ridiculous charges are no more within the law than that and they do it so I'm not surprised. Once people start to challenge this new approach they'll just go and find some other way to screw over the likes of you and I.

Me, I'd borrow £100 from a mate and start up an account with a bank or building society that showed more decency than that, and then shut down the NatWest account and move all the incomings and outgoings to the new accounts.

Me, I'd probably feel safer giving my money to the Russian Mafia to keep safe...

[red]

Fair play to Bob C for highlighting this subject, it's one that I've railed against for years.

I can say from my own experience, before the latest blast of clawback publicity, this is a subject I've drawn down to a fine art without ever going to court.

What I do is simply telephone the bank (using the 'say no to 0870' website to get a local number, or simply asking them to call me back) and complain like hell!

I prepare a list of 10 complaints and simply keep repeating them, working my way up the list from telesales op to telesales sup to dept manager.

I have never failed to get charges reinstated using this method in the last 20 yrs!

Just scream like a banshee about the indiscriminate profiteering, they know it's bad practise, we've just got to stick together and make them aware we know it too!

[Bob Crabtree]

This was too good an opportunity to pass up - but I can't claim any significant credit apart from a little bit of word-tweaking.

Oh, but I like your perseverance!