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Just checked my online banking they have debited the charge of £28.00 on the 28th Feb.

Our family suffered a bereevement at the end of 2005. This left us in a postition where our finances were a little out of control. The bank levied charges on our account to the tune of £379.00 over a period of a month. Before finding this sight we wrote them this letter on the 13th Jan 2006 Dear sir or Madam We write in regards to the above account. We are very concerned about the bank charges which have been made to our account over the period of one month 8th December 2005 to 10th January 2006. Granted we have be experiencing some financial difficulties within this period due to circumstances beyond our control. e.g. family illness and bereavement , however many of the direct debits which were unpaid from our account do not amount to the extortionate charge of £379.00 which has been made to our account. We usually pay our bank charges without question as we do appreciate that the bank is a business. However these charges are highly ridiculous and to say the least unfair. We are writing to you in order for you to justify to us why such exorbitant charges are necessary. We are of the view that your charges represent a penalty and are therefore irrecoverable at common law. In the Scottish case of Castaneda and Others v. Clydebank Engineering and Shipbuilding Co., Ltd. (1904) 12 SLT 498 the House of Lords held that a contractual party can only recover damages for actual or liquidated losses incurred from a breach of contract. This is also the position in English law: Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Co Ltd v New Garage and Motor Co Ltd [1915] AC 79. Your charges do not reflect any actual or real loss, instead they appear to represent a lucrative profit-making scheme. On a separate note, your charges appear to represent an unfair term of contract which is contrary to the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 (SI. 1999/2083). Our account falls within the ambit of Regulation 5 of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 as we are consumers. Your charges constitute an unfair penalty under reference to paragraph 1(e) of schedule 2 of the said regulations: ‘Indicative and non-exhaustive list of terms which may be regarded as unfair - 1. Terms which have the object of effect of - (e) requiring any consumer who fails his obligation to pay a disproportionately high sum in compensation’. 0n 26 July 2005 the OFT stated that 'a charge is likely to be disproportionately high if it is more than a court would be likely to award if the lender sued the cardholder for breach of contract'. Because your charges include a lucrative profit margin, in addition to actual loss, they are irrecoverable as an unfair term in contract. We believe that your charges require us to pay a disproportionately high sum in compensation for being without sufficient funds. We are aware that the penalty charges should not be enforceable if those charges are disproportionate. LAURA v. GOLIATH TEST CASE. This is very clear in our case. We are therefore requesting that you please refund these charges to our account within the next 7 days, or we will commence court proceedings without any further notice. We are prepared to commence court proceedings as they will not amount to the costs for which you have charged us. Yours sincerely We received a letter from our branch manager on the 18th Jan as follows: Thank you for your letter dated 13/01/06 regarding multiple charges that have been applied to your account from December 2005 to January 2006. You will find enclosed a copy of our leaflet, which tells you how we will handle your complaint. Your concerns will be dealt with as quickly as possible, but if you need to speak to me in the meantime, please telephone me om 020XXXXXXX. After hearing nothing we wrote again on the 31st January as follows: Further to our correspondence of the 13th January and your unwillingness to respond, we now wish to look further into charges levied from our account as we commence court proceedings. Therefore we are now requesting a schedule of the charges and fees that have been levied from our account, for the last 3 years. We are entitled to this information under the Data Protection Act 1998. The schedule needs to include the date, reason, i.e. unpaid DD unpaid standing order, unauthorized overdraft etc, and amount of each charge. We understand that we can be charged no more than £10 for this service for which we are happy to do. Yours Sincerely On the 2nd Feb we received the following again from the branch manager Having looked at your account in detail the charges you have incurred are for failed DDand standing orders. You will appreciate that we have to pass on the costs for paid and unpaid items, should you use an unauthorised overdraft. Its only fair to all of our coustomers that we pass these costs on to the specific account holders affected. This is clearly stated in the 'Bank Account. Terms and conditions', a copy of which is enclosed with this letter. In your letter you state that you have been experiencing financial difficulties however your account has not decreased in bank credits and you have only recently cancelled some of your Direct Debits and standing orders, as far as I am aware this is the first correspondence we have received regarding your financial postion and personal circumstances e.g family illness and bereavement. As a gesture of goodwill I have resversed the charge, which is due to be debited on the 28/02/2006 for £28.00 due to the usage of an unauthorised overdraft. Unfortuanately all charges, which have been previously debited correctly will stand. should any or your concerns remain unresolved please let me know what you would like me to do to put the matter right. We are keen to resolve your concerns, if we are unable to do so we'll provide you with details of how you can contacyt the financial Ombudsman for help. If I don't hear from you yn the next eight weeks I will assume you are happy. As we were not happy we replied with the follwing letter on the 15th February. With reference to your letter dated 2nd February 2006 Thank you for your gesture of goodwill to reserve the charge of £28.00 due to be debited to our account on the 28/02/2006. In your letter you have said that you are aware that our letter of the 13/01/2006 was the first correspondence you have received from us regarding our financial position and personal circumstances. This is true as we have not had any other reason to inform you of any other personal circumstances in the past and were unable to for see the financial problems we suffered between November 05 and January 06. What happened to our family over the period to which we refer was very traumatic for us all as the bereavement we suffered was unexpected and costly. The death of our family member took place abroad and left us with very expensive bills in order to take care of the issues surrounding the bereavement.. We understand that the bank will pass costs for unpaid items and the use of unauthorised overdrafts to specific account holders affected. However we believe that these charges as stated in our letter of the 13/01/2006 do not reflect any actual or real loss, instead they appear to represent a lucrative profit-making scheme. Your charges require us to pay a disproportionately high sum in compensation for being without sufficient funds. A reasonable gesture of good will would have been for the bank to credit our account with all of the charges debited or a reasonable percentage of them. Some of the charges made to our account were for unpaid direct debits of £1.99 and £2.98 for which we were charged a total of £78.00 We are aware that the penalty charges should not be enforceable if those charges are disproportionate. Therefore in respect of the above we enclose a cheque payment of £10.00 in accordance with our letter dated 31st January 2006. In this letter we have requested a schedule of the charges and fees that have been levied from our account, for the last 3 years. Yours sincerely On the 17th february our account was credited with the sum of £40.00 marked as bank administration credit. We have received no correspondence explaining what this acutally means. This morning we sent a further letter as follows Further to our letter dated 15th February 2006 a total of 17 days has elapsed since our request for bank statements under The Data Protection Act (1998) As you are no doubt aware, you are afforded 40 days to comply with this request or you must request an extension from the Information Commissioner. If you are of any doubt that this information is covered by the act, may we respectfully draw your attention to the case of Durant v FSA 2003. We thank you in anticipation of your speedy reply. We have not commenced our court proceedings as we were waiting for the statments so that we know how much to claim. However as they are obviously stalling should we go ahead and estimate an amount and start proceedings as from now? Or shouls we wait until the 27th March. As this is when the 40 days will have elapsed in accordance with our DPA request. By the way this is a wonderful site wish we had found it earlier