I am reading this with interest as Natwest is the main company I will shortly be claiming from. it is my belief that the OFT ruling has little to do with this - the main point is the legal issue raised elsewhere on this forum - the bank are only allowed to claim admin costs resulting from breach of contract (e.g. a direct debit failing on your account) and no matter what they say this does not cost anywhere near £20-30. Check the completed litigations section - no-one has lost a case yet.

Sweetthings I too sympathise greatly. I was in the situation a while ago of having a £3000 overdraft - almost half of my monthly earnings. The bank then made me take a loan with extortionate interest, knowing that I wouldn't pass the credit check for one anywhere else. Luckily I managed to source finds from elsewhere (legally I assure you - just realised how dodgy that sounds!) and paid back the loan. I'm still paying back a lot of other debt, but something always comes up at the last moment. Like you finding this site. So stick with it and let people here help you if you need it. What bothers me is how many other people in your situation have not found out about this yet. Make sure you tell everyone!

I'm not sure if this is admissable as evidence in court. There is a lot of stuff at the beginning about it being uncorrected etc and nothing substantial is being admitted. Plus this refers to the banking code rather than any specific laws. I'm not sure how much legally the banks have to abide by it. On the subject of unlawful charges it mainly just refers to the investigation by the OFT and leaves it as that. However, it may contain information that could help back up a claim if it was deemed usable in a court of law. It's definitley not a bad thing anyway.

Q373 - Mr Fortescue: The Guidance on this point says that banks should leave the customer with sufficient money for day-to-day expenses, taking into account individual circumstances. We are aware of instances where that has not happened; where the bank has grabbed all the money when it is paid in after the salary date. We have got a very good liaison with a lot of money advisers and Citizens' Advice Bureaus who have frequently told us of this. We have taken them up with the bank concerned and been able to rectify the situation. Interesting. Must read this properly later.

In my anger at my bank's general appaling level of service, without even going into the charges, I had an idea of printing off some leaflets containing information on the current state of play with bank charges, including examples of court cases won etc and then standing outside my bank on Saturday morning giving them out to customers. I'm sure they would probably find some law to make me stop doing it, but I really am quite tempted! If I hadn't been browsing the BBC news site, and read an article on debt, and THEN gone to the forum part and posted something and THEN read someone else's post I wouldn't have known anything about this. Somehow I missed the odd articles in the newspapers and anywhere else. I really do feel sorry for people who aren't aware that they have the opportunity to claim back all of this money.

DPA request sent by secure messaging today (21-apr-2006). Will keep this up to date...

Thought this isn't directly related to charges being unfair i thought people with Egg credit cards on or near their credit limit should be aware of this. I received a letter the other day from them stating my card was over its limit and to call and make a payment. knowing that it was just under by about £5 and I had cut the card up, this concerned me so I called them to find out more. "No, you're not over your limit yet" says the woman at Egg. "But you will be when the interest is added." I pressed for further information. I would have enough funds in my bank account to make this month's payment. What was the problem? "Ah, well we add the months interest to the account a few days before the payment is taken. Which, being £92, will take you over you limit and incur an additional charge." What a surprise - an unfair charge. However, is it just me or is this a tad unfair? Do all creadit cards do this? Have I been in the dark all this time? Maybe everyone else was aware of this except me. I fully intend to claim back the mountain of cash owed to me by Egg, but I think it is unfair that if your card is at its limit or just below you can still go over (and of course get charged) without doing anything wrong. Views on this anyone?

I will definitley donate something towards the people responsible for this site when I get my money back. I aim to claim from Mint, Natwest (including late payment charges added on to my mortgage), MBNA, EGG, Tiscali, Sky and T-Mobile. So I may need that good luck!!! Especially as the amount so far claimed from Natwest seems very little. Although that is something for discussion in the relevant thread. I have been exploring moneysavingexpert and it is a very good site - sorry if I made it out to be less informative than this one in my earlier post. Anyone else reading this should definitely check it out if they're interested in saving money.

Thanks for the super-fast reply! I originally saw the OFT ruling mentioned on the BBC new site, in the 'Have your say' section about people in debt. After some brief Googling, I came across moneysavingexpert.com which had an excellent article and amongst others recommended this site as a goodresource for letter templates etc. My apologies, as I assumed the information on that site would be about the same as on this one, however after reading your reply and checking around here a bit more it seems this site is a little more up to date with regards to the current situation concerning the recent ruling. Oh, and I don't normally phrase postings like this but I'm getting geared up for writing a lot of letters to various companies so I'm in 'posh matter-off-fact' mode

A couple of questions came to me after looking into this whole unfair charges thing - 1) With the OFT ruling that charges over £12 are unfair, shouldn't I only be able to claim the amount over £12 for all charges rather than the full amount? It seems odd to me that we are able to claim the entire amount (not that I'm complaining if we can ) 2) I have read about some people getting (mostly small) amounts refunded easily, whilst others claiming from the same banks get letters stating their charges are not unfair and they will not refund them. Surely after they have refunded even just one charge, that is admitting that the charges are unfair and qualify for refunds?