First, in answer to the original question, I've had charges of up to £140 taken out in one go - these are multiples of £35, in the case of a Coop current account. Regarding money simply being taken, I've had a similar issue with a Coop Visa, where they would just take money out at a fairly unpredictable date. The biggest laugh I had recently (which really prompted me to take action) was when they took out the money (I had just put enough money in the day before), and then returned it 3 days charging me a £35 unpaid charge PLUS £11 for the Visa fee. I then got a call from a very cocky chap telling me I as in arrears on my Visa and could I just pay by debit card. Since this was news to me, and I was on holiday abroad at the time I told him since they're so good at transferring money in and out of my account just like that, he might as well transfer it back to my Visa, given that there was enough money there in the first place. He did, only he took TWICE the amount than should have been paid in the first place bringing my current account within just 5 pounds from the overdraft limit, all this without any declaration or confirmation requested from me. When I tried to check my balance online, I couldn't log in, because the account had been blocked. I phoned and was told that this was because my Visa was in arrears. The next day I checked again, and saw the damage (luckily, no other transaction had taken place since), and then phoned immediately again, to tell them to revert the transaction. After much tooing and frooing (and several international calls at my charge), the promised to return the payment by 5pm the same, and now here comes the absolute GEM from the Coop: They advised me, now WAIT FOR THIS, that a direct debit payment would be returned, IF THERE WEREN'T ENOUGH FUNDS IN THE ACCOUNT 24 HOURS BEFORE IT WAS DUE TO GO OUT!!!! (ie. not even the day before would be good enough) When I said, cheers for telling me now (it's great being informed by the bank about this, since it's not stated in their Ts&Cs), he said : "Oh, this is clearly stated on OUR Direct Debit form". To which I obvious reply was: "Well, normally, when setting up a DD, you don't fill up YOUR form but the other organisations (if at all), so nobody would ever see this." I honestly didn't argue with the chap, he knew it was absolute nonsense himself, and just had to say what he was told. But to top all of that, when I checked later that day, of course the payment hadn't been reversed already, so I phoned again to complain, and then the next day, TWO payments had been returned to my account, from my Visa account, which was not seriously in arrears. As I said at the beginning, this was the final straw for me. I think the Coop are not only unethical, but incompetent, and I am now doing all my preparation to do a full reclaim on my current account with the Coop, current account with Smile, Visa Classic account (recently closed), and Visa Gold account (soon to be paid off in full, but not closed), though I will be waiting, just for fun, for the penalty charge date later this month, just to add all these wondeful new illegal fees to my claim. I hope some of you find the above interesting and supportive if you have any doubts as to whether it would be right for you to reclaim your charges. All the best to you all! WNettie

Hello, I’d really appreciate your advice on the following: I had an MBNA card from 2000 to 2003, when I paid it off and closed the account down. This account caused me an enormous amount of trouble, because of their extortionate interest rates, and the fact that their minimum payment doesn’t really pay anything off (you really have to be savvy about managing your debts with them, which I wasn’t then) – so I was really glad to see the back of them. I now would like to reclaim my charges, which were a pretty regular late payment charge of about £18 up to 2002 and £20 thereafter. However, it seems that I wasn’t quite as good at keeping the statements: I haven’t got a complete set, and particularly missing statements from 2000 & 2001 since I went through a pretty messy house move during that period. My question now is: given that this is now either very close to the beginning or just outside of the 6 year period during which I am entitled to claim, should I just leave it at that and submit a claim based on the statements I’ve got? Or should I submit an SAR requesting the missing statements, and then submit a full claim, taking the risk of additional delay, which might cause a few additional statements to fall outside of the 6 year period? How close is the 6 year period set really? Is it exactly 6 years going back from the date of claim, or is 6 financial years, or is it roughly a 6 year period? Any advice on this would be highly appreciated! Many thanks in advance. WNettie

Hello everyone, I’ve been a member of this fantastic forum for a couple of days now and am now getting myself ready to submit the Preliminary letter to the (highly incompetent) Cooperative Bank (luckily, I have got all my past statements and so did not have to do an SAR). However, there is one little question which I would really appreciate your knowledgeable input for, since I’m not sure how best to handle this. The story started back in April ’05 when I ordered an international bank transfer for some 900 EUROS to be sent to my father in Germany. However, what the bank did, was in fact transfer the requested amount in GB POUNDS (which would equate some 1350 Euros). Also, despite the fact that my father immediately notified me of the difference, it took over 3 weeks for the difference to be credited to my account again (obviously, I did not want my father to have to incur any transfer charges due to the incompetence of my bank). This caused some problems both with cashflow and charges as you can imagine, and the bank refunded £70 to my account in early July (!) – but obviously only after I complained. Anyone who knows Coop statements knows that any commission/unpaid charges descriptions are totally vague regarding what they relate to, and admittedly, I do not keep the letters which have details of what each charge relates to. My question now is as to how I should deal with this refund in my Schedule of Charges: Do I include it as a refund (and a minus amount), or do I just find ignore/delete those charges from the Schedule, which the refund might relate to (though there would be some guesswork involved). I have another question which relates to the interest that I might reclaim. As I understand, I can only reclaim interest, which is on an overdraft directly caused by the charges. I am only reclaiming a fairly small portion of the interest charges, since my overdraft periods, in the main, were caused by my own transactions rather than the directly by bank charges (and the Coop, in true ethical spirit, only started charging me significant sums when I really couldn't afford it after having had a baby!). However, with the above described messed-up international transfer, the interest charged on at least one occasion was not directly caused by charges but by the fact that the bank made a mistake in the performing the transfer. Would it be wise to make reference, in the schedule, to the bank’s incompetence being the direct cause of the charge, or should I just include it without any comment? Any comments/advice would be greatly appreciated! Many thanks in advance! WNettie