Sorry if this annoys you but take a step back and look at the bigger picture - whats more important getting the money you are due back quickly (by using the templates and taking court action if need be) or wasting your own time dragging it out by being creative and writing your own letters to gain a feeling of self-importance? RBS churn out their replies in bulk and no matter how cleverly worded your letter may be it will have next to no impact on their decision. Follow the processes and templates already listed on this site - It's not going to be a walk in the park by any means but you'll have the quickest and most hassle free resolution. (By the way I'd disagree with what RBS said in their letter about the OFT ruling only applying to credit card charges - that's not what they said. It was basically about CC charges but stated it could be applied to financial products across the board if i remember right)

Yes this can keep happening but cheques will bounce completely and be sent back after 2-3 attempts. Yes they are all illegal so claim it all back.

I'm with you on the whole bank charges are illegal and you should claim them all back but i have to say.. ...1p cheque day would be a waste of time. (believe me I've had pay-ins for 1 pence a few times and it is always a laugh! ) As already pointed out there are only 13,000 users on this board. There are more than 14,000 banks in the UK (according to tv last night) Even if all 13,000 from the forum all went into the bank and paid in a cheque for 1p this is less than one person per bank. It would only take the teller 20 odd key presses and a matter of seconds to process this. (and if you'd already filled out the slip we wouldn't need to do anything at all!) Then the cheque and payinslip would be fired away with the rest of the days work where it is automatically scanned and processed at no extra cost to the banks. As my flatmate has just pointed out I think you'd be more annoyed at having to stand in a queue for 10 minutes to do this in the first place than wasting a whole 15 seconds of the tellers time. I once knew of a guy (think he had mental problems! ) who insisted on paying in 20 £1 coins each as a seperate transaction and each of them had to have a different reference keyed to appear on his statement, that would have taken a bit more time (maybe 5-10 minutes??) Then again as we offer a service I'd say the banks are within their rights to refuse to serve you if they so wish - this is not against the law as some people have said.

Glad to help. I'm not quite sure what you mean though. Is it when a soldier is moved from say a base in Nottingham to a Glasgow base that the army automatically tells the bank of the change of address? I've a feeling these may not be set up as regular personal accounts because of the way they sound like they're run, could you tell me what type of account they have? (Interest Paying Current Accounts or Royalties or R21 or Key are the usual accounts for personal customers)

I wouldn't mention this as the bank may use this as an excuse to try and accumulate all your charges into one claim, meaning you can't go thru the small claims court. Otherwise go for it!

yeah good luck.

£90 is the maximum monthly charge for referal charges (ie 3 or more PAID items that take you over your limit) £28 is the maximum "maintenace charge" each month (if you are ever over your limit) £38 unpaid charge per item that is unpaid so if you had 1000 items bounce in a month you'd be charged £38,000! Bounced DD = Unpaid Item Charge of £38 DD Paid (ie not bounced) when there are not enough funds = Referal Charge of £30 per instance the bank has paid a DD when there are unclear funds up to a monthly maximum of £90 In the example I gave the item is not paid (ie bounced) so there is an unpaid item charge. Referal charges are only incurred when the bank pays the item (ie doesn't bounce it) Yeah charges are deliberately confusing not all staff seem to understand them so i can see why customers struggle with them. This helps the bank as less people understand the charges so are less likely to challenge them successully in the traditional way. By the way I've a whole thread about how the charges are worked out, its called "how we calculate charges" or something like that (you can find it in "a word from banks") have a look there if it helps.

I assume your with Royal Bank of Scotland, Woolfie? You're told about your referal charges on a seperate sheet at the back of your months statements but they won't be debited to your account until the sixth working day of the next month. Have a check back through the statement where they tell you when they will be debiting your referal charge(s) and you'll see that you've had cheques, DDs or SOs paid when there is not enough cleared funds. (£30 for each time it happens up to a maximum charge of £90 per month) I said you can't have both charges at once - what I meant was you can't receive both charges for the same item. You may be unlucky and have an unpaid item charge on the same day the previous months referal charge is taken from you. A referal charge applied on the 10th April will relate to something that happened in February or March and will say "Referal Charge 15 Feb 2006 - 15 Mar 2006" (or whatever your statement date was) I can see how it could be confusing as referal charges can come of anything up to almost 2 months after the original incident. Hope this helps

There are no referal charges when the bank bounces DDs. Referal charges are only applied when the bank decides to pay a DD when there is not enough money. Unpaid Item Charge (£38) - when an item is BOUNCED due to not enough funds. Referal Charge (£30) - when there are not enough funds to cover an item and the bank still PAYS IT for you regardless. You can only have one or the other not both charges at once. The decision seems to be made automatically and is based on your account conduct.

The official line we i was given during my training at RBS is that we only do it (bounce DDs / SOs) as a last resort. Apparently if we refuse to pay a DD it is a technical breach of the Data Protection Act as we are effectively telling other companies about the customers accounts (ie they have no money) All righty then! Shame I'm one of the few in the bank who's smart enough to see through their lies.

1. - Referal charge is where the bank decide to pay an item (cheque/SO/DD) that takes you over agreed borrowing limit (£30 per item, maximum monthly charge is £90. This is advised on your statement and debited to your account the 6th working day of the next month) - Maintenance Charge occurs if you are ever over your agreed borrowing limit during the month a particular statement is produced (£28 for each monthly statement period your account has one (or more) instances of being overlimit, this is advised on statement and debited about two weeks after statement is sent out) ...and yes that means that if you get a referal charge you will definitely also get a maintenace charge. Well unfair! 2. Yes they do charge you but as allanfromderby says they are both illegal so you will get your money back if you persist

best wishes and good luck. Be persistent and you will WIN!

How long ago did this happen? £800 of charges sounds a lot you must have had it for a while. Are all your DDs SOs etc coming off this account now? What was your old account a key account or an interest paying current account perhaps? Let me know and maybe I can help. Its possible that either (A) someones made a genuine mistake or (B) that the branch are trying to cheat to gain more points towards their precious sales target. If they opened up a brand new Royalties Gold account with no link to your original customer id it looks like a new connection to the bank and they'll get a fair amount of sales points, whereas if they'd just upgraded you the points would have been far less. I would contact customer relations about this (see sticky on RBS contact details) By the way are you really sure you'll use all the benefits of royalties gold? I'd say 90-95% of customers don't get at least £144 (£12 x 12 months charges) worth of value from it each year. They may have shown you on paper but how many services are you actually likely to use? Just ask to downgrade back to a free account if you don't benefit from it.

good luck mate!

If you can sign up to a 12 month contract by phone then you can pretty much cancel it by phone to the company concerned as well i'd imagine. I'd say the tv company are just trying to stall you and they have no right to do this. I've seen lots of companies do this sort of thing in the past and then say "oh but we never ever got your letter..." Even sending recorded delivery has had similar problems The bank is right in that you can't have a DD on a credit card. What you're actually paying is a regular credit card payment. This means the tv channel have your details and just present a payment request every time they want the money. But credit card payments need authorised by yourself if not they are illegal. If you've told the tv channel not to take any further payments and they do then tell your bank that the payments have been taken without your authorisation and you can have them refunded (though this could take 4-6 weeks) The credit card company cannot put a block on the tv channel from taking your payments however, it needs to be that they come off first and then you can claim them back. If it continues to happen I suppose you could take the tv channel to county court for continuing to take payments from you without your authorisation. I would record a phonecall confirming the cancellation with the tv channel 1st (make sure you tell them you are recording it otherwise it is inadmissable in court) Hope this helps

Yes this is still the address. Take it its a football credit card? My mate had the same deal and they automatically changed it to MBNA Does this mean you can take the football club to the county court lol!

agreed

Yes, there's no charge for this on a key account. It does not have any credit facilities (ie chequebook, debit card, overdraft). You'll be offered this account when you sign up if you don't score for a regular account (though we'd like you to have one of these as there's more sales points in it for us staff!)

No ones quite got it yet... Here's the answer and what would need to happen (remember this is the WORST case scenario!) : Charge 1 - If the bank decides to bounce the DD (£38 unpaid item charge applied immediately) Charge 2 - The account is now taken overlimit because of the above charge (£28 overlimit charge is accrued on system) Charge 3 - Company will automatically represent the same DD a few days later and it will bounce yet again (another £38) Charge 4 - If the customers statement just happens sent out during the time they are overlimit (further £28 overlimit charge is accrued on system for inclusion in next months statement) £38 x 2 unpaid item fees + £28 x 2 overlimit fees = FOUR CHARGES TOTALLING £132 FOR BEING JUST 1 PENCE SHORT!!! Obviously if you are living on a tight budget having £132 wiped off it will affect you in the coming weeks and you'll no doubt incur an awful lot more charges and interest as has already been pointed out by some people. Please note this is a worst case scenario I don't want to scare anyone unnecessarily - If your account is generally run fairly well its doubtful the bank would bounce a payment like this in the first place (not sure exactly how the decision making process works though) Hats off to jonni2bad who was just a fiver out with £127

£240's too high (theres no daily charge on the accounts by the way)

I'm sure there are bank managers lurking on here. The question is whether they're good ones or bad ones... In my experience its split about 50/50. Half the managers sympathise with the customers (and the staff) and the other half are total jobsworths and can see the bank do no wrong.

ok own up who said £20 lol! At RBS we only send a letter for the 1st charge ever on the account. Therefore assuming that everything else is actually automated the total charge to the bank in future would effectively be ZERO! (Unless you take into account costs involved in setting up the charging systems in the first place and split them equally between chargees but even still there are that many charges the cost to each person would be minimal)

yes your right. By the way you have to make your cheque for £10 out to each individual company separately. I'm sure you could get away with sending one to the Halifox, and then one to Yorkshire asking for information its credit card division holds on you as well. It may feel painful writing "please pay Halifax Bank ten pounds only" but don't worry you'll get this all back.

go get 'em tiger!

excellent. result!