Morgan054 v Natwest Small success

[morgan054]

Because of my long running battle with Halifax and the possible threat of account closure, I opened a parachute account with Natwest,

 

anyway I forgot about a D/D due out and they charged me £38, well to say I was livid is an understatement so I rang their Bangor office and asked for it back, guess what they said,.................NO WAY...................

 

So I fired off a slightly edited version of a prelim but added a bit extra courtesy of the FOS

 

Natwest

Customer Lending Centre

P.O Box 1130

Bangor

Gwynedd

LL59 5ZD

 

 

20th December 2006

 

 

Request for repayment of charges

 

Dear Sir/Madam,

 

ACCOUNT NUMBER: **********

 

After a few days away from home I came home to find a letter from yourselves indicating that you had refused to pay a Direct Debit of £27.48 as there were insufficient funds in my account, whilst I will agree that I do not expect you to pay the said D/D it is quite inconceivable that you therefore debit my account for £38 payable to yourselves. I believe that is classed as double standards, you not being prepared to pay some one else to make me go overdrawn but pay yourselves and making me overdrawn.

After my telephone conversation with Mr Chris Rogers on 20th December 2006 to which you have refused to refund said penalty charge or to provide me with a breakdown of your costs I have no option but to proceed as indicated in this letter.

Furthermore I must direct you to a recent statement from the FOS which states

The ombudsman, Walter Merricks, said that banks should be paying customers their claims in full or explain why their charges are legal. "If they are not prepared to do that and they want to argue the point then I have to start down the road of investigating myself," he said.

My request

I am writing to ask you to refund to me the charge of £38 which you applied to my account on 15th December 2006

I now understand that the regime of fees which you appear to apply to my account in relation to direct debit refusals, exceeding overdraft limits and so forth are unlawful at Common Law, Statute and recent consumer regulations. If you say that they are not, then will you please demonstrate this by letting me have a full breakdown of the costs to which you have been put by as a result of my breaches, in order to reassure me that your penalties really do reflect your costs.

Additionally, it has now been confirmed that your particularly high level of penalties are considered to be unfair per se by the OFT who reported on the 5th April 2006 and are therefore presumed to be unlawful in the absence of specific proof to the contrary. Blah Blah Blah............

Well it seems to have worked, today I had a letter informing me of a refund of £38.

Not a lot I know but its the thought that counts

Good start to the New year I think:D

Best of Luck to everyone else

[Guest NATTIE]

Well done Morgan, I thought they might.

[mogaso]

Hey Morgan, congratulations. I'm now in the same situation that I'm charged 38 pounds. Whom should I contact to claim refund? Would you recommend just to copy your refund-claim letter as it is posted above? Thanks for your advise.

[steven4064]

If it's just one charge the branch can (usually) deal with it

 

Steven

 

If this post is helpful, please click the scales

Any opinions are without prejudice & without liability.

Almost everything I know concerning the law I learned from this site