Alex Harries's diary

In the latest of the virtually unbroken series of embarrassing defeats for banks being pursued through the courts by customers sick of being hit with penalty charges - decreed as "unlawful" by OFCOM - Natwest bank has repaid £35,988 to an anonymous customer whose small business was hit with the charges.

• Find out more at BBC News

In a related development, a number of people, including the administrator of the Consumer Action Group forums - one of the most powerful community groups challenging the UK banks now - have suggested that the 6 year limit should no longer apply. This limit - the maximum period of time bank charges could be reclaimed within - apparently no longer applies, according to several people far cleverer than I am, who know how to quote facts and figures and other things.

• You can find out more, here

... Not that I consider some areas of the retail banking industry to be one of the most greedy*, incompetent and ignorant groups of numpties to ever grace this country - oh no.

Ok, I do.

Fancy some more proof? Try this ("Are Penalty Charges Bank Robbery?"), and this (video - "The Money Progamme investigates bank charges") from the BBC.

Grumpy luv /al

* Well, how else do you justify £190 in charges in a month where I'm paid £280, for two bounced payments of £15 and £50?! 

(Off topic fun. Isn't it always these days?)

I've just been reminded by a friend that you can apply to reclaim any bank charges you've had in the last 6 years. For example, a direct debit for £15 was bounced recently because I had only £14.12 in my account (yup, I was 88p short). For that I was charged £27 for bouncing the charge, £30 for an unauthorised overdraft (caused by the £27 charge), and then charged a further £30 the next day for not repaying my unauthorised overdraft.

To recap: that's £87 of charges for being 88p short. To add insult to injury, the reason I didn't have enough in the bank in the first place was my bank's shiny new online banking website which displayed my bank balance, recent charges, a block of text and a nice, shiny, flashing advert all on top of each other. (If that's the level of ability of their webteam, maybe I should apply to them for a McJobbidge? ;o).

A lot of information and advice is available online - a quick Google search turned up www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk near the top of the results, and there's a lot of information on there to get started on reclaiming your charges. ThisIsMoney also has a good feature on it.

In short, what you normally do is:

• Send a form letter to your bank requesting your bank statements and details of any charges applied (you can get up to 6 years' worth in England and Wales, or 5 years' in Scotland). Normally they have 40 days to reply.
  
  
• Once you receive the statements, total up your charges and send a second form letter - with the total amount of these charges plus any other bits and bobs (the information is provided online) - and send it back. This shouldn't take more than 14 days I think?
  
  
• In an ideal world, you should then get either a settlement offer back from the bank, confirmation of a refund for all your charges, or confirmation that they're going to investigate your complaint. It's important that you read all the information you can get your hands on throughout this procedure to make sure you're doing everything the right way!

Think I'll be starting to do some maths tomorrow. A bit of mental artithmetic comes up to a figure of £bloody hell for me... ;o)

Couple of points:

• The whole process can be completed within 80 days, depending on your bank's level of cooperation.
• This might also be suitable for credit cards, or if it's not, being able to claim credit card charges back is something that's definitely in the pipeline.
  
• You can get (usually free) independent advice from the Citizen's Advice Bureau, or (normally) paid advice from a solicitor, financial adviser, or another suitable professional - this is never a bad idea so you can make sure everything you're doing is correct and above board.

Disclaimer: I'm not a financial adviser. Hell, you shouldn't even be listening to me, so it's up to you to figure out if the information contained in here is useful to you and accurate. Please don't sue me if it all goes horribly wrong - although it shouldn't - 'cos I can't afford it!