What Can I Claim?

As a bank account/credit card account holder you are entitled to claim charges applied to your account over the last six years in England (last 5 years in Scotland).

Bankchargesuk.co.uk will assist you in liaising with your Bank/Building Society to reclaim such charges including:

• Charges for late payments
• Unauthorised overdrafts
• Exceeding your overdraft limit
• Returned Cheques
• Returned Direct Debits
• Returned Standing Orders.

You may have come across or read several references to the term “unlawful bank charges”. We prefer the term unfair as there is no current ruling describing the charges as unlawful. The charges could be described as unreasonable or unfair in that they are applied to most account holders in an arbitrary way. English law, The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 No2083 states that a term is unfair if it “requires any consumer who fails to fulfil his obligation to pay a dis-proportionately high sum in compensation” therefore by inference, to charge a bank account holder between £25 and £35 for going £5 overdrawn is clearly disproportionate and unreasonable.

This also applies to charges for unauthorised overdrafts, bounced (returned cheques), unpaid direct debits and standing orders.

The Office of Fair Trading recently referred to many bank charges as not only unfair but also unlawful where they cannot be justified strengthening the case for reclaiming your bank charges over the last six years.