For those taking (or considering) legal action to recover charges:
It is a wise move to open an account with somewhere like the Woolwich before you take your current bank to the cleaners. The Woolwich are "pretty cool" about new customers and don't do credit checks on many new customer accounts (depending on the type of account facility required). With many new accounts they also offer to rearrange all your Direct Debits, Standing Orders etc free of charge for you.
Some banks are getting a bit stroppy with customers who successfully claim (ie. everyone who has claimed to date) and are closing some successful applicants accounts. The legality of such actions are currently being looked into and I'm pretty sure that they'll have to stop doing this in the near future or face further legal action from customers (if not Government - who are hell bent on everyone having a bank account so they can keep tabs on all of us).
There is no legal (or logical) argument for any bank to close an account simply because the account holder has won a claim against them. The argument most commonly put forward is that the bank feel that the account is not "profitable" or "incorrectly managed". This is an interesting, if fundamentally flawed, defence of their actions.
Over the past few years the Government (bless 'em) have moved over 93% of benefit payments to BACS / EFT and benefit receipients must have a bank account to receive payments. Additionally, benefit receipient accounts are, on instruction from Government, to be treated differently from the accounts of working individuals in order that the socially disadvantaged are not further penalized by bank charges.
This raises the issues of equality and discrimination (yes, the old chestnut of human rights). I'm personally involved with two current cases where the plaintiffs have threatened (legitimately) to sue their banks for theft after they won back their charges, costs, and interest and their banks closed their accounts.
Guess what? Once the banks realized that charging illegal penalty fees was now the least of their worries and that people were prepared to instigate criminal proceedings for theft they quickly backed down and offered (sorry, "begged") the plaintiffs to reopen their accounts and let bygones be bygones. Neither plaintiff has taken them up on their offer and are currently considering proceeding with the theft charges.
Generally speaking if you take action against your bank for illegal charges it is worth mentioning to them in your letter before action that any attempt to defame or disadvantage you as a result of you exercising your legal rights will result in further legal action.
I find this works a treat since once they receive their summons in respect of the illegal charges you can pretty much rest assured that they'll get the message that you're quite prepared to go to court in the event that they do defame or disadvantage you as a result of you deciding to do so.
Be advised though that 99% of banks do not "roll over" once you threaten action, 99% do not roll over once you issue proceedings, 99% will drag on until the day of the hearing trying to wear you down or brow beat you with legalese and fancy letterheaded missives from their elected counsel. There is an upside though - 99.9% of them, to date, have paid up. The one exception being Lloyds who in one case used a cunning (see: lowdown / sneaky) interprative distraction which, if they attempted to use it again, would be entirely ineffective
Inspiration for all
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/5043154.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian_j...524077,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/m...er/4810490.stm
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