Get your overdraft fees back!

[Chris Perkins 228]

On the 12th and 13th of December Barclays Bank charged me 2x £30 per transaction beyond my overdraft limit. I hadn't kept an eye on the account. I got dad to pay some cash in and that sorted it.

I was quite pissed about the £60 charge. So I looked online and apparently there has been quite a bit of publicity about bank charges recently. I found a very official looking letter template that cited other cases of companies taking fees that were not proportionate to actual costs.

So I sent them this letter with a threat of account closure and court action if the money was not returned. And hey presto, £60 hit my account today! They don't want court hassle, so refunding is much easier.

So, if you're annoyed about bank charges, claim them back! PM me if you want to the the letter used. Unbelievably effective I thought.

[Peter 615]

Was this tip from moneysaving.com (I think) with Martin Lewis?

There is a lot of good advice there.

[scottishmoney 35]

£30 for an overdraft! Wowza, how about usury? They might just as well stick a pistol in your side.

[Chris Perkins 228]

£30 per transaction over my agreed overdraft!!! Swines, banks are.

I don't know the original source of the letter, I think it was the BBC somewhere.

Over here in Germany they never charge more than EUR10.00 for things like that. And parking tickets in Chemnitz are laughable. I park where I like because I know if I get caught it'll cost me about £3.50! I got a ticket London for being parked outside a friends house with 2 wheels on the pavement (not a yellow line) and that cost £40!

We are per capita richer in the UK than in Germany, but the things you get charged in merry old England, particularly the 2 examples above are not proportionate.

[Emperor Oli 0]

Someone I know did that a few months ago. A few hundred quid had mounted up over several years, and most of it was paid back. I found it on the site Peter mentioned, I think, or a dedicated fee-combating site anyway.

[Peter 615]

Moneysavingexpert.com is the one I was thinking of.

An excellent site.