Consumer Central - Times Online - WBLG

Does Bank Charges Loss Mean Anything?

Martin Lewis, moneysavingexpert.com.

According to a report on BBC News a district judge has ruled against allowing someone to reclaim bank charges.   As discussed here before, the campaign to reclaim charges is something I've been heavily involve in, in fact this morning I put out a press release that over 3,000,000 template letters have now been downloaded from my bank charges reclaiming guide.

This result was a bit of a shock, but there’s no cause for panic. This is not a precedent setting case (in other words no other court has to look at this decision and follow it). Across the country the banks are still paying out many tens of thousands a day see bank charges success reports.

My strong suspicion is ....

Get Your Own Back

Our delightful high street banks are in the process of announcing yet another round of humongous profits. Barclays went first this year clocking up a stonking pre-tax profit of £7.14bn in 2006 - up by 35%. By the time all the other results are in, the total take is expected to be a whopping £38bn. Yet all this comes at a time when the banks are pulling one scam after another. Old favourites include:

• Taking an age to clear cheques despite the technology having long been available to do it instantaneously
• Whacking us with exorbitant exchange rate charges when traveling abroad
• Pushing up mortgage rates the moment base rate rise while taking forever to lower them when base rates move the other way
• Flogging us "quality" insurance and investment products that are available at half the price elsewhere
• Suckering us into savings accounts with good rates only to slash them quietly once we're in

But now it seems Britain's banks may have met their match. One of my heroes, the money saving expert Martin Lewis, has launched a campaign ...

Them and us: The 'adversarial consumer society'

My bank-bashing friend Martin Lewis says in the Sunday Times that we British consumers need to harden up a bit. We live in an “adversarial consumer society” in which big business will take us for everything it can unless we stand up for ourselves and fight back. The notion of “corporate responsibility put about by politicians is nonsense and works only to lull consumers into a false sense of security”, he adds.

I agree. With only a few exceptions, British consumers are a bit of a pushover. We are not assertive enough in demanding our rights and we do not kick back anything like hard or accurately enough when we find ourselves being ripped-off. American friends and colleagues are ...