You arrived at this page by selecting:Bank Charge Saga (YEP and T & A 22/05/08)
You may have heard recently that a High Court Judge confirmed that bank charges do apply under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 2003 and bank charges are required to be fair.
That does not mean that Bank Charges are unfair it only means that they are able to be challenged. There now has to be an assessment by the Court to see if they are actually unfair.
Now the Banks argue that when you agreed to take up one of their bank accounts that you agreed to the terms and conditions set with it. Those terms and bank charges were detailed at the beginning of the contract and therefore you shouldn't be able to complain about them afterwards. You can't blame them for thinking that. After all we are constantly bombarded with terms and conditions across many different industries when we make a purchase of one thing or another and we generally expect to be bound by them. But we also expect them to be fair.
Currently if you buy a car for example for £10,000, because that's what the price ticket said, you cannot go back at a later date and say you believe it is only worth £9,000 and the price was unfair. You do not have a leg to stand on. The price was part of the sale and you agreed to it at the time. What you can argue as unfair are defects or add ons or details in small print which could be argued are not part of a sale and more importantly are not considered at the time of the sale. If these terms were not considered they may be deemed as unfair contract terms.
The case management meeting due to be held at the court on Thursday (22 May) where all relevant parties will be present may see the Banks putting in an appeal. At the moment there is now a precedent binding on lower courts that 'bank charges are covered by unfair contractual terms rules'. But it is possible the Court of Appeal could overturn this and subsequently the House of Lords and even European Court could then overturn that.
Those people who are on hold hoping to reclaim their charges could be in for a long wait if Banks do appeal as it could rumble on for a number of years yet. As I have said before if Banks do decide or are forced to concede these charges will it mean the end of free banking for everyone? The Banks will surely want to recoup their losses from elsewhere and I wonder whether the majority might suffer rather than the unfortunate who are penalised in these cases.
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