if the banks lose the case many people will be without banking facilities as they'll be withdrawn.
The banks losing the case may be the only thing which stops more drastic action being taken. My actual debt burden isn't that bad, I have an overdraft, a 5 year personal loan which I'm 3 years into paying off, and a credit card with a limit that's not too extreme. I also have a reasonable enough job and can (in theory) easily afford the minimum payments whilst still paying all my other bills and having a bit left over for me. Yet I am constantly hammered with exhorborant fees over trivial issues. These cost me a lot of money over the course of a year, and being that I have no mortgage (and no real willingness to own my own house anyway), few proveable capital assets, and no amazing credit rating to protect I am actually giving serious thought to bankruptcy as a way to resolve this. Usually, I decide it's better (and more decent) to carry on repaying, but if the banks aren't pulled into line they will inevitably push me too far and end up having the plug pulled on their repayments, permanently. Indeed, if they *don't* loose the court case and their disgraceful activities are formally legalised, the charging situation is going to get even worse in which case I will almost certainly consider whether it's viable to continue to struggle with this.
Rather than play the victim card and hold up their terms & conditions, the banks need to realise that this is all their own doing - if they didn't get greedy then it's unlikely that anyone would have seriously questioned bank charging and it wouldn't be at risk of being taken away from them. They should accept that they've had a good run, and hope that smaller charges continue to be permitted, that they don't have to automatically make a refund, that there is a limit to how far back people can claim, and that most people won't bother to claim their charges anyway.
Well, Lloyds TSB don't, and even though they started it over the phone they've now ditched it again. ING Direct also hold my money hostage for three days and while we're on the subject, exactly why does it take five days to pay a credit card bill? Why is the "date of payment" the sixth when even if you pay i cash in the store the card is attached to it still apparently takes five days? Why is it not set as the first? It's lies.
Some things have got slower - when I moved most of my day to day banking over to Natwest, the main reason I kept my HSBC account aswell rather than closing it was that HSBC could clear a cheque in 3 days (including the day you paid it in if you got in early enough) which could be useful to me. Today, they take 5 days. How can that happen?
It is credit card bills that started me off on this thread - my credit card bill was due on Friday 28th. Being that I also got paid on Friday 28th it would be easier on me to wait until I get paid rather than struggle to find the money out of my last pay packet.
Normally this is no problem - if you go into the branch and transfer money from your current acount it's credited immediately and so you've paid on time. What I didn't bank on (no pun intended) was that because I went in to the branch at 4PM the money won't be credited until the next working day (tuesday 1st in this case) as it's after 3:30PM.
What on earth has the time of day got to do with anything? Do computers not work after 3:30PM? This is bullshit.
So, even though I've paid my bill on the due date, it of course is now 'late' because Natwest have choosen to ignore the payment and in line with their gestapo-like charging policy will apply a late payment charge (rather oddly, this one is only £12 - so they're saying that paying a bill late is less serious than going 1p outside of an overdraft limit, which would result in a £28 charge).
Just to add insult to injury, the late payment charge has allready appeared - on a bank holiday weekend - and they've allready taken the money out of my bank account where it's currently sitting in a holding account earning interest for them - again on a bank holiday weekend! So it would appear that they *can* process transactions outside of their arbitrary timescales if it suits them to and only withold them where it will benefit them (which is patently obvious any way).
These idiots who claim that you only need to be careful and you won't get charged need to wake up and smell the coffee - tell me this isn't underhand and shouldn't be criminal?
or was to issue the fines in the future (e.g. because you did this we'll fine you £50 in two months) you could make sure you had the money in the first place.
I woudn't support this either because this is the excuse Natwest hide behind - they argue that it's totally fair to charge you ridiculous charges on your current account because they send you a nice letter well in advance telling you the exact date on which all these charges will be applied.
Unlike every other kind of electronic transaction though, there is never any 'marker' placed on these funds in advance - the money simply disappears. So that if you happen to forget the exact date the charges will be applied, they could of course make you go overlimit again. There is then nothing you can do to stop a further charge being applied for this. So again, you're in this spiral of 'stacked' charges - where one charge directly triggers another.
