On the 5th I posted about my quest to use the data protection act, and some knowledge gleened from the internet, to claw back some of the bank charges I’ve paid over the years. I wrote “Data Subject Access Request” letters to my bank and two credit card companies, asking them to provide me with details of all penalty charges I’ve paid out over the last six years (the limit on claiming).
Two points to my bank who wrote back to me by the end of the week to confirm that they would supply the requested information without charge, returning my cheque for £10, the maximum amount they can charge for processing requests under the Data Protection Act. And on Friday I received three large envelopes from my bank with details of every transaction – approximately 200 pages worth – I’d made using my account with them. The charges total £680 and many of them were of the triple whammy variety where you go over your overdraft and then get charged £25 for each of the next three transactions for a total of £75 – often incurred in a matter of hours.
This evening I will be writing back to my bank detailing these charges and explaining that I don’t feel the penalties were valid, using my own spruced up version of the template letter found here.
I’m still waiting to hear from the other two banks / credit card providers. I’ll continue to update the process of claiming these unfair bank charges back here, so do bookmark this page if you’re interested in following my progress.
Be sure to not just accept their first offer. It’s bound to be a lower figure and will take some hard negotiations to up it to the full owed amount.