The well-documented bank charge saga finally seemed to come to some sort of end just before Christmas, when the Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the banks.
This decision pretty much killed off any hope that customers could reclaim the charges made on their accounts, barring further cases bought against the banks – the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) dropped their case as they suspect there’s little chance of success, and unless Martin Lewis can come up with some amazing loophole, this whole saga is likely to be consigned to banking history.
So you’d think that might be the end for the number of firms who popped up claiming to be able to get customers’ money back. Not so.
Bitterwallet has learned of one such company, Customer Claims Ltd, which “guarantees” to get back every penny of your charges:
According to one operator I spoke to, the company is buying credit information on individuals and adding up all the bank charges and other fees accrued over the past several years. They then call the individual, tell them how much they’ve lost in bank charges and guarantee they can reclaim that amount plus interest – for a fee. The customer pays an administration charge of £49.99 and can expect to reclaim all their bank charges within six to eight weeks. Simple as that.
But it would appear to be absolute nonsense – there may be the odd case where charges can still be reclaimed, but in the majority of cases the chances of winning are slim. So if you do get one of these calls out of the blue, don’t give them any details and get off the phone as soon as you can – or if you fancy doing some detective work, get as much info about the company as you can, and pass the info onto us or directly to Bitterwallet to see if we can get some answers. But still don’t give out any personal details.
photo credit: lioliz