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Credit Card Charges FAQ
Mortgage Exit Fee Charges FAQ
Payment Protection Insurance FAQ
Bank Charges FAQ
If you have any questions about your claim or whether you are entitled to a refund, you will most likely find the answer to your query below. We have compiled a list of the most frequently asked questions on unfair charges and mis-sold financial products, to help our clients better understand their entitlements.
If your question does not appear below please don’t hesitate to call us on 0800 520 0923.
Alternatively you can proceed straight to the claims areas for: Bank Charges, Mortgage Exit Fees, Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) and Credit card fees.
Credit card companies are entitled by law to impose a charge if you have breached the contract you signed at the outset of the credit agreement. A breach of contract is when a consumer breaks the terms under which the credit card company agreed to issue a card.
You are liable to be charged a fee for any of the following defaults:
Charges vary depending on the company but can be £25 upwards. (Anything over £12 is ‘unfair’ and can be refunded).
Last year, the Office of Fair Trading ruled that credit card companies should not charge more than £12 for default charges. The announcement not only put pressure on companies to justify higher charges, but also underlined consumers’ rights. Since the OFTs ruling, credit card customers have been successfully reclaiming unfair charges from their card providers.
Reclaimed credit card charges that have exceeded the statutory £12 can be backdated six years (five years in Scotland). There is no cap on how much can be reclaimed.
We charge a highly competitive 23% + VAT commission on the total amount refunded by your credit card company.
You have the right to terminate the contract by giving us written notice within 14 days of signing the contract. In the event you terminate the contract after 14 days, the company reserves the right to make a cancellation charge that will reflect the work undertaken by us in pursuit of your claim. Naturally this could be anything up to our full fee plus VAT at the time.
You have two options. Firstly, you can request from your credit card company statements backdated 6 years (5 years if you are in Scotland). You most likely will be charged an administration fee of around £10 for this service.
Secondly, we can contact your credit card company and make the request for you. This is included in our service and will entail no additional charge. We do ask, however, that you send us a cheque for £10 made payable to your credit card company to cover their administration charge.
When you receive your statements, simply calculate every charge over the entire backdated period. We will try and get the entire amount refunded but because of the OFT ruling, only charges in excess of £12 stand the best chance of being refunded.
Remember to enclose your statements when you return our information pack with any other supporting documents that may help your claim.
Please read it carefully and sign all three documents, Letter of Authority, Contract of Agreement and the Financial Ombudsman Service complaint form (in the event we have to take it to the FOS to get your refund). Return them to us as soon as possible in the freepost envelope provided and we shall contact your credit card company within days.
Remember to enclose your statements when you return our information pack with any other supporting documents that may help your claim.
If you either paid off your mortgage ahead of the full-term agreement, or switched to another provider mid-term, you may have paid a mortgage exit fee.
Mortgage exit fees are also known as Deed Release Fees, Final Administration Fees, Sealing Fees, Discharge Fees and Final Redemption Fees.
A mortgage exit fee is not to be confused with a Redemption Penalty. The former is a charge to cover administration costs whereas the latter is a penalty for, in a sense, breaking an agreement with a mortgage provider. Redemption penalties are usually the consequence of switching mortgage providers at the end of an introductory or otherwise discounted loan period. Therefore a Redemption Penalty is in place to protect mortgage providers from being ‘used’ by customers for short-term benefits.
However, since 2004, many banks/building societies have been increasing mortgage exit fees way beyond any reasonable measures. Customers, backed by the OFT, objected to the inflated ‘administration costs’, some of which rose from £70 to £295. The result? Customers who paid more than the mortgage exit fee stated in their original contract are now eligible for a refund.
Simply check the small print on your original mortgage contract to see if it entailed a fee for closing the mortgage ahead of term. If there is no mention of a fee you are entitled to a full refund. If the fee on the contract is lower than what you were charged on exiting the mortgage, you are entitled to a refund of the balance.
In January 2007, the FSA announced, “if past customers have paid a higher fee they can expect a refund of the difference” adding “…when a firm changes the amount it charges, the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 require the firm to act fairly”.
We charge a flat fee of £65 and you keep the rest. In the event the company takes steps to recovery any service charges due and unpaid by the client to the company, the client shall pay to the company a recovery fee of £100 plus VAT.
The average length of time the process takes from getting your documents to receiving a refund from the mortgage provider is 12-14 weeks. As this is our average, it is also possible for it to be a little longer or shorter.
You have the right to terminate the contract by giving us written notice within 14 days of signing the contract. In the event you terminate the contract after 14 days, we reserve the right to make a cancellation charge that will reflect the work undertaken by us in pursuit of your claim. This can be anything up to the full fee of £65.
Please read it carefully and sign all three documents, Letter of Authority, Contract of Agreement and the Financial Ombudsman Service complaint form (in the event we have to take it to the FOS to get your refund). Return them to us as soon as possible in the freepost envelope provided and we shall contact your mortgage provider within days.
Remember to enclose a copy of your mortgage contract and any other supporting information that may help your claim.
Payment Protection Insurance is cover should you be unable to make a payment on a loan, credit card or finance agreement. In the event of illness, redundancy or injury, PPI takes care of it.
According to the Office of Fair Trading, only 1 in 5 PPI claims are successful. This statistic has lead to an investigation by the OFT and Financial Ombudsman into the way PPI policies are sold to the public. In many cases, policies are sold to people who would not be eligible for cover, such as the self-employed. In other instances, PPI policies are overpriced and added onto the cost of the loan, making it subject to interest rates.
In many cases PPIs are sold to people who cannot enjoy the cover benefits. In addition virtually all policies are overpriced and tightly worded to make eligible claims difficult to achieve.
PPIs are mis-sold to consumers when:
* The most common reasons for being unable to work.
PPIs offer poor value for money because any potential benefits are usually outweighed by the cost of having a policy. PPIs are often compulsory, but even in cases where they aren’t, the policy can be added to a loan (known as ‘single premium’) and not paid separately. Single premium means not only do you pay interest on the loan but on the insurance policy also. A loan of say £50,000 could have an extra £12,000 added through a PPI policy.
Whether you can claim a PPI refund depends on when you took out the insurance policy. If a PPI policy was taken out prior to January 2005, (when PPIs were not regulated by the FSA) claiming is difficult but not impossible. You may still receive a refund after a written request has been made.
If a PPI policy is post-January 2005, the consumer has the support of the FSA and has the best chance of a refund - especially if ineligible for any of its benefits.
PPIs are mis-sold to consumers when:*The most common reasons for being unable to work.
If any of the criteria above applies to you, you may have been mis-sold a PPI policy and have every chance of making a successful claim. However, companies are rarely quick to issue refunds, some have even ignored requests for a form in which to make a claim, which is why we perseverance on your behalf. You can be entitled to a complete refund plus 8% interest (which is what a court would award).
Your bank statements should detail how much you have been paying for the PPI on a monthly basis. If on the other hand you have been paying a “single premium” for the policy, where the PPI was added onto the value of the loan and as a result the cost of the policy is unclear, your PPI provider ie, your bank will be able to tell you the cost on asking.
Please read it carefully and sign all three documents, Letter of Authority, Contract of Agreement and the Financial Ombudsman Service complaint form (in the event we have to take it to the FOS to get your refund). Return them to us as soon as possible in the freepost envelope provided and we shall contact your PPI provider within days.
Remember to enclose a copy of your policy documents and any other supporting information that may help your claim.
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Bank have been charging their customers for any of the following defaults:
Some banks also impose a charge for each day the account remains overdrawn.
Yes, but in 2007 the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) said that charges should only reflect the actual cost uncured by the bank, which is around £3.
Banks typically charge around £30 for each default on a current account.
Yes. Banks have been fighting the OFT in the courts for almost two years and it is still ongoing. You can keep up to date with bank charges court case here. Banks do not want to compensate customers for unfair charges as doing so will cost them millions of pounds.
Therefore they are arguing that the charges they have been imposing are fair for the service they provide.
You can make a claim now if you are in financial hardship, which means you are unable to pay your bills. People more comfortably off must wait until and outcome has been reached before they can proceed with their claims.
No. The Financial Services Authority put a waiver on all claims currently with bank, courts and the Financial Ombudsman Service. They did make an exception however and insisted that banks deal with hardship claims now.
You can visit our page on the Bank Charges Hardship Rule for more information.
We will contact your bank by letter asking them for compensation for all bank charges backdated 6 years – 5 if you live in Scotland. At this stage we can expect a protracted period of negotiations and refusals. However, we will deal with all the correspondence and use our claims expertise to get what’s rightfully yours.
Some banks have been using the FSA waiver as an excuse for not dealing with claims but our knowledge of the law means we get results.
Our service is on a strictly No Win No Fee basis and our commission rate is a competitive 23% + Vat. That means you have nothing to lose by applying and everything to gain.
You can reclaim every charge backdated to July 2001 when the waiver was put in place.
We will request a list of charges backdated to July 2001, which the bank will charge around £10 for administration costs. Alternatively you can request a list of charges yourself and return them to us with the application pack. If you would prefer us to do everything for you, we will need you to write a cheque made payable to your bank for £10. This is not part of our fee.
