No wonder the banks ran out of money when they’re paying staff double their wages! A Barclays bank complaints advisor, was given an annual salary of £17,000 when she should only have been paid £9000.

Natasha Keenan only worked 19 hours a week but her contract omitted to state that her pay was on a pro-rata basis and Barclays never realised they were overpaying her. That’s about right, the banks will do anything it takes, using all maner of small print and legislation to avoid paying out on customers’ bank charges claims but when it comes to keeping their house in order, it’s chaos.

Barclays eventually twigged they’d been overpaying Mrs Keenan just days before Christmas and ordered her to re-pay the extra money she had earned, around £20,000. She is now suing them at an industrial tribunal, saying she didn’t know she was being overpaid.

It’s not like Barclays didn’t have a chance to spot the error – Natasha’s bosses even provided a reference confirming her salary when she applied for a loan and she received regular pay rises.

Barclays have recently dropped the demand for the £20k but insist her salary can be reduced because she should have realised she was being overpaid. The banks should take a note of this ‘compromising attitude’ as they’re going to have to get used to giving in and accepting the consequences of poor practice, especially when it comes to paying back unfair bank charges.

Credit card charges have gone up yet again. The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has imposed massive hikes in credit card interest rates used by millions of borrowers, a survey revealed yesterday.

RBS, Natwest and Mint cards (all owned by the RBS Group – which the Government controls) raised their APR from 12.9% to 16.9% over the 12 months to February, amounting to a 31% increase in credit card charges to customers.

The bank increased the rates despite the Bank of England base rate being at the lowest point since records began. In the year to February the Bank of England base rate fell from 5.25 per cent to 1 per cent and now stands at 0.5 per cent. The Retail Price Index fell 0.4 per cent last month, the first time prices have gone into reverse for almost 50 years.

The consumer group Which? accused card companies of being “out of touch with reality” and in the firing line for bank complaints cases. It found that 28 providers of widely held credit cards had either increased interest rates or other charges, reduced the number of days to pay or reduced the number of interest-free days over the last year.

I think most of us would agree with the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott when he recently said ‘the greedy new RBS bosses have to stop spanking their credit card customers’

As any of you who are currently trying to reclaim unfair bank charges on your own will know; it can be a long and slow prossess. It might even seem as if you are being completely ignored by your bank, and that could well be the case.

However, under current legislation, anyone who fulfils the ‘financial hardship’ criteria must be compensated immediately by their banks. The Financial Ombudman is responsible for the ‘financial hardship’ policy which means banks cannot put claim cases on hold if someone’s outgoings are found to be more than their incomings.

It’s thought up to a billion pounds of unfair bank charges have already been reclaimed, as people have taken on their banks. Many of these have argued the point that the traditional £35 charges issued for unauthorised overdraft use were unlawful and unfair. And with up to six years worth of charges that are reclaimable, thousands of customers are getting 1,000s of pounds back.

So now more and more of you can get those £££s back. It’s recommended that you find out if you qualfiy for ‘financial hardship’ status as it can dramatically speed up your unfair bank charges claim response time. If you haven’t started the reclaiming process or if your case was previously suspended as you weren’t struggling then, now could be the time to reignite your bank charges claim.

Anyone who has attempted to take out a personal loan recently will undoubtedly have been shocked by the high loan charges currently being issued by banks. Especially when you consider the low base rate – finding somewhere to borrow money from has never been more difficult.

Even those that do manage to obtain a loan are faced with rising costs; in the past 12 months, the average rate for a personal loan of £1,000 has risen to 19.8 per cent, up by 1.9 per cent, according to comparison site Moneyfacts.

Of course, what with the ongoing charges case awaiting conclusion and potentially millions of PPI claims out there, the banks better make sure they fully justify and explain these high loan charges. There’s already almost 1 million claims awaiting an outcome and if you’ve been blasted with unfair loan charges by your lender then you may be able to claim for a full refund.

There’s a test case in court at the moment that could result in you and many others getting your unfair bank charges back. The thing is, it’s not the test case you’re thinking of, it’s another one that involves the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), letting agents; Foxtons and landlords.

Foxtons charge landlords a renewal fee every year that their tenant is in the property and that fee is still payable if the landlord ends the agreement. Landlords feel this is unfair and the OFT is using Foxtons in a test case against all of the letting agents that operate in the same way.

The OFT is basing its arguments on the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations (UTCCRs). These are the same regulations that are being used in the OFT’s fight against unfair bank charges and that’s why the outcome of the landlords court case could help you get your bank charges back.

The decision will affect claims for unfair overdraft charges, missed payment or returned payment fees as it will make it harder for the banks to turn down refund claims. So…watch this space!

Guess what? After months of waiting and thousands of bank complaints lodged, homeowners are finally starting to benefit from cheaper fixed-rate mortgages as a result of the record-low interest rate.

Bank of England figures showed that average interest rates paid on two-year fixed deals for people with a 25 per cent deposit had fallen from 4.35% in February to 4.01% in March, the lowest rate for almost 6 years.

Half of all current British mortgages are on fixed rates and although not directly affected by lower interest rates; the recently released figures show cheaper fixed deals are now more readily available.

The latest figures from the Financial Services Authority (FSA) reveal that just under one million people are awaiting the outcome of their bank charges claim.

The reason for the hold up is the ongoing bank charges test case which has been extended recently as the banks were given permission to appeal. The question is, how many of these people are already in financial difficulty and need the out come of their claims to be resolved before they sink lower into debt.

As part of the FSA’s waiver that allowed the banks to avoid paying out any more bank charges refund claims until the case is over, they still have to handle financial hardship cases. If they’re not doing this, not only are they flouting the waiver but also aren’t doing right by their customers. No surprise there then.

Research shows there are 12.6 million accounts in the UK that have incurred bank charges, meaning there are around another 11 million people who who could still claim, that’s 1/6th of the population!

What with all the unfair charges, mis-selling of Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) and generally bringing the economy to it’s knees, you wouldn’t be blamed for thinking that the regulatory body, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), isn’t really doing it’s job very well.

And depending on how cynical you are, you might be shocked to learn that they knew about the banks mis-selling PPI for a long time before they chose to do anything about it. The Financial Ombudsman Service warned as long ago as last July that banks and building societies were routinely rejecting legitimate complaints about mis-sld PPI, warnings which seem to have been ignored completely by the City Watchdog.

An estimated two million PPI policies were mis-sold to people who would never have been able to claim on the insurance, which is supposed to be a safety net for borrowers who lose their jobs or become too sick to work. The Ombudsman chairman spelled out his concerns in a formal letter to City regulator the FSA, but nearly nine months later, the FSA has failed to respond. Financial Ombudsman spokeswoman Emma Parker says: ‘We have had serious concerns that firms are failing to handle complaints properly. We formally raised this in a letter to the FSA, but so far we’ve had no response.’

In the letter, Ombudsman chairman Sir Christopher Kelly told the FSA it was upholding a ’significant proportion’ of complaints that had been wrongly turned away by firms. This, he said, suggested the existence of ‘widespread consumer detriment’ and ’systemic issues in relation to PPI’.

Complaints to the Ombudsman about PPI reached record levels last year at over 26,000 – a threefold increase on last year. Almost nine out of ten were upheld.

The FSA need to be asked why they completely failed to act on the Ombudsman’s warnings leaving millions of customers paying for mis-sold PPI. But then, even if you asked the question, you’d probably never get a reply.

Guess what?

The Banks have been given the right to appeal against the court ruling by the Court of Appeal that they should not be able to take their two-year bank charges battle to the highest court in Britain.

What a surprise.

The House of Lords has ruled it is prepared to hear an appeal from seven banks and building societies who maintain they have not imposed unfair bank charges.

The Banks that have been given the right to appeal are – HSBC, Abbey, Nationwide Building Society, HBOS, Lloyds TSB, Clydesdale, Barclays and RBS. This news is a devastating blow to around 1 million people who’ve been hoping to receive a bank charges payout upon the final outcome of the case.

Before the case went to court, UK banks had paid out around £560m in bank charges refunds. moneysavingexpert.com owner, Martin Lewis, said: “It’s time the banks gave up and paid out. Both the High Court and the Court of Appeal have already said bank charges are governed by fairness rules and the OFT has said it provisionally thinks charges are unfair.”

Here-Here Martin.

I mean, how ironic – we live in a society that encourages us to take responsibility for our actions and accept the consequences. Yet, that cornerstone of society, your bank; isn’t prepared to do the same when it comes to your bank charges refund.

In fact, isn’t your bank manager one of the few “respected” authority figures along with doctors that can sign your passport photo’s? – what a joke. One saves your life, the other takes your life savings!