No new UK bank charge complaints for another six months
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Some people work with the court system on a day to day basis and the bank charges saga has set me wondering how they achieve anything at all, even over the course of an entire career.
This week we have heard that the banks will not have to deal with new complaints about unauthorised bank charges for yet another six months.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has extended the “waiver” on complaints about excessive overdraft charges because a test case is still going on. The extension means the period of grace for banks will now end in January 2010.
Law Lords will rule on the latest stage of the test case in the autumn, but the legal battle is expected to continue for some time.
“Although the test case is progressing well, we still do not have certainty on this complex issue,” said a spokesman for the FSA.
This is the third time that the original waiver, first granted in the summer of 2007, has been extended. All new claims against banks were effectively suspended in July 2007 when the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and seven banks, along with the Nationwide building society, agreed to stage a test case to see if their controversial overdraft charges were legal or not.
Following a three-day appeal in the House of Lords in June, all parties are now waiting for their decision on whether to uphold the right of the OFT to regulate bank charges.
Nearly a million people have claimed for the return of their unauthorised overdraft charges but their cases are on hold
As I said recently, if the banks win their latest appeal, these people are unlikely to get any money back. If the banks lose, then the legal arguments should move on to a key stage – a case to determine whether these charges were fair or not
Only then will people have a clearer picture as to whether billions of pounds will be handed back to customers.
