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Lets face it, to the outsider a bank is a large complex financial machine, powerful in the extreme, justifying its every action from the microscopic print of some contract you signed years ago and probably dont even have a copy of anymore. Your only human contact is the people in the branches and the call centres who don't have the authority to change things for the better, the big players and decision makers are all tucked away inside boards rooms and ivory towers, occasionally giving a short interview to the media but never willing to speak directly to YOU, and given the amount of financial clout these institutions can exercise in the court rooms they can seem like an modern day Goliath to your puny David, a force to be truly reckoned with.

Or so it would seem...

There is a growing movement called Consumer Revenge in the UK which is fighting back against the unfair practices of these and other institutions and the most successful campaign to date is the reclaimation of unfair bank charges imposed by all the high street banks for unauthorised overdrafts, return direct debits, bounced checks and the like. As a person who has successfully challenged HSBC for unfair charges I am going to talk to you about my experiences and explain how to make your own claim.

Of course the best way to avoid bank charges is to not go overdrawn in the first place, however this is not always possible in these days of rising interest rates, the credit culture, and the general cost of living in what many people now refer to as "Rip Off Britain", and I am sure the majority of people reading this will have been on the receiving end of unfair charges, and with the average settlement being just under 1000 pounds it is well worth you reading on.

The platform for this is The Banking Code which is a set of industry standards that all high street banks are obliged to follow and it states quite clearly that banks are allowed to charge a fee for services such as arranging unauthorised overdrafts and returning direct debits but this fee has to be proportional to THE COST INCURRED BY THE BANK FOR DOING SO, further more THIS FEE SHOULD NOT BE USED AS A PENALTY. When you consider the cost to a bank of arranging an unauthorised overdraft is in the region of 2 to 3 pounds, yet they will hit you with a charge of 25 to 40 pounds for doing so you can see they are clearly in the wrong. The banks response to this is that the charges are detailed in the agreement the customer signs when opening an account

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