Bank pays for wasting time
April 27, 2007And yet another new event in the history of “consumers vs. banks” and I think a hilarious one… 
A woman from Bristol wanted to re-claim £655 in overdraft charges from her bank - a demand that was flatly refused. So after some correspondence back and forth, things went the usual way… claimant sues and a hearing is scheduled. But suddenly, the day before the court hearing the full amount appears in the women’s bank account.
At that point, Vivien Lloyd (the claimant) had already spent a substantial amount of her free time to research the law and prepare the case. Therefore she decided to complain to the Judge that the bank had been procrastinating for nearly a year before paying her and thus wasted a significant amount of her time.
The Judge agreed and awarded her £85.41 due to the bank “acting unreasonably”.
Now, this is surely not a large amount of money, but what really counts here is the fact that it was acknowledged that the bank’s behaviour was unacceptable. Even if there’s only little progress at a time, we seem to be moving in the right direction…
Read more about this case here.
