NatWest unlucky - again
April 16, 2007Thanks for visiting! If you like what you're reading, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed.
To avoid court, NatWest has just paid a claimant £35,987.94 to cover the £24,000 in charges (plus interest) for bounced cheques. The man, who wants to remain anonymous, is running a window and conservatory business with a turnover of now £1million. But when he started out in 1999, he shared a problem of many young companies: (lack of) cashflow. When he tried to draw on money from customers whose cheques had not cleared, the bank would stop direct debit payments or bounce his cheques - leaving him with bank charges of up to £3,000 a month.
A case conference was scheduled for 11th May, to which NatWest’s solicitors responded as follows:
“Although our client is confident that it will be successful at a final hearing, its legal fees will almost certainly outweigh the value of the claim. As such our client must take a commercial approach to such claims. Without admission of liability our client is prepared to settle this matter in full.”
Read the BBC’s full coverage on the story here.
NatWest seems to be getting a hard time from the press at the moment, but as much as I would like to say that you should rather go somewhere else to avoid the hassle, I can’t. There is no bank I can think of that doesn’t issue such ridiculous charges for bounced cheques, unapproved overdrafts and the like.
I’m hoping that Brennan will win his appeal against NatWest so that they at least have to admit that the charges are indeed being unlawful. Even though this doesn’t necessarily work on a broader scale to include other retail banks as well, it should set the tone and maybe have banks overthink their position - precisely to avoid the bad publicity.
