While the OFT sleeps........Banks Terms and conditions change

[Nattie]

THis is a worrying trend occurring right under the nose of the OFT and they may turn their back on everything while the bank take back the lead over customers that they lost when consumer gained them.
NatWest will change Unarranged Borrowing Fee to Matinenance Fee soon which seems to be the beginning of the service argument. We will not punish you for breaching the agreement but we will change the term so YOU think we will look at your account.
Abbey National seem to be changing their terms and conditions so that if you miscalculate your budget they will treat it as an overdraft request and charge you for possibly doing nothing.
While the OFT slept the Banks worked out that the way to beat the consumer was to change the terms and conditions that would justify high penalty charges. It was worth to them almost 1 billion pounds in refunds and further costs for solicitors and legal expenses.

[iancognito]

This isn't worrying at all I and I cannot believe the banks are really this stupid, they are providing all the proof anyone could ever need that they have been levying penalty charges against our accounts for years.

The OFT have already stated they will be using past and current T&C's in the test case, do the banks really think no-one will notice this blanket rewrite to make them look like service fees.

The court case will decide that the fees are unlawful and they will have to drop the level of charge, OK it may not go as low as we would like it to, but they are not gonna then prove they are lawful from August 2007 simply by saying so.

If they could have destroyed every previous set of T&C's in existence, they might, just might, have got away with this.

[Waggledancer]

There is a solution to this new tactic, but it does assume that people have another account to fall back on. When you receive the new Ts&Cs you can write back, within 28 days, and state that you do not accept the amendments...

The bank then has a choice between cancelling the amendments or closing the account.

This might sound drastic, but is not as bad as it first looks. For most claimants who have been through the mill already, they will have opened a "new and clean" account, one that they will "run properly" for the sake of prudence...

The old problem accounts can be treated with disdain, and a refusal to accept new Ts&Cs will give the banks another round of futile correspondence and opportunities to trip themselves up.

For once this might be a good opportunity for each account contract to be negotiated individually...

Just my 2p.

[Nattie]

I think that is a good idea but someone will need to do that. I am sure that someone on CAG said many moons ago about changing the terms of their agreement with HSBC and that it was accepted.