Claiming back bank charges

[SetToStun]

I don't know how common it is, but a chap I know once spent about a year unemployed. During that time he had housing benefit (his rent) and his dole paid straight into his bank account. Unfortunately, one month his HB was late, but his rent went out anyway. This left him about £100 overdrawn for about a day. The bank charged him £25 for telling him about it (he already knew because he'd checked his balance at an ATM) and then another £30-ish in interest and other charges at the end of the month. This meant that even though his HB turned up the next day, he ended up with over £75 of charges (they charged him another £25 for the letter telling him he was over £75 o/d because of the charges. Nice). This meant that his next rent payment left him a couple of quid overdrawn, which meant... I think you can see where this went. He ended up with about £450 of bank charges in just over 6 months when he was unemployed and without any chance of paying the charges.

He tried time and again to explain and get things sorted, but the bank's opinion was "not our problem" and "take it up with the dole office" and "we still want our money, miscreant".

He's currently applying for the charges to be refunded (he's now working again) and it looks like he was charged a total of £800 in less than one year because of the charge trap. Banks can be cunts: even sensible people can end up with massive charges over a short period.

[micanio]

I'm in the process of taking Halifax to Court for the lovely sum of £4105. They have 2 weeks to reply to the summons and we are a week into that. Am just waiting for them to either a) ignore it and I get a summary judgement by default or b) they will acknowledge the claim on the last day and then have another 28 days to defend the case.

Typically, most other banks will reimburse you for your charges no problem after a couple of letters. In all the forums I've read regarding this, the Halifax are the most cunty about it. Probably this is due to 1 case involving the Halifax whereby the Judge found in favour of the bank - even thought the bank didn't actually turn up to the court date.

As soon as I have my money, the Halifax can get fucked....