The Financial Ombudsman Service revealed that the latest incident involved Alliance & Leicester. The regulator has ordered the banking group to compensate its former account holder with GBP125, after the customer’s account had been closed after successfully challenging an imposed bank charges for accidentally become overdrawn.
Last year, the Daily Mail reported that banks such as Alliance & Leicester, Nationwide and Abbey National among others, were dismissing customers unfairly for recovering penalty charges, according to This Is Money.
In 2006, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) implemented a ruling which stated that similar penalties in the credit card industry were illegal. Following this ruling, the banking industry has seen a significant increase in complaints in relation to bank charges and overdraft fees.
The Independent reported that the OFT is expected to impose a regulation later this year, which limits overdraft fees and check bouncing fees to a maximum charge of GBP12.
