First the good news: bank customers reclaimed £1 billion worth of excessive penalty charges in the first half of this year.

Now the bad news: if you’re thinking of following their example, prepare for a wait.

The Financial Services Authority says banks can hold off on making any further refund decisions until a test case on these charges ordered by the Office of Fair Trading is decided – and that won’t be before next year.

Even more good news: there’s a very strong chance this case will go against the banks, so it should be worth the wait.

In the meantime, there’s no harm getting your claim in so it’s dealt with as soon as a decision is made.

For help with wording it, visit websites set up by the Consumer Action Group or Which?

And once you’ve done that, how about resolving to stay in the black so you don’t incur any more charges?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 9:34 am and is filed under UK Personal Finance, Banking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.