Monday 28th April 2008
Last week saw the High Court deliver its verdict on the fairness of overdraft charges, confirming that the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) may pursue its assessment of such cases.
The OFT stresses that the ruling does not address the issue of whether any charges are actually unfair, but that it should allow for more work to be done in the area.
Accountholders hoping to reclaim charges may not yet see their money refunded, however, as the process for determining the fairness of any costs must yet be concluded.
In the short term the OFT advises that this is to see the court establish a recommended timetable over which the next steps should be taken.
Such a framework should be put in place before the end of May, although the consumer body notes that a hearing will be required before anything is published.
The organisation says: "This is an important early milestone for the OFT and our investigation into this area of high consumer interest.
"We are now analysing the implications of the judgment for our overall investigation into the fairness of the terms."
Customers of the high street banks may be further interested to know that, while some financial services providers were deemed to publish their terms and conditions in plain intelligible English, others were not so effective in making their contracts clear.
Abbey, Barclays, Clydesdale and HBOS were all listed by Justice Andrew Smith as having failed to make information sufficiently clear on some specific aspects of their account details.
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