16 October 2007
The conflict between banks and their customers over penalty charges continues, with news that financial giant HBOS will be summoned to the High Court this week to defend its practices.
Leeds High Court will hear the case of 11 customers reclaiming what they term "unfair" bank charges from the bank through claims management company Robertson Holbrook.
Despite having received court orders to pay the consumers back, HBOS has refused - even obtaining its own injunction against the previous verdicts.
HBOS' resistance to paying up comes in the wake of the announcement earlier this year that a test case would be brought by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) against high street banks to determine whether the total of £4.7 billion in charges in the UK should be repaid.
After the test case was announced, banks asked ongoing charges cases in UK courts to be halted before it got underway.
However, the BBC reports that the Robertson Holbrook case is the first occasion in which a bank has refused repayment having already lost in court.
An HBOS spokesperson said: "We do have the right to have [the payments] stayed after the original hearing in the county court, because they were all judgements in default."
The OFT said last month that its general case against banks will be unlikely to reach any sort of settlement before the court case begins next January.
As a consequence, consumers are unlikely to be able to reclaim charges before the summer.
© 2008 Adfero Ltd
Content for the uSwitch.com market news service is provided by a third party, Adfero Ltd. Whilst uSwitch.com makes reasonable efforts to check the reliability of this content, uSwitch.com does not guarantee the accuracy thereof or endorse the views or opinions given by Adfero Ltd, unless expressly stated otherwise.