Banks have been operating Packaged Bank Account (PBA) facilities which can sometimes have included protection for your mobile phone for damage, theft or any other form of breakage. However, the majority of Home and Contents Insurances (as well as a variety of other policies that you may well have in connection with or as a stand-alone variety) could well include the mobile phone cover that is included in your Packaged Bank Account. As such, if this was not established at the outset, it could mean a mis-sale has taken place.
In order for the Bank to have made a correct sale, they should have established if you had any duplicate cover available. If you did, that proportion of the cover would not be available. Therefore you would effectively be paying for it twice, and this should have been highlighted to you. In addition, in order to obtain the cover on your packaged account facility, the sales person at the Bank would have needed to have informed you that you would need to independently contact a specific department in order to register your phone. Once again, if they did not allow you the opportunity to do this, then there is a good case that the account was mis-sold.
We are seeing a tremendous growth in claims for Packaged Bank Accounts, both in relation to Barclays and the other Banks. As a result of a review by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the last two years, the general poor selling techniques of the various Banks in relation to these particular accounts was highlighted. As such, if the account was mis-sold, then the Bank is expected to look at refunding not only the payments you have made each month (which ranges from between £10 to £30) but also interest at the prevailing rate of interest of the current account, and also compensatory interest upon the full balance.
There are approximately £11million Packaged Bank Accounts throughout the Country. The levels of refunds we are obtaining for our clients stand at between £1,500 and £3,000. Whilst we are not seeing the same levels of refunds as with the PPI claims (which are so far nationally attributed to refunds generating approximately £25billion) there are going to be a tremendous number of people where the accounts were mis-sold, and already the Banks are making considerable provisions in their annual accounts to cover the cost of compensation for the mis-selling of these products.
The Banks have once again been caught mis-selling a product, which it should know full well had to be sold correctly in order to protect its clients. Sadly, the Banks did not offer the basic requirements to protect clients from mis-selling by, for example, not offering a free alternative which they have to do, or not establishing if the client has any conflicting products or ailments which make the policy either a reduced benefit, or null and void.
We have been dealing with banking disputes for many years. Once again we are seeing (with this mis-selling scandal) a tremendous rise in clients looking to make claims, whereby we are successfully dealing with clients requests and subsequent refunds all on a “No Win No Fee” basis. If a refund is not made there is simply no fee to pay.
If you have a PBA account facility and you are unhappy with paying the monthly fee for the account benefits, then do contact us and we can look at making a recovery on this for you.