Bank Fees: Now you have to collect your money too

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Photo: Jens Kalaene / dpa-Zentralbild

The judgment of the Federal Court of Justice on the spectacular bank fee ruling is available and clear.

Your silence as a customer did not mean that your bank agreed to a fee increase.

You can reclaim increased fees retrospectively since 2018, all you have to do now is to do so.

Here's how.

What the banks are doing right now:

Acting now is important.

Not only for your account, but also for the learning effect at savings banks and banks.

The banks have already understood that the ruling invalidates the previous clauses on changing terms and conditions (BGH-XI-ZR-26-20).

They also realize that their customers are now entitled to recover over-charged fees.

They are already feverishly calculating what that might cost them.

Large online banks such as ING changed the general terms and conditions for new customers in May - and removed the criticized consumer clause.

Sparkasse KölnBonn reacted immediately after the judgment, as did Postbank parent Deutsche Bank.

When asked, ING said that the Federal Association of German Banks had even recommended the change.

What the banks don't do:

Many banks are still hoping to keep the money that has been wrongly collected. By waiting. Because in the past, customers often did not claim their claims after rulings by the Federal Court of Justice. This strategy of the banks has paid off several times. This can be seen most clearly in the fact that banks have accrued too much almost every time in order to pay off their customers. In the end, they only had to pay out a small part of the money they had wrongly received.

Even in the largest reclaim campaign to date, when after two BGH judgments in 2014 (BGH judgments (XI-zr-348-13 + XI-zr-17-14) hundreds of thousands of customers wrongly claimed back loan processing fees, the strategy worked: The banks had to reimburse a few hundred million euros, but Deutsche Bank alone had already put back more than 400 million euros.

The logic of the banks:

Actively approaching customers, as a customer of banks, you shouldn't expect that this time either. They prefer to play for time and hope to be forgotten. The accounting logic of the banks is impressive. As long as small sums are involved, i.e. less than 1,000 euros, very few customers are inclined to take legal action against a bank. A current study by Roland Rechtsschutz showed that the average damage must be over 1,800 euros before customers send a lawyer.

So banks basically waited first to see whether their customers would even make claims.

If they actually do that, many banks initially consider the damage to the customer small.

And hope that the sparrow in hand is enough.

Or they play for time.

And only when there is real pressure from the lawyer will the reimbursement amounts become realistic.

Your success strategy:

As a customer, you shouldn't be fooled.

You can question any price increases since choosing your account model.

Or since you opened a custody account or a savings contract with your bank.

Even if that was decades ago.

You can then claim the overpaid fees retrospectively for up to three calendar years.

more on the subject

• The BGH's ruling on account fees: The banks have to bleed, the customers can celebrateBy Tim Bartz

• Unjustified account fees: banks prepare for wave of clawbacks

• After court ruling on invalid account fees: How to get your money back from the bankA column by Hermann-Josef Tenhagen

• According to BGH ruling: First banks are suspending fee increases for current accounts

So just sit down on a rainy June evening and add up the four euros a month that the bank, for example, has taken too much from your salary account for years. Four euros times 42 months since January 1, 2018 makes 168 euros. Maybe your partner even has an account with the same bank - then it would be 336 euros. Then write to the bank that the bank should please transfer the interest due for the sum as well.

You can find

the sample letter

here.

You formulate the letter politely, set a deadline by the end of June and send it off in the classic way as a registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt.

And as a special service for the bank, you not only mention the file number of the BGH ruling (XI-ZR-26-20), but also attach a link to read the ruling.

Actually, it should work then.

• The case-by-case check, which Postbank, for example, which had lost the fee process before the BGH, announced for its customers, is completely legitimate, but can no longer be at your expense in terms of time.

  After all, the bank could make it easier for everyone involved and calculate on its own how much money is to be returned.

• If it does not work out, the next option is to write to the ombudsman of the respective bank that there is a problem with the implementation of the judgment.

  Preferably always in paper form.

  You can find who is responsible here, for example:

  Ombudsman for private banks

  , office, PO Box 04 03 07, 10062 Berlin

  Customer complaints office at the Federal Association of German

  Volksbanks and Raiffeisenbanks

  BVR, Schellingstrasse 4, 10785 Berlin

  Arbitration Board

  Deutscher Sparkassen- und Giroverband

  eV, Charlottenstrasse 47, 10117 Berlin

  
  

  After the BGH rulings on loan processing fees, 120,000 customers complained to the ombudsmen of the private banks and received over 90 percent of their money.

• The financial supervisory authority BaFin has also explained to me that it is happy to receive information if there is a problem with customer claims according to the BGH ruling: (Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, Whistleblower Office, Graurheindorfer Straße 108, 53117 Bonn).

  
  

  One should not help individually - still not, despite all the reforms after the Wirecard scandal.

  But if the blocking is systematic, one can take action.

  The agency is anxious to show its teeth right now.

• Finally, if you have legal protection insurance, for example, and the set deadline has expired, you can also approach the bank as a lawyer.

  Your legal fees would then also be billed to the bank.

  The legal expenses insurers recommended by Finanztip will of course go to Bütt for you.

• In the meantime, even the first legal service provider offers to step into the ring with the bank for you as a customer and take over the collection - just like with the trouble with airlines.

  However, Conny promises you only ten euros flat rate without any cost risk.

  That would be too little for me.

  For 69 euros you can hire the company to get all of the money back.

  However, it cannot be ruled out that other such companies will offer them debt collection in the coming weeks, with better cost models.

Oh, and tell your neighbors about the success later.

Unjustifiably higher fees since 2018 can be reclaimed at least until the end of the year.

However, you have to expect one.

The bank will soon make a second attempt to increase fees.

Probably legally secure this time.

Then these fees come later.

If your bank worked on the repayment and you feel otherwise well looked after, you're biting the bullet.

If not, this is certainly a good reason to switch to an institute that is inexpensive and focuses on the customer.