Account fees: The tricks of the banks

Created: 01/19/2022, 20:23

By: Martin Prem

Banks pressure their customers to agree to the account fees.

© Frank Rumpenhorst/dpa/archive image

When banks change their terms and conditions, they always assume that every customer who does not disagree agrees.

Wrongly so, as the Federal Court of Justice ruled in 2021.

Now the judiciary is busy with tricks that financial institutions want to use to overturn the verdict

Stuttgart – Originally it was only about the Postbank.

Now a supreme court judgment* from the year is catching up with the entire banking scene.

The top judges had overturned the usual practice that the bank customers' silence on changes to the general terms and conditions was taken as consent.

Usually it is about higher costs.

Now customers must explicitly agree.

Because practically all banks have done the same thing as Postbank up to now, they all have to change their practice now.

Many put their customers under pressure.

In four cases, the consumer advice center in Baden-Württemberg has filed a complaint with the district court in Stuttgart.

The first case was heard in court yesterday: It was about increased account management fees that a customer of Volksbank Welzheim (Rems-Murr-Kreis) wanted back.

The bank's counter-offer: If the customer does not waive his claims, he will have to pay a monthly account fee of EUR 7.50 instead of EUR 5.

Account fees: Can the bank threaten termination?

The customer didn't agree to that. So the bank fired him. The bank has left the ground of applicable law, complains the consumer advice center*. A verdict will be made on February 15. In principle, every bank has the option of terminating a customer relationship. However, if she uses this as a kind of punitive action in order not to have to implement a supreme court judgment, the dismissal in this case could not stand up to the judgment of the courts (file number: 34 O 98/21 KfH).

Other banks are already using threats of termination to get customers to waive their rights.

This is what a lawsuit against Sparda Bank Baden-Württemberg is about.

The consumer advice center considers a threat of termination issued by this bank to be an inadmissible influence on the customer, who only asked for the money back to which he was entitled according to the operative part of the BGH judgment.

She advises consumers not to be unsettled by such threats.

However, customers should expect that they will actually be terminated (reference number: 11 O482/21).

The silence of a bank customer is not consent

The Federal Court of Justice has ruled that the silence of a bank customer does not constitute consent. But what if a customer just keeps using their account after not agreeing to the changes required by the bank? The Volksbank Ludwigsburg considered a one-time withdrawal from the customer's account as consent to the changes being asserted. Anyone who remains silent has not given their consent, replies the consumer advice center and expressly refers to the BGH judgment (file number: 35 O122/21 KfH).

A second lawsuit is also directed against the Volksbank Ludwigsburg, which had asked a customer to calculate and quantify the reimbursement claims he had asserted himself.

This makes it more difficult to enforce these claims, complained the consumer advice center, which, on the other hand, is going to court* (reference number: 35 O 135/21 KfH).

*Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA