Reclaim Credit Card Charges

Before 2006, many credit card providers regularly hit customers with penalty fees of £35 or even more for every mistake, like a late payment or overshooting a credit limit.

But an Office of Fair Trading (OFT) investigation in the same year concluded that penalty charges exceeding £12 each were disproportionate and unreasonable. As a result, most credit card providers cut their charges from an average of £30 to £12.

If you were hit by card charges of more than £12 before the ruling in April 2006, there's still a chance for you to claim the difference back. However, there's a legal time limit on claims: you can only go back six years in England and Wales, or five years in Scotland.

It's important not to get excessive credit card charges mixed up with the recent bank charges test case. They're two separate issues, and the collapse of the OFT's case over excessive bank charges (like overdraft fees) doesn't mean you'll be unable to reclaim card charges.

There are many claims companies promising to win excessive charges back for you, or wipe out your debts completely, but if you use one of them you'll have to give up a proportion of any amount you win back.

If you want to claim, you can do it yourself relatively easily and keep all the money for yourself.