Although a ruling by the Supreme Court meant the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) lost its legal battle with high street banks over the right to reclaim unfair bank charges on an overdraft facility, there are still unfair charges you can reclaim.

Anyone wishing to make a claim for unfair charges on an overdraft will have to go through the complaints procedure with their bank or building society. Once the complaints procedure has been exhausted and you have a letter of deadlock, in which the bank states you don't have a claim and will not refund you, you are free to contact the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS).

The FOS has specifically said it will only look at complaints about bank charges in 3 different scenarios:

• If you are in financial hardship. If you can prove you are struggling to meet your priority debts such as rent, mortgage, utility bills, council tax etc. and you are now living off credit, you may qualify as being in financial hardship
• If the charges your disproportionate. For example, if you have gone into your unauthorised overdraft by £3.00 and get charged £35.00 for doing so, the charges are disproportionate. The FOS may look at this, however if you do this regularly, you are less likely to succeed
• You have charges upon chargesIf you find you are having charges upon charges and you are never clearing your overdraft before new charges are added on, the FOS should look at this

Unfair charges for mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) can also be claimed back. If you believe you have been mis-sold PPI, we can look into claiming back the premiums you have paid plus interest.

You may have been mis-sold PPI when you took your mortgage, when taking out a loan or credit card or when obtaining finance for a car.

On average, customers with unfair charges for PPI receive around £3000 back.

We also offer a debt management service, debtsmart, for customers using this service we will negotiate to request any charges on an overdraft facility are frozen or reduced.