Bank fees are the worst, right?
Non-payment fees, over-limit fees, dishonour fees (when you use
your credit card to buy stuff from infomercials at 2am) - there are
hundreds of them. Okay probably not hundreds but it feels that way.
And as you've probably heard, ANZ was the respondent in a class
action which challenged the legality of ANZ charging these kinds of
fees to its customers.
At first instance, the class action was successful in only one
claim against the bank - late payment fees were found to be an
unenforceable penalty provision, rather than a "genuine
pre-estimate of the loss" likely to be suffered by the bank
(and this is a big nono, as we've
discussed before). On appeal however, the Full Federal Court
has (a) confirmed the ruling that all the fees challenged in these
proceedings were not unconscionable under the various statues and
(b) overturned the earlier finding that the late payment fees were
a form of penalty.
