Refund illegal bank fees

Me neither...

Professionally and privately, I have dealt with banks in their various functions for decades. It starts with the usual things as a private individual (checking account, investments), continues with private and professional trading in securities of all kinds and markets (for asset management), and also various credit matters in the private and professional sectors. Of course, not all contacts were negative, but overall distrust is justified. Whenever there was an opportunity to gain a legally flawless but morally questionable advantage, hardly any bank or bank official was too proud to take it.

Besides the loan I mentioned here, I recently had the classic case on my desk again: a wealthy, elderly woman goes to the bank advisor (DeuBa) and wants a conservative investment strategy. She trusts the guy, and he loads her portfolio with the wildest securities. There was constant, pointless reshuffling to collect fees. Of course, she naively signed everything he presented to her. What some bank advisors do to small investors extends up to the big players as well, see the Libor scandal, to name just one example.
Well, to each their own opinion.

And I have been working for more than 10 years in various areas of banks and have become familiar with many, though not all, areas of banks, ranging from cashier, consulting to overall bank management.

So far, I have not exhibited these morally questionable behavioral patterns in any area.

Therefore, I can only pity you that you apparently keep coming across the wrong people.

Neither you nor this person would have experienced such a thing with me. A pity.

It is much easier. The banks have charged a lump sum fee for the activities they mostly carry out for their own benefit. These include the creditworthiness check (whether the loan should be granted to this person - avoidance of default risks - benefit for the bank; the technical processing of the loan application (without this, a loan cannot be managed within a bank anyway - requirement of the bank; preparation of contracts (legally required, simply cannot be done without - bank requirement). As usual, the effort has again been passed on to the customer (without any possibility of negotiation).

The judgments are factually correct and logically comprehensible. The fact that the bank made an overall calculation (including fees) and was sure that compliance with § 5 Price Indication Ordinance (indication of the effective annual interest rate) was sufficiently transparent is simply wrong. The fee calculation was therefore unlawful and must be refunded according to the rules of unjust enrichment.

Bad for the bank, good for the customers. Ultimately, it must be said that a cancellation or refusal to pay the fees would generally have led to a rejection of the loan application. Thus, the fees were a mandatory component and clearly emphasized as such.

In my opinion, acceptable. Banks should design their pricing policy to be understandable and transparent. No costs should be passed on without precise explanation and complex new formulations and designs should not constantly be created. ;-)

That is nonsense to the power of 10 again. Of course, one can follow this argument.

But then the next tiler shouldn’t charge me for tile adhesive and joint material. Because it is not in my interest to use these, but it is solely due to the proper execution of the ARdT and thus a requirement of the tiler.

The same applies to the transfer costs of my next car. The transport to the dealer is purely in the dealer’s own interest, so that they can even sell and hand over the car to me. Even the pickup at the manufacturing plant itself incurs transfer costs!

In this respect, a few now have an advantage that the entirety of customers has to bear somewhere. Shooting oneself in the foot.

Of course, one can follow this argumentation.

Exactly. I follow this argumentation and find it not only convincing but absolutely sound. However, a whole number of other reasons come to mind, which are only lightly touched upon in the judgments, but strengthen the chain of argument. Specifically, it concerns the flat-rate processing fee. Every automotive company either charges an hourly rate or a work value for the "processing" of the car, which flat-rates the effort and the time required for the tasks (the times here can be shorter or longer; what is charged is the work value).

Banks often charge, for example, a 2% processing fee (often more) for handling a (small) credit agreement. It does not matter whether the loan amount is EUR 2,000 for a vacation trip or EUR 20,000 for a car purchase. The "processing fee" (which is supposed to cover the effort of processing) is EUR 40 for the vacation trip and EUR 400 for the car. I claim that the actual work effort is roughly the same. Presumably, the actual costs for the vacation loan are higher than the calculated fee, and noticeably lower for the car loan. Here, the entirety of borrowers with larger loans effectively pays for the benefit of the entirety of borrowers with small loans. ;-)

Already here, it becomes clear that the "processing fee" is actually not a fee.

I am convinced that we will no longer see fees for processing loan applications in a few years. We will increasingly transition to finding our earnings in interest. And that is a good thing (to quote someone prominent). ;-)