Introduction:
There are plenty of websites and organisations that inform the consumer of their various rights and options in dealing with banks. However, this organisation intends to step up the pressure on the banks and the government to rid us of the scourge of the nastiest form of bank charges ever conceived by the banking industry - the £30-£38 charge whenever a direct debit is declined.

This organisation has been formed to ensure this practice is eliminated forever, if this means the banks have to completely re-write the structure of the system then so be it, consumers have had enough.

In the modern world few of us can afford to live without direct debit. We need to pay most of our insurance bills, utility bills, memberships and most importantly, mortgage or rent accounts using this method. Government has virtually forced thousands (perhaps millions) of people to be a part of this system whether they wanted to or not and everywhere we're encouraged to participate in this 'safe' and 'reliable' system.

However, the system comes without any 'health' warnings. If you make the slightest mistake it will cost you more than a parking fine and almost as much as a speeding fine if you do. Making one mistake can lead to the 'domino' effect, where the charges levied for one failed direct debit can leave your account overdrawn (often without you realising), so causing the next direct debit to fail. Conceivably, if you have 10 direct debits a month planned, if just one fails you could possibly face a bill of £380 before you know that anything is wrong.

Quite simply, direct debit should operate on the same scheme as paying by debit card. If there are no funds in your account then, to coin a phrase; "computer says no". When this happens it may be a tad embarrasing but there's no charge. The banks make their money by charging the vendor a small amount per transaction, which the vendor has the choice of absorbing this small cost or passing it on to their customers. Even small retailers and vendors only pay about 50p per transaction and big supermarkets much less - everyone's happy.

The banks should own up to the fact that the 'fee' they charge for a failed direct debit IS a penalty, repay automatically any fees charged to customers and end the practice once and for all. Effectively what they're doing is using unfair and excessive charges to fund so called 'free banking' for the better off. The poorest members of society should not be footing this bill.

This site recommends that you SHOULD put in your claim anyway to recover your fees and we'll add our voice to this action to increase the pressure on the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), who are currently challenging the banks in the courts. We at Cadds believe that our pressure may still be necessary to bring about change as by the time all the appeals have been heard (the banks are definitely going to appeal for as long as possible) it may well be late 2009. The time scale coupled with recent developments in the global money markets mean that it's quite conceivable that the Government and the OFT may try and let the banks off the hook. THIS MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN. The banks have ripped off consumers for years and years and made huge profits - reliably estimated to be 25 BILLION POUNDS in unfair charges alone over the past 7 years. THEY DO NOT DESERVE OUR SYMPATHY OR MERCY.

Please sign up to this site and help rid our community of this scourge.

Phase 1: To pursade as many people as possible to register their interest. This is free and will both allow us to decide our next course of action and will in itself provide another statistic to show the powers that be the depth of consumer anger on this subject.

Phase 2: To invite registrants to become members - currently we're thinking about charging £1 per month or £10 annually for membership. All funds will be used to campaign vigorously. To see more specifically our planned actions check out our list of 'intentions' (left bar). When you register your interest you'll be invited to give us your opinions on this membership fee so that we can best judge the way forward. It will though cost money to campaign, so if this campaign is to be successful we'll need to raise funds somehow. The organisation is to be non-profit making so all funds will be used to campaign and members will be able to see an overview of the accounts at all times.

Phase 3: Major action. The actions of the campaign will depend on funding so please begin by registering your interest and giving us your opinions so that we can begin to make our, no YOUR voice heard.