Westpac's fee review slugs battler

Westpac Banking Corporation's review of exception fees did not prevent Matthew
Burgess from struggling to meet rent payments after he was slugged by the bank for
being overdrawn on his low-income transaction account.
Mr Burgess has joined Maurice Blackburn's multi-billion-dollar class action against
10 local and two global banks that he labels "predatory organisations".
More than 32,000 claimants had registered to join the class action by late Thursday
afternoon in what is expected to be Australia's biggest class action, to recover
more than $5 billion in exception fees charged by banks which are claimed to be
punitive.
A Westpac customer, Mr Burgess was charged $40 each time his transaction account was
overdrawn when his gym direct debited his account between two days and two weeks
ahead of his fortnightly benefit payment.
The fees charged totalled $1000 over the past three years.
"I'm low income and I found a lot of the time that when the bank ... put me further
into debt that impacted on my ability to feed myself, my ability to pay my rent. It
was a compounding effect," he told reporters on Thursday.
"There was a period when I was $3500 behind in my rent," he said, adding that the
gym membership was needed for medical reasons.
"That's not solely the bank's responsibility but often the situations they put me
into of recurring debt, would exacerbate my problems and affect my ability to
maintain my accommodation at the time."
Westpac spokeswoman Jane Counsel said the bank could not comment until it saw the
details of the claims but noted that Westpac was the first of the majors to cut fees
for both business and consumer customers after a thorough review.
"We did undertake a thorough review of exception fees which resulted in a wide
sweeping reduction which was effective as of October 1 last year where we reduced
all of our exception fees down to nine dollars."