polly7vabbey

[polly7]

Well, this is it - I have been reading your fantastic site for months but it has now come to crunch time as I have to submit evidence by 11th June - my court date is 31st July. I have to confess to being a technophobe and that has deterred me from posting before.
Basically I have had a dreadful battle with Abbey since Nov 2005. I had a loan account, joint account and a sole account. We fell into financial difficulty as my wife has MS and although still works (just) she had problems over sick absences. I had my overtime cut and also found myself taking time off due to caring for her which my company were great about but obviously I was not paid. So we had the triple whammy of no overtime, no pay and my wife's sick pay. I contacted Abbey asked to reduce loan payments until we were sorted - they refused. Two credit companies were fantastic and they complied immediately and froze all interest. Abbey embarked on what I can only describe as a campaign of destruction and sent a barrage of arrears and default letters. In May 2006 they stopped our joint overdraft without any prior notification at the same time an article in the financial Mail told of a computer blip for Abbey customers cancelling overdrafts. However, instead of reinstating mine they refused to as we had "loan arrears" and my wife spent an extremely stressful afternoon talking to 8 people before being told she either agreed to repay £100 per month or no overdraft. I have to be honest and as we were so scared (never having been in real financial difficulty before and being very private people) we took out a secured loan and repaid Abbey and everyone but could not borrow enough to repay the overdrafts on the two bank accounts. That was in June 2006. We did manage to reduce the overdraft on the joint but decided to leave the bank completely. Needless to say with the damage inflicted to our credit rating by Abbey we only managed a basic bank account but that was fine and we have not needed any overdraft just managing (just) every month. Once Abbey realised our salaries were no longer going into the bank accounts they started again on the defaults - again refusing our offers of monthly repayments and imposing the highest interest rate. So we have decided to reclaim bank charges on the sole account. It is only about £550 but if successful we could then manage to settle completely and hopefully get them off our backs. The Financial Ombudsman has taken up the joint account because of my wife's disability and our overall ability to pay.
I do hope you are not all asleep by now - my question is this - do we tell this tale in our evidence - we are the type of sad people who keep every scrap of evidence and details of harrassing phone calls - even after notifying of my intention to go to court they still passed the debt to a debt collection agency.
Please could someone just help us with the evidence we are allowed to submit - is it all just restricted to the bank charges alone or can we bring in the whole sorry story

Many thanks

[noobrider]

To be honest the rest of the evidence isn't relevant to the case. The case is being judged on a matter of law which is down to breach of contract and penalty charges. whatever happens after that breach is not really relevant.

Read the court bundle and prepare your case using the documentation and templates supplied. understand the law behind the case and you should get settlement.

[adamc6671]

Hi polly7, and welcome to GAG.

Your story certainly did not induce sleep - quite the contrary in fact. This highlights the total and appalling disregard that Abbey have for their customers. Their only motivation is profit, and they could not care less about the effect of this overriding objective on their customers!

I hugely admire you for going public with your story - it must have been a very hard decision to make. I know from my experiences on CAG that there are many wonderful and knowledgable people here who will help you every inch of the way.

Sadly I am not in a position to advise on exactly what evidence is admissable, but I am sure someone who does know will be along very soon. What I do know is that the fact you have kept every scrap of evidence will help you greatly. I am aware that once an account is oficially in dispute, the bank is NOT allowed to sell that debt on, but it does depend on what stage your proceedings were at when they sold it. If they did so after you issued the claim in Court they are definately in the wrong, and the Collection Agency should be informed.

Very sorry that I can't help more than that. I'll follow your thread with great interest. All the very best - Adam.