up_the_cahoot v Cahoot!

[sbb1979]

I phoned Cahoot a year ago to make a payment to my account to bring it back under my overdraft limit. At the time I asked if there were any more charges due which hadn't yet appeared on my statement and was told there were none and specifically said that the reason I wanted to know was because I wanted to leave the account for a while whilst I sorted out my other finances.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I recently looked back at the website and the cheeky buggers had charged me £30 for every month since taking my balance well over £400 over my overdraft limit. They had not attempted to contact me at all even though they had fully up to date contact details and were I suppose happy just to continue charging me ad infinitum.

Anyway, I'm not happy about that!

Having read some other threads on the Cahoot part of this site, I thought that first I'd try just emailing them asking for a list of charges since I opened my account in 2002. Will see how that goes otherwise it'll be a Data Protection Act request in the post on Monday.

[sbb1979]

Has anybody any idea what Cahoot may say when I claim the money from them given the fact that I am (entirely due to charges) over £400 over my overdraft limit.

Are they going to demand that it comes under the limit and threaten anything whilst I'm going through the process against them?

[sbb1979]

Following my email to cahoot customer services, I received the following reply:

Dear Mr.,

Thank you for contacting cahoot in Coventry.

In order to complete your request for a list of charges, you would need to send a letter for the attention of our Operations Control
team, our address is:

cahoot
Friars House
PO BOX 1982
Coventry
CV1 2ZA

Once received we will action this for you.

Kind Regards,

Suckhbir Sahota
Who would you rather be in cahoots with?

There will therefore be a request for a list of charges or statements for the whole period that I've had an account in the post this evening. It appears that it may be best to just be nice and not say anything about claiming the charges back when you make the information request. That way you may not need to pay them anything to get the details.

Having said that, I've not got anything from them yet........I may be speaking too soon.

[sbb1979]

04/08/2006 - Received a letter through the post with a list of all transactions in my account since I opened it in 2002. They didn't make me pay for it.
07/08/2006 - Preliminary letter on its way this at lunchtime today - recorded delivery - asking for the £1030 in charges that they've illegally made against my account.

So glad that I can finally get this ball rolling!

[misspickles]

im currently waiting for a reply from Cahoot for £2960 charges. They are awful - all my charges started 3 years agao when my partner changed jobs and so we were short of money for a couple of months, we couldnt pay things, even when we rang and asked for an extension of our od they wouldnt but then proceeded to charge £300 in one month! So the knock on affect is that we continued to be charged every month. One month we went over our od by 26p and they still charged us £30!
Good luck with your claim I will be follwoing your thread with interest! Miss P x

[sbb1979]

Received a standard "Our fines are fair and if you don't like it you can go somewhere else" letter on Monday (21/08/06) in response to my Preliminary letter.

Therefore the LBA is going off today. Glad to be moving on with this one.

[sbb1979]

Not long to go until the Moneyclaim stage. Am looking forward to showing them that I mean business. They've just added another charge to my account.

What do people think the best way to go about this is? Just add it onto the moneyclaim and send a new schedule of charges in to them along with a copy of the claim, or shall I leave it off and start a new claim afterwards? Some advice on this would be gladly received.

[Piggy bank]

If you haven't actually filed a new moneyclaim yet, I would simply add it.

This is what I plan to do with the charges that have been levied since I sent my original approach and LBA letters.

After all, your original approach and LBA weren't legal documents, but attempts by yourself to resolve the situation 'amicably'. In my eyes, there's nothing that stops you recalculating your claim for the actual court proceedings to reflect these new charges.

Good luck! Am about to file a court claim myself

[sbb1979]

Can anyone tell me how much the Moneyclaim will cost for my claim which is about £1130?
I'll claim tomorrow if I can afford it.

[jellybabe]

Hi, i think it's £120 to file with your amount.I am too at mcol stage and will file my claim as soon as i have the money for it.
Good Luck with yours!

[sbb1979]

So, I got an email from Cahoot in response to my LBA, saying that their charges are fair. Their 14 days is also up so today I've filed my moneyclaim! So glad to have this all moving on.

[KJBoutcher]

Originally Posted by sbb1979

So, I got an email from Cahoot in response to my LBA, saying that their charges are fair. Their 14 days is also up so today I've filed my moneyclaim! So glad to have this all moving on.

I too am at the MCOL stage with Cahoot come the 14th of September. I even emailed them today jut to remind them that their time is up tomorrow and to kindly contact me about my refund (only £240, but still, it's my money)! So far not heard a peep since my LBA went on the 1st (via Royal Mail and email) so I thought I'd give them a nudge to avoid 'court fees and wasting court time etc' over such a small claim.

Lets see what happens! Good luck to everyone else fighting Cahoot too, they seem to be one of the harder banks to crack.

[sbb1979]

So, Moneyclaim has been issued today. They therefore have 14 days to acknowledge the claim.

In the meantime, should I send a letter to Cahoot informing them of this? Or maybe a letter to their solicitors with a schedule of charges?

I know that I'm meant to send a schedule of charges to the court because there wasn't room for it on the Moneyclaim form.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.......

[sbb1979]

I am going to send this tomorrow to Cahoot along with a schedule of charges and a copy of the claim form. Any opinions???

Head of Service Relationship
cahoot
Friars House
Manor House Drive
Coventry
CV1 2ZA

14/09/06



Notification of Court Claim: ********

Dear Sir/Madam,



Following on from my letters dated 7th August 2006 and 23rd August 2006, I am writing to notify you of the details of the claim that I have made with the County Court in relation to the unlawful penalty charges that you have levied on my account.

For clarification, my current account number is *******. I have calculated that the illegal penalty charges levied on my account total £1160 which when added to the £188.25 interest under section 69 of the County Courts Act 1984 and the court fee of £120, comes to the total that I am claiming of £1468.25. I have attached a schedule of the charges and a copy of the county court claim form.

I hope that you will enter into a sincere dialogue with me about this matter, I will however not be accepting anything less than a full and unconditional payment of the amount claimed. I would appreciate if you would forward on the schedule of charges to your legal department so that they have all the relevant details and to therefore avoid any unnecessary delay in this claim reaching its conclusion.




Yours faithfully,





sbb1979

[Piggy bank]

Personally, I don't really see the point of yet another letter if you've already sent the initial approach as well as the LBA, and when court action has been initiated. I'm sure they will get in touch with you through their solicitors.

Alternatively, if you feel you want to send another letter like above, it might be quicker and easier to email it to them - they tend to respond pretty fast.... (I've been in touch with customer relations manager through service.relationship.team @cahoot.com)

[jellybabe]

dito!I, for myself, wouldn't send them another letter.They had plenty time to resolve this matter before it reached deadline.And i'm sure they will be in contact with you soon enough to pay you out.

[sbb1979]

Lets hope so!!!

What about sending the schedule of charges to the court as there wasn't room on the moneyclaim form? Who would I address that to?

[jellybabe]

i think you can do that.Not sure who to send it to though.
But i think you can use the "The Court Manager...Northampton...C ounty Court" adress. And don't forget to include your claim number so they know which claim it belongs to.

[Karnevil]

have you sent the letter yet ?