New claim, but a bit stuck

[Paintball]

I sent off my S.A.R - (Subject Access Request) to the Co-Op bank on 14 December 2006 enclosing a cheque for £10. However, I made the mistake of not sending the letter by Recorded Delivery! Have not received acknowledgement from the bank to date ...

I rectified this by writing another letter requesting acknowlegement of my Subject Access Request letter and enclosing a copy of the original which I took into my branch yesterday and handed it in to a member of staff, asking for a receipt as proof of delivery.

Two members of staff 'assisted' me with this astoundingly unusual request and looked at my account records where, surprise surprise, there was no reference to my recent Subject Access Request request. They did update the details and I got a receipt and told the staff to take my letter straight to the Manager. I was told that the process would take a while as my request would need to be passed on, I presume to some bod in Balloon Street.

My additional problem is that I only had one cheque left in my cheque book which I had enclosed with my Subject Access Request. I have since requested another cheque book which the Co-Op have declined to provide and I need cheques to send out additional SARs to Crapital One, Nasty West etc.

Ouch!

[Bizarre.Moogle]

Did they say why they could not send out a cheque book?
The bank uses a flexi trigger on the issuing of books and will only auto issue a new book once it has received around chq 15 of the book. If you'vehad to scrap any of them, then it may not have had 15. Call into Telephone banking and ask if any new cheque book has been sent. If they say no, ask if any are still marked as open and not complete (ie any with only around 13 to 17 cheques used). If they say yes, ask for them to mark it as complete and order another one.


The only time a book will not be sent out is if there is a Referal marker on it. These normally only go on the cheque books if there has been returned cheques as funds unavailable. The team that can look to remove this is Managed accounts.

Hope this helps out. PM me for any more info.

[Paintball]

Thanks for this reponse. I have since contacted the Co-Op bank repeating the request and was asked about 16 unused cheques which I explained will have been voided/torn up over a period of time. I was told I would have another book in the post so am awaiting its arriveal!

Still waiting for an acknowledgement of my Subject Access Request letter ...


Rachel

[Battleaxe]

I send crossed postal orders for my Subject Access Request's. You can track them easily enough. it cost £10.80 in total the 80 pence is the admin fee. You don't need a cheque.

[Paintball]

A result today ...
Received in the post a complete list of charges which were headed with abbrevations that I was not readily able to understand. My cheque was also returned and in an accompanying letter I was told that there was no charge for this service and that if I had any queries I should call Claire
Maddick in the Customer Care team at Balloon St within 30 days.

I called Claire who was very helpful and requested complete statements. She said she will send them (at my request) by 25 January which is when the 40 days is up.

I now have to decide whether to claim back ALL the charges, including the service charge for the Privilege Account I was coerced into having! Other charges listed are for Commission, Debit Interest, DR INT REF (??) and FEES (??).

I'm going straight from here to the thread about Co-Op FEES to glean some insight/info ...

MODS PLEASE COULD YOU CHANGE THE SUBJECT HEADER FOR THIS POST TO PAINTBALL VS THE Co-Op? Thank you.

[dx100uk]

i think you mean the subscription charges?
that is the admin/freebies/magazine/website fee of having the a/c.

you might p'haps get some luck if you treat this a separate issue latter with them along the lines of bad fin advice?

anyhow.
i would wait for the full statements to come thru, as most of the things you list, from the list you got, are new to me and i've had a priv a/c for a longtime now,

certainly, service [unless linked to an o/d greater than the free £100 one] commission and the others can be claimed.

goodluck dx100uk

[Paintball]

Hi everyone

Still not clear about exactly what to claim for after reading the plethora of information and viewpoints expressed in various threads.

Recent Winners Dylans Mum and Cybergangster appear to have claimed differently. Dylans Mum says she claimed interest (calculated from the spreadsheet on the Commission and Fees charged?) but didn't claim the Debit Interest charged on the account, yet Cybergangster says he didn't bother with interest at all.

I'm still awaiting my statements having already received the Co-Op's own calculations of charges. From feeling initially very confident, frankly, I'm in a slight panic here and would really appreciate someone really haelping me to clear this one up so I can make my next move with confidence.

Cheers.

P

[dx100uk]

debit interest seems to be diff on co-op a/c's as from other banks, & much smaller [in terms of money value]?
there is a thread where the person has used their [co-op supplied] list of charges & just added [x]% compound int to the total & put that in.

i myself have a complete set of statements [though only used those going back 6yrs] to total their charges to me, [inc service but not debit int] added 15.9% compounded [where did i get that figure from now?] and sent it off on jan 04. had the std sorry letter so far only [getting close to LBA].
don't be too worried about claiming for things you mightnot be intitled to, they will soon put you right i'm sure. & you can always revise the figure at a later date.

[Bizarre.Moogle]

from what i have been reading on the site, you wouldn't be able to claim for the privilege fee, as it is a fee for a service. you say you were coerced into taking it, how, if you don't mind me asking?

if helps as well, the rate of interest charged on overdrafts change depending on the account you have (but feel this is only within agreed overdrafts). currently it is the current account at a monthly interest of 1.5%, privilege at 1.02% and privilege premier at 0.79%.

[magnet]

just joined in the great claw back and guess what?? i too sent my initial request to Co-Op unrecorded. sent on 5 dec, no reply so reckon i better re-send

[dx100uk]

well i sent mine 1st class, got sorry letter a couple of days later.
did you send to ballon street AD

dx100uk

[magnet]

certainly did. am intending to re send to same address

[robbiebow]

Originally Posted by Paintball

I'm still awaiting my statements having already received the Co-Op's own calculations of charges. From feeling initially very confident, frankly, I'm in a slight panic here and would really appreciate someone really haelping me to clear this one up so I can make my next move with confidence.

Okay, best go back to the basics: your bank has taken money from you unlawfully and you want to get it back. Have you received a bundle of statements detailing all the transactions on your account for the past 6 years yet? This will have been sent to you in response to your Subject Access Request. If not, wait until you have that.

If you do have it, you need to find all the unfair charges they have made. If you are not sure what counts as an unfair charge. Let us know what the abbreviation is on your statement and I'll hazard a guess. From my own claim, unfair charges included:

• DAILY EXCESS CHARGE
• FEES
• SERVICE CHARGE
• COMMISSION

You will need to take off any ADJ COMMISSION entries as these are refunded unfair charges (e.g. they may have repaid you some charges at some time).

Make use of the excellent spreadsheets set up by Vampira available here. The one I used was the 3a Before court without interest as I understand it to be the case that you can only claim the 8% Statutory Interest when you take it to court, and I considered the amount of Contractual Interest to be negligible compared to the rest of the claim, and too much hassle to bother with.

Contractual interest is the rate of interest they will have charged you for going overdrawn to pay the unfair charges. If you want to claim that, you will need to find out what the rate of interest for overdrafts was over time.

Once you have your spreadsheet completed, check it by going backwards through all your statements (not necessary, but I did this for peace of mind that I hadn't missed or duplicated anything) then print a copy for the bank, use the Preliminary approach for repayment template to make a letter to claim back your charges, and send the letter and spreadsheet to the bank. I sent by recorded delivery, again for peace of mind.

I was refunded pretty swiftly, with the full amount paid into my account without any resistance from the bank, so you should be fine.

Hope this helps!