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The payslip envelope is from Wescot Credit Services trading as "2F". It's in a helpful Q&A format. One of the questions is "what is this about?" and its answer is mysteriously nothing but a very large integer. Barclays say this hasn't affected her credit record... yet. As for stitching her up like a kipper. Putting someone's arranged overdraft down to £10 is essentially saying they don't want to offer someone credit anymore. That's fine (I refer you to points 1 and 2 above), but they don't appear to have acted on that conclusion in good faith. No serious attempt to contact her and putting the overdraft at £10 seems to be a cynical attempt to get someone into more difficulty. At that point, the bank is saying they don't care about your continued custom, it's just about extracting what they can from you. And she still wants the account.......

P.S. They've given us until the close of play tomorrow to pay it off!

Hi again, It turned out that it was a pending charge after the account had been returned to a small but positive number which took the account negative again. About a week after this happened, the bank reduced the arranged overdraft to £10. They have no record of sending a letter to tell her this, and she is pretty sure she never got one, as it would have caused action to sort it out on her part while it was still tiny. My partner spoke to the bank and this had all since ballooned to £800. This time though (going to a different branch must have helped) they looked into it, and kindly reduced it to £215, as a gesture of goodwill. So this is over the £200 it was when I offered to sort it out on condition she closed the account because 1) she doesn't need it 2) can't look after it and 3) I'm not prepared to have our blood sucked by them. She still won't close the account, because she thinks they're being nice about it. This works out at roughly 1000% APR on the original £20 of pending charges. Furthermore, we'd moved and she hadn't updated the address until this trip to the branch. Two strange things happened, a wage slip envelope came through the post to the new house with her name on it, and inside it asked her to phone a number. It could only have been related to Barclays. Second, when she went to the branch her address was already the correct new one. She hadn't changed it and the bank don't know how this happened.

Thanks for the reply. This attached table is the result of a script I wrote, it starts with the initial amount of £276, debits it to his overdraft which starts at zero (we're only counting the portion due to PPI), debits the £6.86 PPI premium payments to the overdraft when they originally came out, and adds compound overdraft interest, and the portion of the annual arrangement fee due to the overdraft. We ignored the overdraft turnover charge as it was getting a bit complicated and it was small. We truncated it at 2005 when the overdraft was finally paid off, and charged simple interest after that. I'll get the other paperwork from him when I next go to his house in the next day or so. ppi.pdf

Hi, My father had PPI with Midland Bank in 1990. They've made him an offer, which is all repayments on the premium, plus simple interest, and totals about £400. The issue is that all repayments came out of his Midland Bank overdraft. So they also incurred him overdraft interest, a portion of the monthly overdraft turnover fee (0.75% on any debit in the overdraft), and a portion of the 1.25% annual overdraft arrangement fee. He came out of his overdraft in 2005, so assuming that the PPI was the last part of the overdraft paid off (a fair assumption since without it he'd have come out of his overdraft sooner), we totted up that PPI has put him out of pocket around £4000. I.e., that's what they've made from him. I think the calculation is reasonable, the question is what are his chances of being able to claim it back? The bank have only said that they won't consider such incidental issues unless directed by the Ombudsman, and the Ombudsman have said they think the bank has made a reasonable offer. I note neither of them have come up with any legal reasoning. Thanks for any help.

Thanks for the replies. I'm trying to establish whether she wants help. I've been told to either cough up the money or leave. I think she's being a bit hotheaded and will calm down, meanwhile I've told her to find out from Barclays exactly what's going on, get print-outs of account transactions, and check her credit file, and the sooner she does all this the better.

Hi BankFodder, thanks for the reply. It's a current account. It was £20 of pending charges which kicked all this off. I believe there is a weekly charge for using the overdraft, and there's a high interest rate. I'm not sure if it's arranged or unarranged, but it was £200 when I had the discussion with her about me returning it to zero about 5 months ago. I dread to think what it is now if DCAs etc are involved. Obviously it's a bit difficult for me to really get precise details because it's not my account. I'm mainly worried about implications due to credit ratings. Also money is tight at the moment, and I can't keep bailing my partner out when she ignores things.

I returned my partner's account to zero early last year. Unfortunately there was a pending charge, and my partner didn't use her account or check the balance again until late last year. It had ballooned into a large amount of overdraft from that one pending charge. Barclays were unwilling to generously be sensible about it, and my partner wouldn't accept the terms of my offer of help, which was that I'd return it to zero (for the nth time) if she closes her account, as Barclays don't deserve our blood to suck on, and she doesn't need a spare account. Since then I imagine it's continued to balloon. I imagine DCAs and court action have happened or will happen soon. My options are: 1) Cave in and pay. 2) Refuse to cave in. Tell her to point out she has no income of her own, and they should accept the one charge with say a staggering 100% annual APR added, which is still a lot less than they want but they're still accepting something that sounds eye watering. I have no idea about implications to credit ratings, so I think that will influence the decision. Thank you very much for any advice.

Well, I thought they sorted it. I started receiving phone calls from their debt collection arm asking for the previous tenant by name, two or three times a day. I have variously told them I am not that person, or asked to be put through to the complaints department (they either hang up or tell me they can't transfer me), or explained the situation and received a promise that this number would be deleted. I phoned British Gas complaints, they assured me the phone number was deleted, and it obviously hasn't been. I have emailed customer services, but not had a reply.

From what I can make out, they've existed since 1985. But changed their name in 2004 from Business Names Registrations Plc to National Business Register Plc. Secretary of State for Trade at the time was Patricia Hewitt.

Yeah. But I am interested in what one has to do before the Secretary of State refuses permission. Appending PLC / LTD at the end surely isn't enough to prevent misleading on its own.

But Company Names Act 1985 means they can't pass themselves off as connected with the government, nor can they use restricted words like "national" and "register" without permission from the Secretary of State. Surely the Secretary of State wasn't born yesterday? BTW, too late there, I'm afraid, about not paying them any money.

Does anyone have any experience with them? It doesn't appear clear on their web site that there are no means or requirement under law to register a name, so they have no connection with the government. They sell protection from passing off, so their register is materially a list of their customers. I feel slightly misled by the name and web site. Of course, that may just mean I was stupid. Am I right to feel slightly misled? Is their marketing legit?

BG sorted it. I'm not sure what happened, something about our rental property being refurbished some time before we moved in and some supplier number not being "de-energised" when it should have been. Blame was not apportioned, but BG are deleting the account (including the 'debt') and their supplier number and it will all be sorted.