Bank charges, PPI and costs going to court, need help with witness statement

[jasonrudd]

Hi

I have been having a long battle with Egg, they have tried everything to take MY money. I am now left with a very messy case. Below is my witness statement (due last sunday, but I think I bought a couple of days grace). I'm currently pulling all the documentation together (what documentation I have that is).

I would be grateful for any advice

1st Witness Statement of Jason Rudd
Exhibit JR1
8 June 2007

In the Bury St Edmunds County Court
Claim Number: 7QZ49166

Between:

Jason Rudd

(Claimant)

-And-

The Egg PLC

(Defendant)

_________________________

1st WITNESS STATEMENT OF

Jason Rudd
_________________________

1. I, the Claimant, am a litigant in person in this case.

2. I make this Witness Statement in support of my claim against the defendant for the refund of Penalty Charges and Card Repayment Protection (CRP, also known as Payment Protection Insurance, PPI) taken from my credit card account by the Defendant. Also sought are 6 days loss of holiday, which can be bought back from the claimant’s employer.

3. I make this Witness Statement from information and facts within my own knowledge and documentation provided by the defendant, both of which I believe to be true.

4. On 2 February 2003 I signed the credit agreement with the Defendant.

5. On 2nd February 2003 I was told by the Defendant’s staff that I must take Credit Repayment Protection in order to be allowed to continue. The staff actually had to call me as the rest of the application was done online. I protested as I was already well covered for accident, sickness and unemployment via my employer. I was not a home owner at the time and had very little debt compared to the cover my employer supplied. However, I was forced to take the CRP in order to take the card.

There is, in fact, no requirement to take CRP with the Defendant’s card and here I had been misrepresentation and concealment aimed at increasing revenue through staggering CRP commissions.

6. In July of 2003 I changed position to a new employer, who also provided very good accident and life cover. This time I wrote to the Defendant via their online messaging system, believing this tractable, asking to have the CRP taken off my account. The response I received was “You must contact the broker”, the agent could not tell me who the broker was.

7. Between July 2003 and May 2006 I made numerous requests to the Defendant’s staff to have the CRP taken off my account, every time I was given a different reason as to why this was not possible. These ranged from “the system is down” to “this is not possible/allowed” and “you have to do this online”. These were in fact all lies, as egg staff cancelled the policy in Aug 2006 and in May 07 refunded back to May 06.

8. Jan 2006 after much persuading form the defendant I applied for a loan to consolidate my debts. Egg phoned to say the loan had been agreed, however upon checking, egg were trying to dupe me, the loan amount was for the Egg credit card debt only.

9. May 2006 I was again told during phone call that I could cancel the CRP online, however I was unable to locate any such page.

10. August 2006 customer services cancelled my Card Repayment Protection, thereby admitting this was under their control all the time. This is the earliest reference the Defendant can find as the older messages are backed up to tape.

12. October 2006, tired of being bounced between the defendant’s staff and the Financial Ombudsman Service, I wrote to the defendant explaining until my requests for penalty charges and PPI were removed from my account I would not pay any further money to egg.

13. October 2006, the claimant responded with a template letter refusing to refund the monies threatening further action if the entire account £3660 were not paid immediately.

14. October 2006, I paid £1000 into my account to ensure it was within its limits. I wrote to the defendant advising that I was now going to progress this through the courts.

15. October 2006, I was contacted by DL & C Collections threatening diminished credit record and court action.

16. I wrote to Egg explaining that the account had been bought back into its credit limit and that I was still persuing the monies unlawfully taken.

17. The defendant responded that their decision was final.

18
11. On 6 December 2006 I wrote to the Defendant requesting ALL of my Personal Data under the Data Protection Act, as I had done repeatedly through secure message and telephone call during 2003-06.

12. On 23rd January the Defendant supplied ALL of my account transactions, but only the last three months of Call Log Data and Messaging system data, and only the headers, no content of each. The call log data is incomplete showing most calls as “General enquiry”, which does not show my request to have the CPR removed. There was not a single reference to the loan I was almost convinced to take

14. On the 27th January I spoke with the egg data team, who informed me that the earlier data “older than 3 months” was “backed-up on tape” and that they’d “speak with IS”. This data falls under the Data Protection Act and has still not been provided. As such, the Defendant has failed to comply with the Data Protection Act and have been reported to the data commissioner. This also explains why the defendant’s staff were unable to find previous requests to remove CRP.



15. On 27 January 2007 I wrote to the Defendant, setting out the nature of my complaint and requesting that the Defendant either justify the legitimacy and legal status of its charges or alternatively refund them. I also asked that the Card Protection Insurance, which I had asked for 3 years to be stopped, to be repaid. I also sought costs for the time wasted in concealing these hidden costs. In a separate letter I asked for the missing data from the preceding point.

16. Upon unsatisfactory response from the Defendant, on 9 March 2007 I again wrote to the Defendant requesting a refund of said charges and CPR and advising I would file a claim should I not receive a satisfactory response.

17. Upon the Defendant's very low offer of settlement, on 5th April I filed a claim at Northampton County Court for the return of the charges levied by the Defendant, as particularised and detailed in the Particulars of Claim.

18. The Defendant acknowledged service of the claim on 19/04/2007

19. The Defendant filed its defence on 11/04/2007

20. The Defendant has still not supplied the missing data.

21. The defendant has ignored previous requests for data

22. The defendants’ staff have done their utmost to prevent me bringing this case, including using 2 debt collection agencies, instructing them as recently as the 5th of May knowing that this case had already been taken to court. Every communication I have sent with regard to these problems has resulted in an agency contacting me within 2 days. This is nothing less than harassment.

23. The stress caused, has been partly responsible for my having to leave my last position Apr 2006 and also for 4 months of bad health early this year. The current job is becoming untenable as I have to spend so much time dealing with these problems. My employer has asked me not to deal with them at work anymore.

24. I have had to take 6 individual and separate days as holiday up to January to try to resolve the problems the defendant and their collection and agencies tried to cause. My employer will allow me to buy these days back so that I might use them as the law intended, i.e. to de-stress rather than get stressed. Hence, I wish for costs in this case to be considered as this will enable recovery from problems that the defendant created in attempts to waste my time and dwindle my efforts to bring this case.

25. The preparation of this case has and will take several more days, as such, I would like these costs repaid as part of this case so I might take the time to relax as I should have done

26. The defendant admits that they have found an earlier “UNSATISFIED” request (May 2006) to have the CRP removed and has refunded back to that date. This proves, by the defendants own admission, that egg were telling customers they could not cancel CRP, when in fact they could. The claimant believes this is evidential that the defendant’s computer systems obscure data more than 3 months old by “backing it up to tape”. The claimant further believes that earlier back-up tapes will support this claim of earlier requests and refusals (as in May) to have the CRP taken off the account.

Summary
26. The claimant believes the defendant has used the CPR and over limit charges as a means to hide the true costs of its “cheap credit-card”. This is something that many of the defendant’s customers must be suffering. Indeed the OFT and FSA have shown that CPR carries the largest commission of all insurances. The OFT has also shown that the PPI (CPR) is very often mis-sold, as it has been in this case.
The OFT and FSA have been very concerned over the behaviour of financial institutions with respect to PPIs. As such most financial institutions are now refunding mis-sold PPIs. Where this has not been repaid, there are many cases where either the FOS or County Court, have ruled in favour of the claimant.

27. The defendant has repeatedly misrepresented itself and concealed information in an attempt to keep the PPI alive.

27. The defendant has repeatedly refused to supply data that provides evidence for this case. This data will show that my earliest requests to remove CRP were circa 3 years ago.

28. Thedefendanthas used two credit agencies to harass me into paying the money the defendant has unlawfully taken. This has always happened within days of my requesting the defendant to resolve this matter. In other words, this has been a direct attempt to prevent me pursuing this case.

29. The above summarised actions add up to, what the claimant believes, a planned and organised attempt to unlawfully prevent access to monies, and further and attempt to conceal the true costs of the defendants credit card accounts.

Conclusion
30. Thedefendant, through varying unlawful manners,has taken the monies outlined from the claimant’s credit-card account, made obvious attempts to prevent access to information, tried to confuse the claimant, wasted the claimant’s time and made the claimant’s jobs untenable, all in an effort to maximise profits at the claimant’s expense. As such, the claimant requests all the monies requested and costs relative to the amount of time wasted. It is the understanding of the claimant that some county court judges have seen so much of this behaviour by the financial institutions that costs are often awared in these cases.

31. Statement of Truth

I, the Claimant, believe the facts stated within this Witness Statement to be true.

Signed:

Jason Rudd
Dated: 8 June 2007

[jasonrudd]

Have I posted to the wrong area?