stew1275 versus RBOS

[stew1275]

Ok we have started.

Letter asking for our money back with interest for charges over the last 6 years (worth a try rather than 5 years) sent on the 30th March 07 as below.


The Royal Bank of Scotland PLC
Customer Relations
Customer Central Support
First Floor
The Forthstone
56 South Gyle Crescent
Edinburgh
EH12 9LE



29th March 2007


Request for repayment of charges

Dear Sir/Madam,

ACCOUNT NUMBER: XXXXXXXXX


Our request
We are writing to ask you to refund to us the charges which you have levied from our account over the last 6 years.
We now understand that the regime of fees which you have been applying to our account in relation to direct debit refusals, exceeding overdraft limits and so forth are unlawful at Common Law, Statute and recent consumer regulations. If you say that they are not, then will you please demonstrate this by letting us have a full breakdown of the costs to which you have been put by as a result of our breaches, in order to reassure us that your penalties really do reflect your costs.
Additionally, it has now been confirmed that your particularly high level of penalties are considered to be unfair per se by the OFT who reported on the 5th April 2006 and are therefore presumed to be unlawful in the absence of specific proof to the contrary.

Your responsibilities
We would draw your attention to the terms of the contract which you agreed to at the time that we opened our account. It is an implied term of that contract that you would conduct yourselves lawfully and in a manner which complies with UK law.

We are frankly shocked that you have operated our account in this way as we had always reposed confidence in your integrity and expertise as our fiduciary.
We consider that your repeated representations that your charges are fair and reasonable are deceptive and that they have deceived us into agreeing to pay them.
Your concealment of the true nature of your charges has prevented us from asserting our right until now.

What we require
We calculate that you have taken £2460 plus £745.25 which you have charged us in overdraft interest for the sum which you have taken. Total £3205.25 .
We enclose a schedule of the charges which we are claiming with this letter




Our targets to resolve this matter
We hope that you will enter into a sincere dialogue with us about this matter and we are writing this letter to you on the assumption that you will prefer to do this than merely respond with standard letters and leaflets.

We will give you 14 days to reply to us accepting, unconditionally, our request in principle and letting us know a date by which I will receive payment.

If you do not respond, or you do not respond positively, within this time period, we shall send you a letter before action giving you a further 14 days in which to reflect. We believe that these targets are more than sufficient for a large company such as yours with dedicated staff and departments.

After that, there will be no further communication from us and we shall issue a claim at the expiry of the second deadline.

We have received a reply today requesting that since this is a closed account that they require account number, sort code and our names, everything that was in the correspondence we had sent, on receipt they will investigate.

We presume this to be a simple delay tactic, although they have been quick in getting back to us.

Do we submit the information again and state we will stick to our original timetable of 14 days from the original request letter before the final 14 days before action?

Cheers
from a pair of scardy cats in the norht east!

[stew1275]

On looking through some of the other threads the opinion seems to be to go down the FOS route, has this any milage in it and how should this be tackled given that we have requested our charges plus interest from the bank as per previous post.

p.s. with reference to the bank asking for account information ie. sort code, account N° and our names - the only info we hadn't provided had been the sort code, do we provide this information and give them a further 14 days to learn to read?

[Bigmac versus]

Hi Stew1275 and yes the FOS have plenty of power to force the banks to settle and have done on many occasions in regards to bank charges, the good points are you need not appear in court and therefore are not subject to possible costs.

[stew1275]

Thanks Bigmac, we will provide RBOS with the further information required along with a suitable letter, not sure how it will go -

Do we mention the FOS at this time to push them along or do we accept the 8 week timescale and hope to either settle (yippe) or get a final response without settlement and involve the FOS from that point.

[Bigmac versus]

My personal view is one that if you add into the LBA that you intend to complain through the FOS if you are not happy with their response they may decide to wait the full 8 weeks to respond, on many occasions they respond quicker than this maybe due to imminent legal action threat but you have no responsilbility or duty to inform them of your intentions of going through the FOS.
I would send prelim
then send LBA
If no response from them then i would advise them you are to complain through the FOS as they only have roughly 3 weeks left to respond to your complaint by then anyway.
Hope this helps

[stew1275]

Ok, this is the letter that we intend to send back to the RBOS and will include the original preliminary letter and charges with interest schedule - just in case.

Dear Sir,

ACCOUNT NUMBER:
SORT CODE:

Further to your letter dated the 3rd April 2007 please find attached the completed information sheet along with a further copy of our original letter dated 29th of March 2007.

We note that you have not provided us with a reference number and hope that this is an oversight that you will correct in future correspondence.

We will give you a further 14 days to reply to us accepting, unconditionally, our request in principle and letting us know a date by which I will receive payment.

If you do not respond, or you do not respond positively, within this time period, we shall send you a letter before action giving you a further 14 days in which to reflect. We believe that these targets are more than sufficient for a large company such as yours with dedicated staff and departments.

After that, there will be no further communication from us and we shall issue a claim at the expiry of the second deadline.

Hopefully this will clear up any lack of information that will "delay" their investigation!

[stew1275]

Ok update,

Letter back from Sandy Watt thanking us for the information and stating they will look into our claim.

We are very disappointed that you have failed to respond satisfactorily to our letter of the 11th April 2007.
We now understand that the regime of 'fees' which you have been applying to our account in relation to direct debit refusals, exceeding overdraft limits and so forth are unlawful at Common Law, Statute and recent Consumer regulations.

We would draw your attention to the terms of the contract which you agreed to at the time that we opened our account. It is an implied term of that contract that you would conduct yourselves lawfully and in a manner which complies with UK law.

We are frankly shocked that you have operated our account in this way as we had always reposed confidence in your integrity and expertise as our fiduciary.

We calculate that you have taken £xxxx plus £xxx which you have charged us in overdraft interest for the sum which you have taken. Total £xxxx.
We are enclosing a copy of the schedule of the charges which we am claiming. We have already sent you copies of this in our original and subsequent letters of the 29th March 2007 and 11th April 2007.

We require repayment in full of this money. If you do not comply fully within 21 days then we shall begin a complaint against you through the Financial Ombudsman Service without further notice.


This 21 day period will take us into the 8 week timescale for dealing with our complaint - is this taken from the date of our first payment request letter?

[Bigmac versus]

The 8 weeks as per FSA is from you starting your complaint, that would be when you sent the Prelim letter.

[stew1275]

Cheers Bigmac, letter to be sent tomorrow and will fit nicely into the timescale.

[stew1275]

Ok, we sent of the FOS forms since the 8 weeks came and gone last week and guess what -
We got an offer from RBOS is for the charges but without the interest, any ideas - we are happy to take the offer (I think) any views on the interest?
We still have charges to claim back on another account, but feel a lot better to pursue these since receiving this offer and thanks to this forum!

[Bigmac versus]

Well it could harm your court case if they defended saying they offered full payment of charges and the interest you pursue is judicial, however you are not going to court you are going through the FOS so the choice is yours i know they can make the banks settle including the interest.
You could take the payment offered as partial settlement and advise them you are to claim the interest via the FOS.

[stew1275]

The FOS have given a neutral answer, if we want the interest we have to show how this was calculated out and it may be less than we have stated although I doubt it as we used the calculator.
If we leave the interest then we lose out on £745.
It's like deal or no deal!

[Bigmac versus]

Spot on stevokenevo just as i read it, you want the interest then request it showing your calculations and the rate you used it may delay the outcome but as you say its a lot of money.

[stew1275]

Thanks guys, thats helpful. I'm of the opinion to go for the interest but my partner is scared we wont get a better offer.
I think before the bank have come up with this offer so quickly that they are merely dangling a carrot. I don't like carrots, but my partner does!
I will look at how to calculate the interest and take it from there.

[stew1275]

Having just had a look at Martin Lewis's site again, anybody requiring help with the FOS forms can find a guide on there on filling in and also that you should indeed get that interest!
I think we will reply to the RBOS accepting the offer as a partial settlement and let them know that we shall continue with the FOS route.
Is there any straight forward way of showing how the interest is calculated?
We provided the calculation using ML's calculator from the start, is this enough?

[Bigmac versus]

Use the spreadsheets in here and if they disagree with your calculations i would be surprised.

[stew1275]

Just listed out the charge amount and date, etc onto the simple spreadsheet and get a £45 increase in interest compared to ML's calculator.
Presumably I can still forward this to the FOS and state the 8% interest rate in an accompanying letter as I note that when printed there isn't anything stating the rate, should this be added to the spreadsheet somewhere?
and - do I send this to the RBOS with a letter accepting the offer in part payment stating that the FOS are currently involved?

Thanks again for the advice!