Thread: IHopeSo v Lloyds Financial Hardship Any Advice Would be GREAT!!

Hi All,
Basically started a claim for bank charges with the Lloyds for my partner back in 07, we both have recently been made redundant and at present receiving benefits, so have sent letter asking for amended charges + 8% interest under financial hardship, charges total £3.500, received a letter today stating they will get someone to ring regarding financial position ( to disscuss a varirty of payment solutions!) but will not deal with charges until the conclusion of the test case. Also said no to future charges being frozen.
My question is how do i repond now, do i send a letter before action? I would also like to add the interest charged on the overdraft due to the bank charges, do i send ammended charges give them 7 days to reply then take court action?

Sorry to ask an obvious question, I have tried to read around the forum for a few days now to gain ansers,

Any Advice soooo welcome

We are in arrears with mortgage now 2 mths £2000, but as the bills now bounce regulary from bank account we are paying approx £300 in charges, it is so diabolical when it is most of what we get in benefits of which the tax payer pays for and we are very gratefull and hope to gain employement soon but WHy SHOULD THE LLOYDS GET THIS MONEY!!!!

Start your court action.

Don't expect to find Lloyds interested or sympathetic to you.

If you are receiving benefits then you should send them a letter of appropriation which should have the effect of preventing them from accessing your benefits to pay off charges or overdraft etc.

Put your claim in as quickly as possible. Make sure it is completely up-to-date. Make sure that you have identified any interest which you have paid on your charges. Also any interest which you are presently paying on your overdraft in so far as your overdraft is comprised of charges should be reclaim back as well. For instance, if they owe you £3500 in charges and if your overdraft equals £3500, then actually you're not overdrawn -- you are in the black with a nil balance. This means that you should not be paying any interest on your overdraft because it is your own money. Claim all of that back as well. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you can increase your claim quite substantially.

Send Lloyds a seven-day letter before action and then just Sue them. Don't bother to listen to any of their fob off's or rantings. Don't imagine that they will tell you the truth or that they will do anything for you which conflicts with their own self interest.

Thanks for the reply, will do that, oops seem to have made 2 threads by mistake, just learning, sorry!

Also hoohizzel complain to the FSA about how Lloyds are treating you. They have recently written to the bank to spell out what is expected of them under the waiver expecially for hardship claimants - the letter is posted in this hardship claims forum.

They won't deal with individual cases but they need people to complain or they don;t know things are wrong - as thus far it appears they expect firms to inform the FSA themselves if they feel they are breaching the waiver.

Hi All,
Think i am trying to take on to many things at once at the moment it gets v confusing!

Could anyone give me a link for the template letter to complain to the FSA?
I am about to put in post tomorrow lba, is it worth including Inc & Ex form from cccs and copies of all mortgage arrears? Also can i also write to the FOB as well as above mentioned.

With regard to the letter of appropriation, we have 2 bank accounts, priority bills go out of both but benefits go into the other bank account does this letter only work with the bank account that receives the benefits?

From what i have read of others cases it sounds as though it's not a good idea to move bank accounts at the moment as they will only refund (maybe)while its in use, also is setting up a dmp a good idea will this go against them accepting you in Financial Hardship.

Appologies for the many questions i have been looking on here all day ( actually all fortnight) for answers it gets a bit mind fuddling & i can't spell!!!
Any Advice once again greatfully recived xx

Hi hoohizzel

I've had a read through of your thread as promised - I can quite understand you saying you've been scouring the forums for so long looking for answers as there's so much information to take in it becomes all-consuming if you let it - which is not a bad thing as there is so much to be learnt from the extremely knowledgeable members! I will try to help you as much as I can -

I put together my own letter of complaint to the FSA and sent it to -

The Waivers Team
The Financial Services Authority
25 The North Colonnade
CanaryWharf
London
E14 5HS

In it I catalogued the story so far with our complaint to ltsb, explained how I felt they were breaching the terms of the Hardship Waiver, with detailed examples of their conduct in dealing with our complaint. I also enclosed a chronological list of all correspondence sent and received to/from LTSB.

If you haven't already sent your lba, I would definitely enclose as much supporting evidence as possible - particularly proof of any priority debt arrears.

The letter to the Ombudsman needs to come once either the initial 8 weeks have passed and you have received a final response or the 8 weeks have passed and you haven't received an adequate response. The 8 weeks is the standard time allowed to a complaint to be investigated.

When you are ready to make a complaint to the Ombudsman I can give you some pointers as to what you need to include in your letter, courtesy of yourbank who has written some excellent posts on the subject of hardship.

With both the FSA and the fos I think it is better to use your own words rather than a standard template (I don't even know if one exits for either of these situations, to be honest) as you don't want to appear too clued up and as each case is different your own situation will need to be described from a personal perspective.

I'm afraid I have no experience of the right of appropriation so cannot offer any advice there.

As for moving bank accounts, it does appear to be the case, I believe, that they will only refund if your account is in use. That's probably one of the reasons why they chose to close ours down Fortunately we do have a parachute account set up which is always a good idea, just in case.

I don't know anything about DMPs but I believe that if you have payment plansin place to clear priority debt arrears etc the bank will use this as an excuse not to pay out under the Financial Hardship criteria as you say.

To be honest, as you have seen from my thread, LTSB are going to be as awkward as they possibly can be, but I am coming to the conclusion that we have to be as awkward with them in return!

On another thread I saw it suggested that we start putting our own personal reference numbers on the letters we send to banks. As the responses we get from them (LTSB in particular) tend to be very vague and its not always clear to which of our letters they are referring, it may be a good idea to try this - although I somehow can't see LTSB complying with this

I hope this has answered some of your questions

Regards,

Landy x

The final response letter will be important because if they reject a claim for hardship they have to give their reasons and that is what you have to argue with the fos over.

Originally Posted by yourbank

The final response letter will be important because if they reject a claim for hardship they have to give their reasons and that is what you have to argue with the fos over.

Hi yourbank

Very true, but if, as in our case, you have received so many letters (19 or 20 now, I've lost count!) from the bank some which could be final responses - but being so vague its hard to tell - its very difficult to actually sift out their reasons for rejecting our complaint!

Apologies to hoohizzel for hijacking.......

Regards,

Landy x

Originally Posted by landy_alert

Hi yourbank

Very true, but if, as in our case, you have received so many letters (19 or 20 now, I've lost count!) from the bank some which could be final responses - but being so vague its hard to tell - its very difficult to actually sift out their reasons for rejecting our complaint!

Apologies to hoohizzel for hijacking.......

Regards,

Landy x

Ask for a final response and tell them you are aware that the FSA letter dated 19th March 2009 stated that any final response should explain the reason for rejecting a hardship claim.
Once you have to FINAL RESPONSE(or in your case final response x 20) then we can see why or if they have rejected it.

Originally Posted by k1mmie

Think you may be wasting your time, but it is a process that you need to go through. I went down this road with Lloyds and they came back with usual OFT on hold jargon. I went through all details and they came back and admitted I was in financial hardship, but said they do not refund at the moment under any circumstance. SO once I got their final response went straight to Ombudsman and am waiting. The only option I could see. My daughter is in the same circumstances but she has seen her overdraft jump from £300 to £850 with charges and interest and although she has told them almost on amonthly basis about her circumstances they call to get a payment arrangement set up. When she explains she cannot they say they cannot stop any interest being added and call sometimes several times a day if we dont pick up. Not holding my breathe that anything will come of this though.

k1mmie, when you go to the fos the final response should be arguing against their reasoning.
This is a hijack now but have you got priority debt arrears(mortgage/rent, council tax, utilities)?
Are any of the arrears being paid off?

I would say that you need to give the FOS details of all correspondence, plus an Income and Expenditure form plus any arrears notices

Originally Posted by k1mmie

I told them all about the arrears, ccouncil tax arrears, utility arrears in my claim. None of the arrears are currently being paid off, as the income is nowhere near meeting our ususal payments let alone arrears. So they know the situation!

You told them or you supplied them with proof of the arrears?
Do you still use the account you have with them?