Thread: Bank Charges and State Benefit

My blood boils. More times than I care to count, my wife's part-time wages for an entire week have beem confiscated by the Natwest.

More times than I care to remember, they have confiscated A MONTH'S WORTH OF MY DISABILITY LIVING ALLOWANCE - and more.

That's why I'm here, and that's why I'm not taking this any more. They (the banks) not only plunge us into spiralling debt, but they have the audacity to blame us for it.

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more (to quote Peter Finch from the movie). My wish to associate banks with public debt, and force them to behave more like their European counterparts - cost only.

Our politicans are singularly useless. Even the CAB is summarily ignored by the banks. Unfortunately, we're British. As some wag once put it, "What do we want? Moderate Change! When do we want it? As soon as reasonably possible!"

Ain't good enough. Not even the DWP can get State Benefits ring-fenced, and our beloved Labour Party forced Direct Payments upon us....

Rats.

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Hi - take a bit of time to read up first to make sure that you have the facts before going too far ahead. Read the FAQs and template letters then have a good read around here to see how others are getting on. Keep any progress on your own claim or questions that arise in a new thread in the forum for your bank to make it easier for others to follow and advise you. There's a set of links in my sig below that will help you find where all this useful information is. Well done for getting started!

Here lies a tentative letter. Comments are welcomed.

VEHEMENT COMPLAINT

We have been asked to make proposals for remedying the deficits on our loan, mortgage and overdraft. We have given concrete proposals which have been wilfully ignored. We have asked for a face-to-face meeting, and this has also been ignored. We have a complaint with the Financial Services Ombudsman (their reference, 6449290) and Mr Alex Woodcraft of the OFT. We have sent Press Releases to the radio, newspapers, television news, and approximately two-hundred MPs, MEPs, Welsh AMs, various charitable institutions and many other interested parties besides, including The Samaritans, the Citizens Advice Bureau, various Human Rights organizations, the DWP, Treasury and the European Bank and EU Parliament.. We are furious at the inhuman approach you have adopted. We have begun a National Campaign to have personal debt and hardship firmly associated with the Banks in the minds of the public. Your treatment of us, and them, has been truly despicable.

• We are refusing to accept calls that are, or may be, recorded. This is our home and we make the rules – and we will not grant permission for phone-tapping. It is intimidating and a clear breach our Civil Liberties. Your policies are one-sided and out-of-date.

• We are refusing to give so-called “security information” to unverified callers, since this is a clear opportunity for Identity Thieves. All we get is “The Caller Withheld Their Number” when we check who our last caller was.

• Your representatives insist on calling my wife, even though she always refers them to me. They do not call back when they promise. They use expressions such as, “If you would just let me finish…” which demonstrates they are under-trained with customer relationships and only serves to intimidate and highlight their perceived superiority over us. We are now threatened with unspecified “further action” by a particularly obnoxious and anonymous female member of your staff from your Telford Credit Management Services department.

• The management of our account was moved to your Credit Management Services without written notice, which you are obliged to do, according to the Manager of your Llangollen branch.

• We have had our debit cards cancelled, again without notice, and, typically, on a Friday when we have no opportunity to access our funds to live on over the weekend or make contact with our local branch.

• We have had our overdraft facility removed, again without notice, and the Natwest has had the sheer gall to charge £30 for “exceeding our limit of £0” in one fell swoop. We have been threatened with foreclosure.

• You have been confiscating our State Benefits, and those of thousands of others – the poorest and neediest of Society.

• Our debts to the NatWest are entirely compounded by your unlawful Punitive Charges, plunging us ever-deeper into debt and making it impossible to recover from them.

The proposal we gave cannot be more simple: return the charges you have made, for as far back as you have records (which goes beyond the legal requirements, as I know, having worked as a freelance for NatWest and Citibank in the past – you keep them in deep archive) and deduct from this what we owe. The remainder goes to us. The balance of our commitments will be paid from a separate account by Standing Order only, from a separate bank, which you will never have access to – our State Benefits have already been switched there, so that the NatWest can never again confiscate them. We have tried before to get our charges refunded, having paid more that £730 in charges over just a twelve-month period, and been refunding a miserly £250 “discretionary” refund, together with a written refusal to return more – despite written and verbal requests from us, our MP, our Welsh AM, and the support of Sir Malcolm Rifkind. In fact, such charges are a penalty and completely out of proportion to the true cost to the bank. It is therefore unlawful because it amounts to being both an unfair and unenforceable contract term under both regulation 5 and paragraph 1(e) schedule 2 Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999, as well as an extortionate credit bargain under Section 137 Consumer Credit Act 1974.

We hereby give notice that if a full refund for as long as we had held accounts with the NatWest, and including commensurate compound interest, is not given within fourteen days of receipt of this letter, we reserve the right to take NatWest to The county court for recovery of the money, and pursue the matter further with The Financial Services Ombudsman and The Office of Fair Trading.

We will not take this action lightly, but we will pursue it with vigour – not only on our own behalves but those of many thousands of other sufferers. The banks have brought hardship to many thousands, including case-studies of suicides. and we will give them a voice. We will prove that The Banks’ so-called Social Responsibility Policies are no more than window-dressing and lip-service, and positively equate the banks, NatWest in our case in particular, with Personal Debt, as opposed to excessive and massive profits, in the minds of the UK public.

As Margaret Thatcher once declared, this is the unacceptable face of Capitalism.

Any defamatory or adverse credit reports by The NatWest must also be repaired at the Bank’s own cost, including those of creditors who have needlessly suffered as either a direct or indirect result.

Owing to my disability, we have been on State Benefits for a considerable period, and The NatWest has wilfully abused our right of appropriation.

WOW!!!! That's some letter.

Thank you! I would appreciate independant scrutiny before I go off half-cocked, so thanks to anyone replying.

Note To Moderators: Is there a more appropriate forum to move this topic to, please? Many thanks.

I realise this is a highly active forum, but it's taken me 15 minutes to find my own thread! There's no apparent facility to view your own posts on User CP - has it been turned off? I really need to keep this thread active, to accrure replies before I send my letter off.

Many thanks - and please, please offer your comments. I need this to be right before I post it.

Click on your name, then 'View all posts by xxx'