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Below is text for my letter sent to Barclaycard today. Also 3 claims made against Barclays for 2 accounts and my wife's account. Next will go after Natwest. Totals of all claims is £2,000. Will let you know progress.
April 6, 2006
Barclaycard
1234 Pavilion Drive
Northampton
NN4 7SG
Dear Sir or Madam,
I have just read todays OFT on your use of unfair charges for late payment, or going over-limit.
I am shocked that you have continued to levy these charges, during the period that you were being investigated by the Office of Fair Trading, even though you had reason to believe that they are unlawful as they are penalty charges and do not reflect you actual costs incurred.
I request that you refund me all of the Exceeded Limit and Late payment charges levied on my account from the period of 2nd December, 2004 to 5th April 2006.
My Barclaycard account number is: XXXXXXXX. Please also close my account with you from today as you refuse to apply this account in accordance with the law of the land.
I calculate that you have taken £216.00 from my account for these unfair illegal charges. You have also charged me interest at an Apr of 27.9% on these amounts. This amounts to £60.26.
Please repay the full amount of £276.26 by cheque mailed to my address on this letter.
In the event that I have to take you to court I will also claim interest as allowed under section 69 of the County Courts Act 1984 at the rate of 8% per year for the period mentioned and also interest at the same rate up to the date of judgment or earlier payment at a daily rate of £0.11
Only a couple of thing: Do the charges actually cover the total outstanding on your account? If not, asking them to close the account could be risky, as they'll ask you to pay the balance.
Secondly, how did you reach the daily rate of £0.11? According to the Excel sheet, I make it a daily rate of £0.06.
Keep us posted.
Apologies to people who I was in the process of helping, I may be gone some time.
Below is text of as my letter before action due to be sent out tomorrow. Let me know if you see any howlers. There is some good stuff in the OFT report especially around double recovery, Clause 3.17 & 3.18 below.
LETTER BEFORE ACTION
April 20, 2006
Paul Summerfield,
Customer Relationship Manager,
Barclaycard
1234 Pavilion Drive
Northampton
NN4 7SG
Dear Paul Summerfield,
I acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 11th April and In which you offer the sum of £120.00 to settle my claim for £276.26 on the condition that I agree to a confidentiality agreement.
I regret that I do not find this proposal acceptable. I am giving you a further 14 days to settle this dispute to my satisfaction. If I have not received what I consider a fair settlement by then I shall start legal proceedings to recover the full amount without further notice.
Below I deal with some of the points raised in your first response to my letter.
You claim that your charges have been levied fairly and that your true cost is more close to £12.00, rather than the £24.00 charge that you have been applying to my account.
Please could you provide me with evidence to back up your position that your costs approach £12.00. I would accept for each of the 9 charges evidence of your actual costs which would include but are not limited to:
computer logs, time of transaction, evidence of any manual intervention, including name of person who intervened, time taken to reach decision, their salary, calculated at a cost per minute, any general office overhead and any other information that is used to show the true and actual cost incurred by your company for each of these 9 penalty charges.
If as I suspect the charge imposition is a fully automatic decision taken by a computer with no manual intervention then your actual costs are probably very close to zero.
In this situation your penalty charges do not reflect your actual costs as in liquidated damages but are indeed penalties that are designed to punish and intimidate your customers for transgressions, have a very high level of profit built in and are therefore unlawful at Common Law, and contrary to Statute and recent Consumer regulations.
I draw your attention to the following extracts taken from clauses contained within the OFT ruling.
Clause 1.11 - “ The setting of a £12.00 threshold is a provisional measure to move credit card companies towards compliance. We are not proposing that default fees should be equivalent to the £12.00 threshold and a court will not consider that a default fee is fair just because it is below the threshold.”
Clause 3.8 - “ We have difficulty in seeing any general damages that could flow from exceeding a credit limit of a credit card agreement.”
Clause: 3.9- “ In general a party to an agreement who fails to pay an amount due is not usually liable to pay ANY damages to the creditor except such interest as may be payable.” ( this interest having been already been paid to Barclaycard out of my account.)
Clause: 3.17 - “ In considering costs arising from default, a credit card company should be careful to avoid any benefits arising from a ‘Double Recovery’..
Clause: 3.18 - “These benefits may arise out of operating a risk based pricing policy, that is offering a higher APR to a particular class of consumer based on evaluation of their credit risk.”
My card agreement was at your highest APR ( 27.9% ) so it seems that you have already built in a higher profit margin on my account to cover any possible default charges. So you are possibly in effect charging twice for the same items.
I repeat my request that you refund me all of the Exceeded Limit and Late payment charges levied on my account from the period of 2nd December, 2004 to 5th April 2006.
I calculate that you have taken £216.00 from my account for these unfair illegal charges. You have also charged me interest at an Apr of 27.9% on these amounts. This amounts to £60.26. Please repay the full amount of £276.26 by cheque mailed to my address on this letter.
In the event that I have to take you to court I will also claim interest as allowed under section 69 of the County Courts Act 1984 at the rate of 8% per year for the period mentioned and also interest at the same rate up to the date of judgment or earlier payment at a daily rate of £0.06
Faithfully yours,
Gareth Eckley
Banks declare war on the Poor
Don\'t get mad get even !
Mhh. "costs close to zero"... even though it's probably true, it makes it sound like you would want not to pay anything... I'd replace it with "minimal".
Otherwise, fine, but you might want to spellcheck for missing capitals letters and punctuation, although details, they make it look more professional.
Could you please scan me a copy of the letter they sent you at:
They carefully say in their letter that the OFT ruling states that their true cost is closer to £12.00 than to £24.00 that they currently charge.
I don't really want to rely on the OFT ruling as the unfair contract terms in consumer law seems to be more useful for us poor souls !
Will try to scan the letter for you. We have been regraded on our internet and as a result have very patchy internet connection, so everything is taking much longer right now.
Cheers, Gareth.
Banks declare war on the Poor
Don\'t get mad get even !
Recieved reply from Barclays 3 days after my lba deadline. A very weak response pleading for more time. I am filing today with moneyclaim.
Letter read:
From Karl Voller, Customer relations manager.
" I apologise for the delay in replying and thanks for your patience whilst we continue our investigations. Unfortunately we remain unable to respond fully to your concerns at present, however we will contact you again as soon as possible and certainly no later than 7th June."
Basically hoping that I will go away. Not going to happen so now thay have to pay more money to me.
Will keep you posted on outcome.
Banks declare war on the Poor
Don\'t get mad get even !
Sucess. Barclaycard have offreed me a full refund of the charges £216.00 without any conditions such as confidentiality etc.
My dillema is that I have already filed with the court, so i have incurred a fee of £30.00.
Should I accept the offer and absorb the court fee myself, continue with the court action or write back asking for the extra £30.00 ?
I am thinking of writing back and asking for the extra £30.00 to drop the case. If it does get to court then I can show that I have been very reasonable.
I have three other court filings for Barclays bank in progress with no response yet.
Banks declare war on the Poor
Don\'t get mad get even !
As you know barclaycard offered me a full refund as response to my lba. However it arrived 1 week after I had filed in court.
I have just recieved an Acknowledgement of Service showing that Barclaycard intend to defend the claim.
What makes me smile is that it is signed by Nicholas Hartigan, his position is a Trainee Solicitor ! He is going to learn fast !!
My dillema is what to do now. Ask Paul Summerfield of customer relations to increase his offer of full payment by £12.00 interest and £30.00 so that it covers my costs and then drop my claim.
or contact nick hartigan on his email to explain the same to him and get him to offer.
or should i just sit tight and wait.
I have two other claims against Barclays ( for current accounts ) at exactly the same stage but no offer to settle was ever made on them.
Banks declare war on the Poor
Don\'t get mad get even !
text of my letter sent to Paul at customer relations offering chance to settle.
[Dear Paul Summerfield,
Thank you for your letter dated 11th May offering me a full refund of MY money. The sum of £216.00 for the charges.
Unfortunately you took a too long to respond to my letter before action dated 20th April. I have already filed a claim at county court to recover the amount of the charges. My claim number is: 6QZ29224 at Northampton County Court. I have recieved my Acknowledgement of service from Nicholas Hartigan. His contact email is: nick.hartigan@barclays.co m phone 020 7116 6575.
Due to your slow response I have incurred extra costs of £30.00 to file the claim. My claim is actually for £258.43, which is the charges of £216.00 + interest @ 8% of £12.43 + court fee £30.00.
If you can increase your offer from £216.00 to £258.43 and send me a cheque for the same then I will consider this matter settled and instruct the court to drop the claim.
This would save you the expense of defending the claim and you can avoid having to explain to a judge how you calculate this charges and why you fell that you can levy penalty charges that are punitive and highly profitable in nature. It being well established that only liquidated charges are allowable under British Common Law.
I have now asked you twice to close my account. I do not want to give you the opportunity to levy more of these charges. So please close this account immediately and inform me of this in writing.
Faithfully yours,]
Banks declare war on the Poor
Don\'t get mad get even !
1st letter sent to barclaycard
for 2 accounts and my wife's account. Next will go after Natwest
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Re: 1st letter sent to barclaycard
Re: 1st letter sent to barclaycard
Re: 1st letter sent to barclaycard
