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Just thought I would let everyone know I phoned the local branch of RBOS today asking for 6 years of statements for my two accounts. They are organising them and sending them out and charging me £20 which is £10 for each account which I was told is the maximum they are allowed to charge. I was also told it should take about a week.
Dont know if this one has been answered appologies if it has. As well as my personal accounts which I am going to apply for charges back, I have a business account, could they close this? it is a limited company account if this makes any difference.
I think my claim to the bank will be about the 4k mark. I may well split this down into £750 bits if it has to go to court but do i still send the letter for full amount or do i send consecutive letters for £750?
While all my accounts are held in Scotland I was wondering about the possibility of raising an action against RBOS English Head Office to potentially take advantage of the higher limits on the small claims court i.e. £5000 as opposed to £750. Can anyone out there advise if this is possible or practical?
What would the pitfalls be? Anyone got any thoughts on this?
Just for your information. I was today charged £228 for 3 bounced standing orders (total of standing orders was £40) and 2 bounced direct debits one was over £150 and the other was £1.99. Now the funny bit!
I had the money in my account to cover them.
How is this possible i hear you cry...
well i will tell you. I transferred the money on Sat from another RBOS account. This is apparantly not good enough. I should have transferred the money on the Friday (last working day) prior to the day the DD's etc were due to come off!!
Now call me an old cynic but is it just possible that the bank has put this system in place to grab even more money from us punters? Think about it, they told me that if you have a direct debit coming off on the 2nd of the month then the cleared funds have to be in the account on the previous working day. They must be making a fortune relying on people not complaining about this. Its bad enough getting charged at all but when you have money in your account, thats just taking the you know what!
Now I complained (bitterly) and they have refunded my charges (on this occasion blah blah) but i really am a naughty boy and will need to be more careful in future!!
At first they tried to quote the banks terms and conditions till i pointed out that they were supposed to give me 14 days notice about any charges applied to my account, then they quietened down.
Rant over.
Oh how happy they will be when i send them my letter demanding my money back for all the other charges they have taken over the last 6 years!!
Hi there, Just thought I would give you a progress report. Got my statements today for 2 of my RBOS accounts and the total so far is £7534.25 and I still have another year to add up. I have also requested details/statements for three other accounts that we have held with them over the years.
I knew we were due a fair bit but I had no idea it would amount to this. The deeper in trouble we got the more they hammered us!!
I will keep you all posted I am gonna get my money back.
Scary innit we had no idea. We bought a house which was ok till my contract got terminated early and we couldnt meet the £1200 per month payment RBOS allowed us to slip further and further into the mire and were charging us upto £400 per month in unpaid item charges etc etc. We managed to sell and clear things a bit, also took a £38k loan with RBOS just to stay afloat.
Things are much better now but I want all my money back that they are due me!!
When they see a customer slipping like we did they should be there to help not to add to the misery. Although I can smile about it now we went through months of hell!!
I am seriously considering seeing my solicitor and going for the whole lot in one. I cant help but thinking that banks will not want this to go to court regardless of the amount because they must know they are on a hiding to nothing!!! Also unless someone takes them on then we will never get a case in court.
I will be speaking to courts in both Scotland and England on Monday and will try and get into the solicitors next week too.
What are peoples feelings on the OFT statement made this week. Will this do anything to help our case?
On another point, if when going through my statements I had included a charge that had, later in the statements, been refunded or if I had included overdraft interest which was, in part, for authorised borrowing, would this be enough to have the case rule against me?
Personally, yes, I think the OFT announcement WILL help our/your case.
No judge is going to rule against the OFT. The OFT even said that even if a charge is higher than the £12, this does not neccissarily mean that it's legal or fair.
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So you reccon I should just go for the whole lot then? I need some encouragement here!! lol
Woolfie
I may also be considering action against this web site for loss of earnings as i was late for work yesterday cause i was reading the posts. I think i may be addicted!! lmao only kidding guys
You could go to a lawyer, but he will charge you (and will probably need at least £1k up front). If possible it's definitly worthwhile keeping it below £5k so that it stays in Small Claims. This is important protection in case they defend it and win, because it means they can't recover their costs from you. Remember, if your case is proceduraly flawed, they can get it thrown out without having the actual issue addressed, which would be a real bummer, because you'd then get hit with their costs (probably several thousand). If it's in Small Claims, there is simply no upside to them for defending it.
Bear in mind that you can treat every single charge as a seperate issue, so it is perfectly acceptable for you to sue them in chunks of £5k, until you've recovered it all. They'll probably get the idea after the first lot and do a deal to settle the lot.
One other thing to remember is that you need to add interest to each charge of 8% per annum, calcualted daily. In your case I imaging it will bump up the final amount by quite a bit. you can download a spreadsheet elsewhere on this forum which will do it for you.
Overall, unless you feel you must, I would stay away from lawyers. First of all, you'll probably have to convince him that your claim is valid. Secondly, in my experience lawyers get pretty humpty if you try to tell them how to do their jobs, so he'll probably resist taking detailed instructions from you about how to fight the claim. Also, there is almost no chance that your lawyer will be as motivated as you to get your dosh back, so he'll probably spend a lot of time trying to get you to settle for half or something like that.
Robertxc v. Abbey- £3300 Settled in full Robertxc v. Clydesdale- £750 Settled in full Nationwide v. Robertxc- £2000 overdraft wiped out, Default removed by order of the sheriff Robertxc v. Style Card- Default removed by order of the sheriff Robertxc v. Abbey (1)- Data Protection Act action. £750 compensation Robertxc v. Abbey (2)- Data Protection Act action. £2000 compensation, default removed
The opinions on this post are those of Robertxc and not necessarily the opinions of the group and do not constitute sound legal advice. You are advised to seek professional legal advice.
I am in Scotland and the small claim limit is only £750. I am looking at the possibility of lodging my claim in England to take advantage of the £5000 limit there. If I break my claim down in Scotland does the total claim have to be under £750 including the 8% interest? When I win can I also claim expenses i.e. for loss of earnings?
If you are in Scotland, you won't be able to sue a Scottish bank in England (unless, possibly, the account is held at an English branch). Yes, the total value of the claim needs to be below £750, but you can treat each charge as a seperate issue, so that if you're recovering more than £750 you can one claim after another until you've recovered it all. No, you can't get your costs back in Small Claims - that's the whole point. More importantly however, neither can they!
Robertxc v. Abbey- £3300 Settled in full Robertxc v. Clydesdale- £750 Settled in full Nationwide v. Robertxc- £2000 overdraft wiped out, Default removed by order of the sheriff Robertxc v. Style Card- Default removed by order of the sheriff Robertxc v. Abbey (1)- Data Protection Act action. £750 compensation Robertxc v. Abbey (2)- Data Protection Act action. £2000 compensation, default removed
The opinions on this post are those of Robertxc and not necessarily the opinions of the group and do not constitute sound legal advice. You are advised to seek professional legal advice.
Perhaps, but don't be surprised if they turn up in court and challenge the jurisdiction. I 'm not sure what the position is here, you might ask someone like Bankfodder - he seems to know everything!
Robertxc v. Abbey- £3300 Settled in full Robertxc v. Clydesdale- £750 Settled in full Nationwide v. Robertxc- £2000 overdraft wiped out, Default removed by order of the sheriff Robertxc v. Style Card- Default removed by order of the sheriff Robertxc v. Abbey (1)- Data Protection Act action. £750 compensation Robertxc v. Abbey (2)- Data Protection Act action. £2000 compensation, default removed
The opinions on this post are those of Robertxc and not necessarily the opinions of the group and do not constitute sound legal advice. You are advised to seek professional legal advice.
Personally, yes, I think the OFT announcement WILL help our/your case.
No judge is going to rule against the OFT. The OFT even said that even if a charge is higher than the £12, this does not neccissarily mean that it's legal or fair.
I might be wrong, but didn't the OFT say that even if a charge was LOWER (not higher) than £12, etc. etc.