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I need a bit of advice as to what to do about my latest problems with A&L.
I went through the whole process of claiming back 6 years of charges from them in July last year. They settled out of court a couple of weeks after receiving my claim. However, I was going through a few financial difficulties at the time and used the money I received back from them to pay off some other debts. Unfortunately, this left me nothing left to pay off my overdraft with them. I had already set up and was using another account with Barclays so I just stopped using them altogether.
They began sending me letters asking for me to pay off the overdraft so that they could close my account. At the same time they where adding over limit charges to my account with interest but always removing them the following month. As a result, the amount I owed them never got any bigger or smaller.
Anyway, last week I had enough money to pay off the debt. I rang them up and payed it off and was told they would now close the account. However, yesterday I received a letter stating that they are unable to close the account due to two overlimit charges and interest, totalling £51.83, due out of my account today. I rang them and asked them not to charge me as I had paid the original debt etc. and they refused and said I would have to write to them to complain.
Now, I really don't know what my next course of action should be as technically they haven't taken any money from me as there is no money in the account to take so I can't just send them the usual letter asking for my money back and I can't afford to put money in the account to pay the charges either. Can somebody suggest a sensible course of action?
Well it seems to me that they have applied unlawful charges to your account. If you have tried to ask nicely for them to not apply the charge, then the next step is to send a prelim letter, then an lba and if that doesn't get it sorted start a claim.
Good luck - I'm sure the prelim letter will get the response you want
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If they have been automaticly putting the charges back in after its been taken out i would leave it and see what happens. If they do take the money and do not correct it then send the lba. You might have got an advisor that was either having a bad day or did not like the fact you challenged the A&L and received your unlawful charges back.
Try not to worry about it, if they don't close the account its their problem. You have paid your amount back and have already proved to them you do not agree with the charges so don't let them bully you
Lily
Alliance & Leicester;
LBA 22nd July 2006
Reply 31st July
MCOL 6/8/06
PAID IN FULL 25th August 2006..... DONATION HAPPILY GIVEN.......
Hi There, Thanks for your replies. I'm just not sure that the usual prelim letter and the lba are appropriate in this case as they have not actually physically taken any money from me but they are saying that I owe them money that I don't because its made up of their unlawful charges. So I really don't see how I can threaten to take them to court over it in the usual way. I'm really confused over how I should tackle this and obviously the last thing I need is for them to default me. I have tried to write a letter to them but I am really rubbish at this kind of thing and would never have been able to do it in the first place without the wonderful template letters from this site.
When you phoned up to pay them & close account - did they give you a balance BEFORE you tried to pay? If you had been told by either by a real person or an automated thingy what your balance was - and it was what you thought it was - so you went to pay it and THEN they said you had other charges, then that's their tough luck. Sorry it's a bit early, not sure if I am explainng myself - do you get what I'm saying?
I just wrote them a letter saying that as I had discovered the charges to be unlawful, I was refusing to give them permission to deduct them from my account, they closed the account as expected (well they said they would but it's still open) but they did refund all charges to the account which cleared the balance.
The letter is on the site somewhere but I can't find it!! give me a shout if you're stuck and I'll have another look.
That letter sounds like its exactly what I need!! I've been looking around for it and I can't find it either. Whereabouts was it??? Thanks very much for you help, Lesley
Here I go again!!
of charges from them in July last year. They settled out of court a couple of weeks after receiving my claim. However, I was going through a few financial difficulties at the time and used the money I received back from them to pay off some other debts. Unfortunately, this left me nothing left to pay off my overdraft
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Lily 
Re: Here I go again!!
