Firstly, I would look to a company that helps you for free. Noone (certainly not a friend) should make money out of anyone in financial difficulty. Paying £1 a month to each and £10 to your friend is crazy. CCCS and National Debtline will help you for free - all the money goes to your creditors. It sounds like bankruptcy may be an option for you. There is a lot to consider and if you speak to one of the aforementioned companies, they will give you sound advice on what option is best for you. Good luck!

Hi Pete Hubby has another account with Lloyds already. He is attempting to pay off the debt as per CCCS advice. I am wondering if he should ask CCCS to stop paying HSBC altogether until they put it in the hands of debt collection. However, he is concerned it will be deemed that he isn't trying if he doesn't continue the payments. It's a tough one but the debt is just going up and up. Last month they charged him £75 for charges and £33 interest and CCCS only put £33 into that account! You can see the problem... Just don't know what to do.

Thanks Paul. I resigned due to all the bad behaviour in the office. As a top performer, it came as quite a shock to them all It's a horrible thing to go through and of course people back off when they are confronted by these things, especially those who are still working there (which you can understand). I guess I have to leave it in the hands of the former HR department for now and see what happens. I am so surprised this kind of behaviour is still happening with all the laws to protect us now.

Hi folks I seem to have lost the link to the very useful interest calculator that was on this site. It was the one that calculated interest owed from the original charge date to today. Could someone post the link to me please? Thank you

Thanks Castlebest. We can't go through the reclaiming charges route again at this point (did it already successfully earlier this year) as HSBC now state until the investigation that has commenced into this has been resolved, all pending claims are being put on hold. Is anyone actually having their claim paid still by DG at this point? HSBC stated "In regards to your comments concerning reclaiming the fees that have been already applied to your account. Please be advised that on 27th July 2007 an investigation was commenced by the Office of Fair Trading into charges imposed by major financial institutions. This investigation is likely to last at least 12 months and during the investigation we will not consider a request to refund historically applied charges, until the outcome has been confirmed. As a result we will not be dealing with or resolving customer complaints on overdraft charges while the test case is running. Instead customer's claims or complaints will be logged on a new register pending the outcome of the case." Also, they have not yet passed the accounts to any debt collection agency, hence hubby is still having charges and interest applied. They are certainly not 'responsible lenders' as they state they are when they are increasing someones debt to a ridiculous level. Any further thoughts?

Hi everyone Another HSBC woe I'm afraid. Hubby can't get the interest/charges stopped on his accounts so that he can pay off the debt via Consumer Credit Counselling Service (CCCS) under the Debt Management Plan (DMP) they have running for him which has been so since April 2007. Payments regularly go in to HSBC but they just say they are not enough but continue to send documents recommending CCCS to speak to (highlighted that and sent it back to them) and continually charging for unpaid standing orders between two accounts knowing full well that they won't be covered so every month in his current account £33 is paid in by CCCS and they charge £33+ interest and 2 x £25 returned s/o fees! What hope does he have? We tried to cancel those S/O immediately online and by writing to them as they are 'internal' ones but we can't stop them and HSBC refuse to. It's entrapment surely when you know someone can't pay but you keep charging anyway. On 4th October after hundreds of letters and getting nowhere, he received a letter stating that if the accounts were passed to debt collection, interest and charges would be frozen and he could pay off the debt. They also stated "Unfortunately, your monthly repayment offer would not be sufficient to cover the amount of debit interest that would be applied to your account. Therefore your debt would be ever increasing, which the bank does not consider to be responsible lending.” Sounds sensible so why, over 2 months later, are they still charging interest and adding charges and have done nothing further other than write to him again on 15th October 2007 saying "We are unable to freeze interest and commission charges or prevent further action being taken." Please, please TAKE FURTHER ACTION and stop this. Has anyone else gone through this? The debt has increased to a ridiculous amount with their interest and charges as he has a current account/flexaccount/loan account and they keep trying to make these s/o payments between them despite different amounts being paid in by CCCS for each account, in accordance with the DMP which is in place. Any advice would be great. Thank you everyone.

Hi everyone I have recently resigned from my former employers due to racist remarks (see title - my grandfather was Austrian, died in 1945 in WWII and was in the German Army, not something you had a choice in back then) and sexual discrimination by my branch manager from the moment I told her I was pregnant (sadly lost the baby). However, I have raised a grievance as I am in sales and really couldn't bear to stay there until the end of January 08 to get my commission. Part of my grievance is also use of the "C" word repeatedly by one other person in the office as well as my branch manager would you believe (this is supposedly a 'professional' organisation) and lewd drawings on whiteboards by this same former colleague (pictures of mens heads entering vaginas, derrogatory naked temp images, etc). My solicitor believes I have a really strong case and if they don't sort out some kind of constructive dismissal deal, I could take them to tribunal (an ET1 form I believe does the trick) but I wondered if anyone else had come across this kind of thing and how they had gotten on. To be honest, in all my years of working, I have never (I'm pleased to say) up until this point worked with such a foul bunch of people who are so rude and disgusting and yet call themselves professionals!! Thanks everyone

Also it's worth us all bearing in mind that if we are making payments under a legitimate agreement and those payments are worked out correctly to be 'affordable' to the debtor, surely no court in this land would try and get more money or enforce some ridiculous request for large lump sums? My (very limited admittedly) understanding is that if you are making payments, and making them regularly with no missing payments, you are doing your best to clear the debt and that will be looked upon favourably. Any other thoughts on that?

Thanks everyone. Letter N being done right this minute! In fact when I got the notification from MBNA that the debt had been sold to Link, they themselves quoted a meaningless account number. When I queried this with Link they just said that MBNA send letters out once they sell a debt with some random number on it. How the hell can that happen? What, my debt isn't stressful enough without them flippantly sending a random number on the letter just to upset me even more? Great. MBNA themselves have been the worst of my creditors to date but finally they agreed to the CCCS offer. Trust them to send to one of the worst DCA's going. Stands to reason doesn't it. I will keep everyone posted on the outcome of the letter sending. So appreciate your support. You know you're never alone going through this stuff but it feels that way at times.

Sorry to sound stupid but was SFA? Thanks for the link to the letters, I've seen those (and used them well!) on the National Debtline site

Hi everyone I have just found my debt has been sold to Link Financial. The person on the end of the phone when I politely called them, was not exactly rude but very disinterested shall we say (I guess spotty oik out of school, earning £10k per year collecting debt the size of which he could only dream about, ha, ha!). They have demanded full repayment of my debt of £13k. A lot of money admittedly but I have a Debt Management Plan (DMP) via Consumer Credit Counselling Service (CCCS) who are a charity that I would recommend to anyone on this site suffering debt problems (it's free - hell, why pay for debt advice and management!) who are recommended by most creditors. My debt arose out of redundancy from a much higher paid role and my eternal optimism that something better would come along - it didn't Anyway, I have been on the DMP for 1.5 years now and every single creditor has accepted the payments, stopped interest and charges (it wasn't an easy battle to win but you can't get blood out of a stone and they tend to accept that in the end) and I've been paying regularly with my reviews via CCCS. My question - yes I finally got there - is (1) can this new Debt Collection Agent seek interest/charges on the account - I believe the answer is no and (2) do I actually have a legal liability to pay them anything when the agreement I signed was with MBNA? I happen to know for a fact (one of my best friends' close friends RUNS a debt collection agency and described it as 'mostly easy money' as they pay between 5% - 75% to buy the debt and everything over they collect is pure profit...nice) that it's nothing like the cost of the debt to purchase it and can I demand from them to know how much they PAID MBNA for the debt? To be fair, MBNA sold ALL my personal details to them!! I would be very interested in responses. I have looked at the OFT information and various other sites so am interested in fellow debtors experiences. Kind regards to everyone K

Hi there No question is silly DG are the solicitors that HSBC use. I don't have their address to hand but they are located in Birmingham and you can look them up on the Internet or they are likely to reply to your claim letter anyway. Good luck to you. Kind regards

Hi everyone Just thought this might be of interest. Hubby won his Claim for charges (all info in the 'winning' thread) and the money was refunded to his HSBC account. The amount was paid in under the description of "Refund of Charges". Interesting considering HSBC have been trying to say the money has been taken as an 'arrangement fee' recently. You never know how this may be useful for ongoing claims. If they deny the amounts are 'charges', why would they refund them under this title?! Good luck to anyone still waiting for their payout. Don't give up!

Can someone help me get this to a moderator to go to the Successful Claims Thread? I can't seem to PM anyone - their inboxes are full

Just to give a final update to everyone - Hubby had a letter back from DG saying they would only pay into the account by 12th June. He wrote back (faxed it again too) and said that he wanted a cheque as it was his choice how this was settled, we posted that on Tuesday, 29th May. He heard from DG again today (2nd June) saying money had been paid into his account but should he wish to pursue the settlement via cheque through the Court, he could do so but should not touch any money that has been paid in until the Court date (14th June). You can imagine his reaction to that He went straight down to HSBC and drew his money all out He has written to the Court to say the matter is settled for this claim. What a result and a happy ending. I would say to anyone going for this - keep on battling and do not give up!! You will get there. Good luck to **everyone** getting their money back. We all deserve it