This topic was closed on 10 March 2019. If you have a problem which is similar to the issues raised in this topic, then please start a new thread and you will get help and support there. If you would like to post up some information which is relevant to this particular topic then please flag the issue up to the site team and the thread will be reopened. - Consumer Action Group

This topic was closed on 10 March 2019. If you have a problem which is similar to the issues raised in this topic, then please start a new thread and you will get help and support there. If you would like to post up some information which is relevant to this particular topic then please flag the issue up to the site team and the thread will be reopened. - Consumer Action Group

This topic was closed on 10 March 2019. If you have a problem which is similar to the issues raised in this topic, then please start a new thread and you will get help and support there. If you would like to post up some information which is relevant to this particular topic then please flag the issue up to the site team and the thread will be reopened. - Consumer Action Group

I'm missing one or two statements; maybe £60 worth of charges overlooked. Not worried about it, just wondered how useful it would be to get them back. What I am curious about is how they record defaults. Every time a payment has been missed or late, they've recorded a default apparently, which is 42 of them - but I have never been through "recovery" with them, have just missed a lot of payments due to the slowness of the bank/crediting the account quite often. I'm going to wipe out the balance on the basis that I won't be paying them interest on it anymore, but set the direct debit to be "whole account balance" and use the card for cheap items, fiver a month or something, to keep it active. Makes it a little trickier for them to just close the account and cause delays in processing refunds. Thanks for the response! So I should send prelim letter with spreadsheet with charges and contractual interest at 29.51% and a request for defaults to be removed from my credit file, then LBA after 14 days, then file for the total. I am assuming I do not request the court 8% interest if I am asking for Contractual Interest, even though I have seen a few people doing just that?

Starting another process, having dealt with the bank and got my finances stable it seems that these cheery fellows are responsible for a lot of my hassle now - a lot of missed payments/overlimit (had a habit of paying chunks off) - and now I set up a direct debit I notice the minimum payment really makes no difference at all. Oddly enough, my balance is actually lower than the number of charges they've applied to my account prior to the £12 "limit" suggested by the OFT. I have worked out that they owe me £1246; my APR is 29.51% according to the customer rep, so I dropped this into Vampiress' spreadsheet and have £3,100 and a bit to claim theoretically. The bank procedure was straightforward. Since I have all my statements, do I need to: Do the SAR request? Get more statements from them? Or can I go ahead with an LBA, 14 days to respond, then court filing? My intent is to pay the card off now, then recover this money. That way I'm not paying interest whilst reclaiming the money from them. And yes, I'll be happy to get the charges back, but I want the interest - clearly I've paid for the purchases AND their legitimate interest, and I am now left with pure charges and paying interest on them. Is it better to leave the balance on the account? TBH, I can see no way in which it would be beneficial. As I understand it the court claim is much as before; use the POC on this site and clearly state the rate of interest - I'll double check the sheet accordingly but I believe it is Contractual interest that I have used.

Use Halifax court in England and bundle the next four together. Worked fine for me.

And again, I really appreciate all the feedback and help I've had with my posts. You'll no doubt be delighted to hear that taking HBOS to court in Halifax, when resident in Scotland, for accounts started with Bank Of Scotland, worked perfectly - I was refunded £3,270+£699.pennies+£120 - just over £4,000. They did indeed play silly buggers with me - I had an account with £5,000 or so owing on it being handled by Blair Oliver & Scott; fortunately, I called Blair Oliver & Scott, and they set up an early repayment settlement figure, which was £3,640 or so. The person I spoke to suggested I may get the extra back since HBOS gave me no choice about the matter; either way, I don't owe them ANY money now - and BO&S should restore my credit file. No need to faff around with multiple claims in Scotland.

The quote about £5,000 relates to English, not Scottish law. FWIW, I'm in Scotland, dealing with HBOS, and I'm using the English court in Halifax. All seems to be going as normal at the moment (Acknowledged with intention to defend 10th July).

Indeed. Congratulations on speaking up, reviving a dead thread, and thereby proving the rule

To get the car there legally if the MOT has expired, book it in with the dealer for an MOT. I don't know about Smart warranty, but 52 reg is 3.5/4 years old nearly, isn't it? Assuming a normal three year warranty, you might get it all done, assuming full history. Mercedes offer a 30 year 'lifetime' warranty, but the contributions scale with the age of the car. Worst situation is you have to buy a spring; they're not usually that expensive. I'd expect a free parts/you pay labour as the most likely outcome assuming prior cases and full history. If they can definitely pin it down to a manufacturing defect (some dealers might be that helpful), then ask for a deal to get both springs replaced.

Garry R D (Ronald Daniel) Kettle is real; he's relatively high up in Halifax PLC, and was a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Bankers as of 2002, information which appears to be missing. He is apparently based in Trinity House, but they're pretty good at fielding attempts to contact him.

Right, thanks for input everyone. HBoS don't make it easy to figure out what the Leeds /real/ address is - only post boxes - with two major sites there, I've decided to go for the silly move if you have any thoughts of "old boy's networks" and the courts Yep. Leeds court said "No problem", but for head office, I have to use Halifax County Court. They also said "No problem", so: Claim for £3,270 + interest (just under £4000) plus costs (£120) sent to Halifax County Court, registered post. If it works, then I have used the English small claims procedure, saved a lot of time, and will have more than I would have settled for had they been willing to negotiate sensibly. The only problem I can see is that this is on their doorstep - I wonder if that might make them more likely to defend? Worst case I lose my £120, or additional costs too?

Lightweight additional information; purely to help the OP feel better (ish): Three are astoundingly incompetent. If you're lucky enough to get through to Glasgow instead of India, you might get somewhere, but I took out a contract with them just after they launched, still have the NEC E808 somehwere. When BoS changed to Halifax, they cancelled all my Direct Debits. Three didn't reinstate it, nor did they cancel my contract; just carried on sporadically sending bills and the like. Eventually, the bills stopped, owing £600. Attempts to sort it out got boring, so I ignored it, but phoned them a couple of months back and cleared it off (paid it). Don't know about the default, but I definitely didn't get a default notice from them. With any luck, Three will fold; they have proven to be both incompetent and unsatisfactory in terms of package provided (no data for years! Have they even got data now?!).

If there is a loss of coolant and the garage can't find out why, I take it to a different garage. Coolant shouldn't be lost, and when a car starts losing coolant, I change the head gasket - regardless of car type - before it overheats and does further damage. There's no such thing as "without warning" on a headgasket; a touch more white smoke from the exhaust is enough for me to check it. Whilst it wouldn't be unkown for me to suggest that most of western civilisation is comprised of idiots; I'm not saying that the Freelander is free of issues - I am saying that you are ignoring the fact that SOME owners are going to be idiots, some garages are going to be crooked or incompetent, and FWIW, the Freelander (like most urban SUVs - Discoveries, X5s and the like) attracts a particularly solipsistic, mechanically unaware and misinformed demographic. Nothing else in his post had further information, TBH - it wasn't selective quoting, it was a convenient summary. 6 or 7 posts later, someone posted the correct advice. No quote marks = it's me saying that. Yes, I have as it happens. Over something which personally I'd consider 'experience', but figured was worth a shot - my gf's Scorpio, bought at £2K below retail (but, at the price advertised at the dealer), one owner, FSH, 110K miles. For three months the dealer happily replaced items but ignored consistent complaints and requests for steering wander/tracking issues to be investigated, even when it was made clear that the work would be paid for (they spend over £800 in parts replacing items free, like the plastic inlet manifold which is prone to cracking at the thermostat housing. Better start a class action for that, eh?) - eventually claiming to have checked it and found nothing wrong, two weeks later the very same garage failed it on excessive play in the balljoints. They had even declared a fault with suspension that was supposed to have been sorted before collection of the vehicle; they were somewhat short of legs to stand on. Technically I could have got them on another car I bought as a 'trade sale'; a 1990 Toyota Sera with 60K miles on it (that's calculated from the KM reading) that one week after I'd got it... blew the head gasket, costing (£500 quote; £1,800 with my decision to have the engine fully rebuilt). As an 11 year old, imported, used car with no history, sold as an (unlawful) 'trade sale', I thought that it might be a little churlish to demand they rectified it You probably think differently, and I bet the bulk of LR Freelander owners would too Sorry, that doesn't make sense. Do you mean flog him a Freelander for cash? No excrement! Traders don't buy for the money most Freelander owners think their vehicles are worth; as I've said before, Glass' guide is nonsense. Most traders simply aren't buying cars from private indivuduals unless they're insanely cheap; the dealers you see with 5-8 year old (and older) cars in their stock are underwriting older tradeins from main dealers primarily. For a real benchmark, take a Freelander to auction and see how the traders bite. None of the trade auctions seem to publish results online, unfortunately. I'm pretty much of the opinion that the multiple failure owners; at least the ones in rapid succession, are suffering at the hands of incompetent mechanics rather than any inherent fault in the K-series. Reusing the stretch bolts is a common problem, for a start. Calm down, dear First, nowhere did it state that the recon was fitted by LR; in fact the poster in question claims to have had the recon engine fitted AFTER the cost of a NEW engine from LR was quoted (about £4,000). As for the owner having £2,000; that is neither here nor there. Scrapping the car for a blown head gasket is the sort of environmental and financial idiocy I'd expect, but are you seriously suggesting to me that scrapping a car 'worth' £4,500 because it needs potentially £4,000 work, but equaly feasibly £800 of second-hand K-series, £500 for a pre-emptive headgasket replacement with new bolts, and a few hours fitting? Even if they don't have the money for the work, they could probably come to an arrangement with a dealer, or get £1,000 for their car for spares or repair. I wasn't hinting anything - I simply stated what information was presented FYI, this engine isn't a K-series, or even remotely related to it The truth is out there. Sadly, it does appear to be sadly obscured here You're telling me that you personally know of over 100,000 failed headgaskets on Freelanders (assuming around 350,000 have been produced based on available figures). As that stage, the car surely wouldn't be running correctly. Aside, most temp sensors I've used read high even if there is no coolant, taking a reading from the surrounding metal or air within the system. Also, the A/C or heater will exhibit problems. You are aware of Google and the power of complaints, right? Specifically, any forum dealing with complaints about a product will be seen to have high traffic; the one with the most complaints will get the most traffic. Even if that owner has a holed radiator, they will then read all this, and think "Ohnoes! My headgasket is going!". And then ignore the real issue, and overheat the car (or get ripped off for a new headgasket, or in a good outcome, go to the dealer and have the actual fault identified and a new radiator fitted). Publish it here. You want to help consumers, then stop using mystery and scare tactics. Frankly, I've noticed a lot of K-series bashing going on from people who have no connection; like slagging off iPods, it seems to be trendy with people who think they know a bit. I appreciate that your motivation is much stronger than that, but really, I'm wondering if this is all a co-incidence, or the fact that the Chinese now own the rights to the engine is resulting in a massive attempt to discredit a lightweight, well designed powerplant with high specific output and IN THE MAJORITY OF CASES, no problems. I don't own a Freelander; you're welcome to post my comments there verbatim if you wish. As far as this non-specific forum goes; I am more than happy to help with anyone's issues with a car - K-series or otherwise - and will not indulge in targeted campaigns of biased or misleading information. Sorry. Most cars have issues, and when someone posts about a K-series issue, I personally will offer advice based on their problem, directly, and I'll ask them about THEIR issue, not tell them what THEIR issue might be (I'm still astounded that you followed up a thrown-rod post with a bunch of stuff about headgaskets).

Argh. There's nothing so infuriating as a forum of 'experts'. Here's a good example: "I purchased a Year 2000 V Reg 1.8 Xei 5 door Freelander 8 weeks ago with 34700 miles on the clock from a approved RAC dealer with a so called 5 star Rac waranty. I have driven the car a total of 800 miles and on Wednesday I was on the motorway, doing 70 mph. I heard some knocking, so pulled over (no warning lights or temperature increases noted) and there was oil all down the side of the car - head gasket failure." The response, from DavidBristol, is "Get rid of it". 8 weeks. That's two months. That's pure and simple Trading Standards territory. Return car to dealer as unfit for purpose. It doesn't matter what LR are doing or anyone else (it's a six-year old car that it looks like they paid well over the odds for - impressive, since traders aren't touching Freelanders). And the number of people who have managed to ignore things like temperature gauges and drive until the car's engine has boiled every liquid available to it is astounding. Elsewhere, the same idiocy. A man taking his reconditioned engine back to LandRover and expecting them to do something about it. Another saying they're going to have to scrap the car and lose £4,500 (in which case, surely it would make sense to replace the engine with a recon unit for £2,000 and lose £2,000, instead). Irwin Mitchell's dropped group action (wonder why they dropped it...).