Thank god someone else is going throught the same as me!

I am helping my (grown up) daughter claim about £1800 from Nat West for unfair fees etc. I am happy that we are claiming for the right things.

Have done the Moneyclaim forms on line and with only a day to spare received very very official looking stuff from Natwest's solicitors. Cobbets LLP in Manchester.

They say that "the particulars of claim set out no facts indicating what the claim is about , are incoherent and do nto disclose any legally recognisable claim aganst the Defendant". They ask us to remedy the above, which with the help of this site I will be doing this week. As you will know, there's very little room to lay out your claim in the online court forms, so I suppose we didnt do a very good job.

I am sooooo relieved to see that we probably wont have to pay their costs if we dont win.

Does anybody have experience on how things might go from here?

POST MOVED. YOU WERE POSTING ON SOMEONE ELSE'S THREAD, WHICH IS NOT RIGHT. BY ALL MEANS, ANSWER OTHER PEOPLE ON THEIR THREADS, BUT POST UPDATES AND QUERIES ON YOUR OWN. THANK YOU.

Hi Clarkson 321

Welcome to the NW Forum.

You seem to have done q well on your own, did you use the site to find out about moneyclaim or did you just know how to do this?

You are quite far ahead and the next stage is the tricksy bit, but above else do not panic! You will win and it won't go all the way to court.

Spend some time on this forum reading threads of people at a similiar stage or already won. A good one is MountainofDebt and rbrears. They have both recently won and NW took it to the wire but NOT court. They really don't want that cos they will lose.

Apart from that read all the FAQs really carefully, there are lots of hints and tips for filling in the online claim forms and loads of people who will offer support and guidance cos theyve been there themselves.

If you have a specific legal/advice question the moderators will answer it for you asap but there are only a few of them and 28000 of us, rising fast daily!

Keep us informed on this thread how you get on.

loads of luck

Kate:)

Did the MCOL without any help or advice - didnt know there was any help or advice until I heard about this site on Moneybox (Radio 4) last evening.

I've read through loads of posts and feel so positive now, was beginning to think we had bitten off more than we could chew!

Found some very helpful "words" from other people's correspondance, and also see that Nat west are big on intimidation - NICE!

Will keep you informed.

Having received the scary looking letters from Cobbetts I am now trying to use the very good excel spreadsheets from the site to calculate the correct amount owed to my daughter by the bank. I know I should have done this before filing a money claim online, but I relied on my daughter's calculation - which was not a good idea ! But now we've started we better keep going and I want to get it right so that they havent got any "wriggle room".

Please could someone tell me if I can include the monthly account "charges" or are these legitimate fees the bank charge for running the account overdrawn?

Also, if having done the correct calculations, the amount isnt EXACTLY the same as on the claim what effect will this have?

The bank can only charge you a service charge if they provide some sort of extra service. Some accounts, such as premium accounts, have this monthly service charge. They can't just charge you for going overdrawn, processing unpaid direct debits etc It sounds like they are siomply charging your daughter for being overdrawn and thats not fair and can be claimed back.

Did your daughter have an Advantage Gold Account if so this would incur a £9 monthly fee that can't be reclaimed.

It doesnt say its an Advantage Gold anywhere - the fees seem to be either £20 or more recently £28. It occurs at the end of the month just under the interest that has been charged. The only reference is Charges.

If I add all of these "charges" onto the other charges for unpaid stuff then we will be over the amount I put on the online claim - what effect will this have do you think?

Been reading through loads of postings and am now not sure what to do.

My daughters account is often debited with £20 (or more recently £28) most months under the title "Bank Charges". One posting I read says that if these are charges for running the account with an overdraft then the bank CAN charge this fee. Another posting suggested that if the bank wasnt providing any additional services for the fee then it could be included in the claim for return charges?

Anyone want to offer an opinion?

The only fees which cannot be claimed are monthly fees for providing a specific service e.g. 'Advantage Gold' account - these charges would only be a few pounds a month and would be detailed as such.

Any other fees such as the ones you have mentioned can be claimed.

Help friends, panicking here!

We filed the mcol - and received a letter from the banks solicitors telling us that it was "incoherent". So I send one of the letters from the library and a spreadsheet detailing our claim to them recorded delivery.

I also received the Questionnaire from the court and send the cheque and form back to the court. Unfortunately I made the cheque out incorrectly and I've had it back and rewritten it now and posted it again today. (so they havent received it yet)

Just gone to the mcol site to see what it says against our claim - it says "Halted" against Status of Judgement.

Anyone know what this means?

Is it because the cheque had to be returned............ or ..soemthng more sinister?

I can't say for definite, but if you had a letter from the solicitors saying the PoC were incoherent, then they may have notified the court of this.

What exactly did you put as your Particulars of Claim?

I enclosed a spreadsheet of all of the charges plus this :

IN THE EXETER COUNTY COURT

BETWEEN

clarkson321 CLAIMANT (Edited for your security)

And

NATWEST BANK LTD DEFENDANT

PARTICULARS OF CLAIM

1. The Claimant has an account ********** with the Defendant which was opened on or around 1998. (Edited for your security)

2. During the period in which the Account has been operating the Defendant debited numerous charges to the Account in respect of purported breaches of contract on the part of the Claimant and also charged interest on the charges once applied. The Claimant understands that the Defendant contends that the charges were debited in accordance with the terms of the contract between itself and the Claimant.

3. A list of the charges applied is attached to these particulars of claim.

4. The Claimant contends that:

a) The charges debited to the Account are punitive in nature; are not a genuine pre-estimate of cost incurred by the Defendant; exceed any alleged actual loss to the Defendant in respect of any breaches of contract on the part of the Claimant; and are not intended to represent or related to any alleged actual loss, but instead unduly enrich the Defendant which exercises the contractual term in respect of such charges with a view to profit.

b) The contractual provision that permits the Defendant to levy such charges is unenforceable by virtue of the Unfair Contract Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations (1999), the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 and the common law.

5. Accordingly the Claimant claims:

a) the return of the amounts debited in respect of charges in the sum of £1944 and any interest charged thereon;

b) Court costs;

d) Interest pursuant to section 69 County Courts Act as set out on the attached list of charges or at such rate and for such periods as the court deems just.

I believe that the contents of these particulars of claim are true.

Signed:

Date: 18th June 2006.

What do you think???

How did you fit that in if you did your Moneyclaim online?

It only allows 1080 characters on 24 lines.

Sorry should have been clearer (too much red wine!)

I admit that the mcol was not very concise or clear - I hadnt discovered this website so the claim was probably as incoherent as they said.

My last posting was a copy of what I enclosed to the solicitors, with a letter to explain and the spreadsheet showing details of what we would like to claim.

I know that this is unorthodox and probably cocks up the whole system, but I have my fingers crossed.

Is this a hopeless case now?

Can you tell us what you put originally on Moneyclaim? I am guessing this is the reason why Moneyclaim says halted.

Had a letter from the bank this morning, usual blurb about believing the charges are fair etc and offering £1000 (about half).

Could this be why its marked "halted"?

I assume the correct response is "NO DEAL"?

Just read another posting - and its started me wondering if I should accept the £1000 as part payment and then tell them that I do not accept the conditions attached to the payment and that I will pursue them for the balance?

I am about to start composing the letter back to Cobbetts, anyone got any words of advice? They are only offering less than half of the claim - is it better to accept the half and say you'll continue to pursue them for the rest or should I just reject the offer and hold out for the cheque! (or see them in court) .

Nearly there!

It feels really good to have them offering me money - instead of paying out ......

Hi Clarkson, I was wondering, what date did you file your original MCOL? I know you had already started this when you first posted here on 12th June, but just wondering how long before then it had been that you did your MCOL?

I filed mine on June 6th, and haven't heard a thing from Cobbetts, they've filed an acknowledgement of service but I haven't heard anything else! Just wanting to check your date with mine to see if they may have forgotten about me or if I have more time to wait before I get an offer!

You're going to think I'm really vague. I do know that Natwest had until midnight on 12th June to file their defence, so i suppose I did mcol about 4 weeks before that............. just gone back to mcol website and it looks like 8th May.

Does that help?

Yes it does help! Thanks! Sounds like I'm about 4 weeks behind you, so no need for me to be worried that I haven't heard anything!!! Cheers, J.

Folks, need some reassurance I think.

We've had the letter from Cobbetts offering about half of the claim.

We said no in a letter which I posted on 26th June recorded delivery.

Try as I might, I cannot get Royal Mail to confirm its been delivered.

The Cobbetts letter said we had until the 30th to let them know if we rejected their offer or not. It said if they didnt hear they'd assume we accepted it.

On the advice of a very nice man at the court (on the phone) he advised me to copy thier letter and our reply to the court just in case Cobbetts forgot to mention it to them!

Has anyone come across this before? Do the solicitors have some kind of way of not accepting post so that the time runs out? (Am I completely paranoid now! YES!!).

The cheque for the allocation questionnaire has been cashed by the court.

Do I just wait to hear what the date will be for the court now?

we won we won we won we won!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cheque received this morning in full settlement - even including some interest that wasnt on the mcol!

Thank you so much for all your help. everyone.

Donation on its way as soon as cheque cleared!

Congratulations!!

Fantastic news.

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