After sending off my SAR and LBA, I got a letter from RBS offering full and final settlement of £620 out approx £1,800 in charges. I was going to reject it, but it just occured to me that I am going into a Debt Management Plan and have other debts with RBS owned affiliates such as MINT. I also have a £2000 overdraft on the RBS current account. My concern is - if i do take it to a county court could they award the money to RBS directly in lieu of monies owed to them in the DMP or due my current overdraft. OR could they award it to me and then immediatly tell me to pay back the outstanding overdraft of 2K? Could you please advise what you think? THANKS - GRAD98

I wouldn't like to say one way or the others, however, personally, I would NOT accept £620 out of £1800, because they will in all likelyhood pay that £620 into the account.

Go the course with them, recover your £1800 and let it be used to lessen your debt.

No point in giving up the chance to pay off such a big chunk.

One point, CC aren't going to "award" you because it will never get that far....RBS will have settled before then?

Spurred on with the fact that reclaiming my charges will go a long way to clearing my debts, I rejected RBSs offer and am due to submit N1 to the court by 26th March. (I gave myself a few extra days rather than 14 days as I was away). In the interim I got a letter from the bank saying: "I am sorry that you feel unable to accept this offer, but having validated your claim and discounted any charges that do not relate to unarranged borrowiing I can assure you that it represents all administration charges that were applied. As we are making a goodwill gesture by offering you an amount equivalent of these charges we are unwilling to consider additional payments in respect of consequential interest you may have calculated. Similarly we will not refund legal or other costs you may incur in pursuing your claim......." And it goes on to ask me to refelct and accept the original offer of £673. Could anyone let me know is it usual to receive this 'form of' letter. This is basically saying that they are willing to refund me the actual admin costs of unarranged borrowing. (Note I did not add contractual interest, Just interest on the overdraft). This has made me hesitant to proceed now in case they are toughening up in any way. Any thoughts please???

It's not normal, no.

Well they are basically disputing your figures. If you are claiming debited interest then they are wrong to refuse to pay it to you. First things first we need to ensure your figures are correct.

What charges might they be disputing?

What spreadsheet did you use?

How did you calculate overdraft interest?

Hiya T4FF, Well I can only assume that it is debit interest they are disputing as my charges consist of debit interest on overdraft, unpaid charge, refferal charge, and other amounts that just say "charge" on the statement but since these amounts range between £20 and £28, I assume they relate to overdraft charges. I just used a spreadsheet and listed every item under date, charge and description for each row and then totalled it. I didn't actually "calculate" overdraft interest, I just put down the amount I saw on the statement. Do you reckon I need to do this all over again? And if so, how do I approach RBS to rectify? THANKS

Right, the problem here is you are trying to claim the full interest charge whereas you are only entitled to claim for the amount of interest that is charged against your charges for the previous month.

In simple terms, if you had a 200 overdraft, 100 interest free and were charged 20 in overdraft interest, the proportion of your overdraft made up in bank charges is 20% (20/200-100). Therefore, if you were then charged 10 in interest, you would only be able to claim back 2 quid of it (ie 20%). This is certainly what they are disputing.

Am I right in saying that you haven't as yet filed a court claim? If not, I suggest you don't. Your calculations are incorrect and you will likely not get very far in court - very likely be strucken out.

What I suggest you do straight away is download mindzai's charges spreadsheet (go into the RBS charges link in my signature and there is a link to it there) and enter all your information into it. The spreadsheet calculates this proportion of interest for you. This should give you a better idea of how far off what you are entitled to the £600 odd quid is.

If it relatively close, I would accept it. If it is still wide of the mark, then I would suggest that you send a letter to RBS saying that you are withdrawing your complaint for the time being due to calculation errors on your part, then start from scratch in say, about a week.

If you want any help in running over your findings, ask away

Thanks so much - I'll get on that immediatly. Will have to do the same for Barclays as I did the same thing (i.e. used the whole interest charge in my calculations) - had I not got this letter from RBS I wouldnt know I had done it all wrong! Will probably run my spreadsheet by you when done. THANKS!