Deadline up. No response at all from Lloyds. LBA sent today. Let's see what happens.

Many Thanks. We'll see what happens from here, will keep you posted.

Well the ball's been rolling for a few weeks now. Posted my preliminary letter to Lloyds on 8 May with internet printouts showing £610.00 in charges. Getting worried about that decision made in Birmingham but I'm going to see this through to the end. I have a question - I've just received this month's statement and the good people at LTSB have charged me another £60.00 this month on overdraft excess fees. Those fees are due to be debited from my account on 11 June, I'm due to send my letter before action on 23 May. Should I mention this in my Letter Before Action and ask for this money back too, technically I haven't been charged this yet but I certainly will have by the time I'm filing my court papers? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Had a call from Policy Admin Services. £23.97 refund (the last three months charges). Slightly better than a kick in the teeth I suppose.

I've just sent the following: Dear Sir/Madam, With reference to policy no. ******* I took out a contract for an O2 pay monthly mobile phone in November of 2003 via Phones 4U. I also agreed to pay £7.99 per month phone insurance to you at the same time; these payments were first deducted from my account via direct debit (quoting the above reference) in January 2004. My contract with O2 ended in December 2004 and I was under the impression that either O2 or more likely Phones 4U would have informed you that I no longer required phone insurance, as I no longer had the phone and my contract had ended. This impression was further reinforced by the fact that Phones 4U and Policy Admin Services are clearly in partnership at some level, it would therefore reasonably be assumed that some form of communication between your organisations takes place. Unfortunately for me, it was not until December of 2005 that I noted that the monthly payments were still being deducted from my account. By my calculations (£7.99 per month, 13 payments made between December 2004 and December 2005) I have paid your organisation £103.87 for an insurance policy I no longer required. I am therefore writing to request a refund of this amount. Some enquires with groups that represent consumers such as I have led to my understanding that this is not an isolated case. Clearly both Phones 4U and Policy Admin Services could improve their customer service procedures significantly if they communicated more efficiently on these issues. Perhaps a more transparent approach with regards to matters of insurance would help reduce the growing number of these complaints against your organisation. I look forward to hearing from you. Sincerely, Let's see how this turns out.

Thanks for getting back - can you point me i the direction of another poster or thread where this issue is dealt with? I've tried searching the forums but come up short. I have the phone number and address of the insurance company but I don't know how to approach them. What are my legal rights here? Am I only likely to get money at the company's discression as 'goodwill payment'?

Many Thanks Buzby. As I said, I was not at all confident about getting this money back so it's not too disheartening. Needless to say I haven't entered into one of these schemes since and do not intend to in the future.

Izzy - I'm a housing benefits assessor myself, perhaps I can help? The no. 1 rule for benefit claimants is - CHECK YOUR NOTIFICATIONS. Whenever a decision is made, you will be notified of: a. Your weekly entitlement and b. The way your benefit has been calculated Now although you could not be expected to know how the calculation works (it's not actually that difficult, I can explain the procedure if you like) the notifications should clearly state what figures the council use when assessing your income. Now mistakes DO happen - regardless of what the public may think, benefits staff are not sipping tea all day, we are almost constantly overwhelmed by the flow of information, my office for example has one roughly one member of staff for every 500 claimants. Please remember that this is like a contract you are entering into, we try our best to reduce errors but in some respects they are inevitable. Thats why we ask you (and you will have been told this on your letters) to check our figures and tell us if they are wrong. Your notification letters will have shown the exact figures we've used for your income, if you were earning £100 per week but your notifications said you were earning £50 per week then I'm afraid it's YOUR responsibility to check those notifications and tell the council immediately if our figures are incorrect. Thats the reason notification letters are sent. This is clearly a very important part of people's lives so it's not unreasonable to ask that people take at least some responsibility when benefits are concerned. I hope you don't feel that I'm being overly antagonstic but writing to people like me and telling them that they're inept, morons etc. is not going to help matters. If you could confirm the specifics of the case - eg. state what aspect of your circumstances the council got wrong - then perhaps I could help advise you better. As another poster said, as long as you are still receiving housing benefit, the council will not demand that you pay back all the money straight away, they will normally deduct the money from your ongoing benefit payments. This can be anything between £5 per week and £20 per week, depending on your circumstances. If you feel that the council are deducting too much you can ask that they lower the deduction amounts. If you have stopped receiving benefits, contact the council's income management section to arrange a payment schedule. If you can be more specific about the nature of the overpayment I could advise you better.

You guys have been brilliant. I will shop around on Monday to find a new current account. Due to my overdraft situation it looks like Alliance and Leicester are my best bet. I'll keep my activities posted. You've really helped me avoid some obvious pitfalls, thanks again!

Good Evening! I'm considering embarking on a lengthly process to recoer over £300 from Orange and/or the Carphone Warehouse. Is took a one-year contract with terms being that I pay the normal (approx. £30-£35) monthly charges then I can claim back the money by sending in various bills (the contract was advertised online as £4.99 per month). I neglected to return any of bills (my own silly fault I suppose) and have since lost the original documentation, I still have the bills though. This contract ended in October '06 so I'm passed the 60 day limit for returning them. The staff in Carphone Warehouse are indiferent and I've spent enough time & money trying to speak to someone at Orange. Do I have a chance on this one?

Many Thank to you both. "I hope this doesn't come across as me trying to tell you what to do" On the contrary, I came here looking for advice from people in the know and I'm more than happy to listen. I was going to send the BBC letter today but then stumbled across this forum and I'm glad I was more cautious. I think this forum is fantastic - truly indicative of the power the internet has given the consumer when dealing with these disingenious companies. My girlfriend's mother dived straight in with the BBC letter and has now been frightened into compliance by a rather rude letter from Nationwide where they advise her to 'seek an alternative banking service in the future'. I will certainly be pointing her to the direction of this site. As it stands it will take me some time to clear the overdraft. I think my best option is to transfer it to my new current account before continuing this action. My Thanks again. green bowl.

Dont know if this belongs in this thread or the insurance company thread but here goes: I signed a contract with O2 in November 2003 for a mobile phone with £7.99 per month insurance. I noticed that the insurance payments were withdrawn seperately from the line fees, they showed as 'policy admin serv' on my statements. I ended the O2 phone contract in November 2004 and thought no more about it. As a diligent student I was too busy studying - amount other things ;-) - to check my statements properly so it was not until December 2005 that I noticed that the £7.99 per month was STILL being deducted from my account. I cancelled the direct debit immediately. As the contract was set up years ago and I'm not particularly good with keeping reams of paper in order, I do not have any of the documentation left. I can't recall if I received seperate documents for the insurance at the time. I checked with the bank and they provided me with a contact number for the company (but strangely not the companies name) I find nothing more frustrating that speaking to large companies over the phone so I intend to contact them by post. Has anyone had any experience of this sort of thing before? Is it my own silly fault for not cancelling the insurance myself or is it O2's responsibility to inform them? If I DO attempt to contact the company i will need to obtain from them copies of the terms to confirm the exact amounts, are they likely to give this up without a struggle? I reckon this is about £103.87 altogether where I've paid insurance for 13 months for a phone I no longer had. It's not a great deal but it's hardly loose change. Should I pursue this?

This is something I've been meaning to get round to for a while but more important things kept cropping up. With financial hardhip looming, I've decided to see if I have any chance of getting the cashback I neglected to claim from the Carphone Warehouse and/or Orange. I apologise if this has cropped up before but I'm new at this. I signed up for one of these 'cheque-back schemes' and was told I would only pay £4.99 per month when in fact it was usually between £30 and £35 per month. The terms were that you had to return the third, sixth and twelth bills (I think). Unfortunately, shortly after taking out this contract I moved house and now the documentation is nowhere to be found. I went to the Carphone Warehouse shop near me for confirmation of the terms but they were no help, saying it was nothing to do with them. I had a lot going on in my life at the time so I pretty much resigned myself to paying the full bill each month. I have however saved most of my bills from Orange. As this contract ended in October '06 I dont hold up much hope for getting this money back. I've been told that as long as you send in all your bills within 60 days of receiving them you can get your money back. My girlfriend was pretty diligent and sent back all her bills (recorded delivery) at the end of her contract. Predictably the Royal Mail lost all her bills and were completely useless in finding out where they had ended up, needless to say Orange claimed they never received them. She eventually got fed up with the whole call-centre-run-around and gave up. Where do I stand on this? My gut feeling is that I've missed the boat but if anyone has any suggestions... Who would I contact to get a copy of the terms? As I've said the Carphone Warehouse staff were not in the least bit interested and advised me to consult the documentation, which I had lost. I never actually signed a contract, I did the whole thing online. Are the companies obliged to provide a copy or will they likely give me the runaround? I would greatly appreciate advice from anyone who has gone through this sort of thing before. By my reckoning its about £360 i'm owed.

Having checked my online statements recently I note that Lloyds TSB have charged me £610.00 in overdraft excess fees and unpaid D/D fees since August 2003. At the moment I've taken no action against the bank. I've printed off the relevant statements from Lloyds online banking site and the sample letter from the BBC - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/h...bank_14day.pdf. I'm quite worried about pursuing this as I've got a £1,500 overdraft with them. If they decide to close my account and/or demand that the overdraft is cleared immediately I have no means to pay it off (getting the unfair charges back off them would be a start though!). As I said I have the BBC's template letter ready to send, I'm going to open another current account on Monday in case Lloyds try to play hardball. Does anyone have any advice for me?

Greetings, what a great site this is, for too long the consumers have been pushed around and pushed to the brink of bankruptcy by greedy companies! Having acquired a significant credit card bill recently (not frivolous spending btw - mostly for an engagement ring - wish me luck!) i've finally had a chance to spend some time checking my online statements been looking in ways to recoup some losses i've suffered in the past. My cases (I haven't taken any action so far, thats why I'm here) are as follows: 1 - £610.00 in direct debit and overdraft excess charges from Lloyds TSB dating from August 2003 to the present. I've got printouts from their online banking site showing these charges and I've just copied the template letter from I'm fairly confident about getting most of this back but I understand that some hard work will be involved. 2 - £103.87 in overpaid insurance. Basically I signed a contract with O2 in November 2003 for a mobile phone with £7.99 per month insurance. That contract ended in November 2004 but the insurance payments continued to be deducted from my account until I found out and cancelled the direct debit from the bank in December 2005. Unfortunately I have no documentation to support this. I checked with bank a few months ago and they gave me a contact number for the charges, all I have is that and their reference number showing on my statements. Not too confident about getting this back. 3 - approx. £360 from Orange and/or the Carphone Warehouse. I signed up for one of these 'cheque-back schemes' and was told I would only pay £4.99 per month when in fact it was usually between £30 and £35 per month. The terms were that you had to return the third, sixth and twelth bills (I think). Unfortunately, shortly after taking out this contract I moved house and again the documentation is nowhere to be found. I went to the Carphone Warehouse shop near me for confirmation of the terms but they were no help, saying it was nothing to do with them. I have however saved most of my bills from Orange, that particular contract ended in October 2006. Not confident at all about getting this money back but would appreciate any guidance. I'm going to be posting these queries individually on the various sub-forums but for now I would greatly value any initial opinions or advice about how to claim some of this back.