To be honest, as the outstanding balance was £2500 and the charges £400 and you managed to settle the whole lot for £1600 I don't really see that you've anything to claim for as you've actually saved £900 on the outstanding balance and that's before the charges are added on to things. Or, have I misread your message?

It's hard to get from any bank. But, if you at least try to get the judge to request full disclosure then there's another hurdle put in Citi's way and one that they're not likely to want to jump either. If the judge orders full disclosure then it's likely that Citi will either default on the order or simply settle out of court. In either of those cases, the claimant wins! Although, if I recall correctly, there have been cases where Citi have produced some very vague and woolly figures that don't show any breakdown or proof of the costs involved - but I would hope that a reasonable judge would dismiss those as being inconclusive. P.S. If I'm wrong in the above - feel free to correct me all - it's only my "understanding" of how things have gone so far!

You're not actually dictating - you're making an offer. One, which they are not obliged to accept (although most will). So, dictating isn't exactly the right word to use here...

I don't think that there are any hard and fast rules here. A few years back I sought the help of a debt counselling company called Gregory Pennington. Basically, I filled in an income and outgoings (excluding debts) form and they then took what was left out of my income and divided it up on a pro-rata basis between the creditors. I later went to the CCCS as they didn't charge a fee - and they did exactly the same. If a creditor takes you to court - then I think that the court will only carry out the same process - so in effect, any creditor will be better off just accepting the payment plans proposed by a body such as the CCCS as they don't incur any solicitors fees and they're not running the risk of you just going for a IVA which would quite likely see the amount of debt being greatly reduced thereby leaving the creditor out of pocket. That said, you'll probably find that most debts will end up having to go to a DCA (frequently an internal one belonging to the parent company) before any payment agreements are actually accepted. It seems to be that the initial company aren't willing to negotiate to the lower repayment figure so the debt gets passed on - but the 1st DCA may not be willing to go as low as the proposed payment so the debt gets passed on again. This can happen a couple of times until it settles with someone willing to take the greatly reduced payments. HTH, Hax

Well, I wrote to Citi and for my first letter, I decided to try and take a less official route leaving open the option to take a more official route at a later date if necessary. Today, I received this reply: Anyway, I'm just wondering what this "Section 75" is all about... From what I can tell, it's all to do with recovering costs under the insurance offered when making purchases with a credit card. This most definitely does not apply to me here - so I'm assuming that it's just a standard response letter for covering most situations.

I think (and I may well be wrong here) that they only require the proof of id if you are requesting details about manual intervention. If you just want the statements, I think that they'll send those without the requested proof. Or at least I seem to remember words to that effect in the letter I got from them! HTH, Hax

Well, I've been a bit slow in getting things moving properly - mainly because the rest of my life has been pushing forward for attention. Anyway, I've just waded through my past statements and found that I have £1275 of charges although at one point Citi did refund 3 lots of £25 of charges so I'll be putting in a claim for an even £1200. One thing that has me curious though is that during the time when Citi were piling on the charges at a rate of about £50 a month (1 late payment and 1 overlimit @ £25 each) I was also receiving a huge interest charge - a large part of which would have been due solely to the large sum of fees that I had incurred. My credit limit was only £650 but Citi inflated the amount owed to in excess of £1950 at it's worst - at this particular point in time I was also being charged £40 for a month's interest. Just wondering if I should somehow be claiming for this interest that was levied against the charges? If I hadn't been making any payments to Citi at all then I would estimate that my highest balance would have been in excess of £2500 - but the payments I was making seemed to be just about covering the interest and maybe a little extra too - but not enough to stop Citi then slapping on another £50 of charges the gits - meaning that I was simply fighting a losing battle with them :/ (I agree that I should be paying interest on the amount that I'd actually borrowed/spent and interest on top of that interest - but it's not like I had ever actually "had" the money from the charges) Thanks for any help/advice! Hax

Thanks for the welcome Gizmo - just been reading your thread - good luck on the 22nd!

Hi folks - just looking into starting my claim for charges on my Citi Card account. Basically, I had a £650 limit, hit some difficulties and ended up owing in excess of £1850 :/ I've had a year of reduced interest which has helped me get the amount owing down to £1400 - but they've just started me back on the "high" interest rate and are sending me letters demanding the excess back so I thought it time to take action - so am preparing my request for data letter. I was just wondering though, with my limit being £650 and Citi Cards effectively lending me another £1200 on top of that through their charges, have they ever been brought up for breaching the "responsible lending" rules/guidelines that banks are supposed to adhere to? I had previously asked Citi Cards on a couple of occasions before the debt reached anywhere near the £1800 mark if there was anyway they were able to strike a deal with me and stop charges so that I may make lower repayments and not incur any more penalites, but I was told point blank that unless I made payments of the amounts specified that I would continue to incur the charges, regardless. To my mind, they had been told that I was struggling, it was obvious from my repayment "history" that I was struggling, but they still kept piling the charges on and effectively increasing the amount owed to them. This sounds far from responsible to me. Anyway - just a thought that had entered my tiny little mind... Back to the S.A.R - (Subject Access Request) letter Cheers folks

Just registered here as I'm about to write a letter to Citi Cards to try and claim back some (if not all) of my charges. Seems that there's a lot of good folk in here willing to help others out - thanks for the advice you've already given to other that will undoubtedly help me out and thanks in advance for any help/advice I may directly be receiving!