Glad to hear you had a sympathetic judge! My case (-v-Lloydstsb) went to Bromley County Court yesterday (the culmination of several months aggravation). There were about 6 of us bringing cases against different banks. First of all we all had to troop into the court -together - where the judge told us he felt he had to "stay" all our cases pending the outcome of the big test case. Not being happy with this, 4 of us went back - separately this time - to appeal against the stay. The judge simply informed me that it would be a "waste of the court's time" to make any decision in my case until a decision in the test case was made. There was a woman representing Lloydstsb sitting there who didn't need to say a thing as it seemed that the judge was presenting the banks' case for them! The same (non) result was obtained by all of us who appealed. I know this doesn't impact on your situation. I just needed to offload because I felt so angry!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for the info.............A

I'm in the process of claiming £944 from LloydsTSB (inc interest and court fee). I sent a letter before action and, as I got no response within 14 days, sent the N1 to my local county court. In the meantime, LloydsTSB have already deposited a £750 pay off into my account in "full and final settlement". The money had gone into my account before I could even reply to the letter they sent. I was ready to send a sniffy letter back telling them that I will accept the money as a "payment on account", pending the outcome of the court case, but I am not willing to accept it as "full and final settlement". I was about to write this letter when I heard for the first time about this one-off victory of theirs. I would welcome feedback from others on this site about what they would do in my situation. As the amount they have offered is just a couple of hundred less than what I am claiming should I just cut my losses and accept it? (Obviously if I was claiming £thousands I wouldn't accept a paltry £750.). Needless to say, when they turned down my original request, they mentioned the guff about charging £35 a time for providing the "service" of extending my overdraft etc etc - nothing about penalty charges. This so-called "service" charge was, I understand, the basis of their recent success in court. Please let me know what you think:confused:

On 4th April I received lloydstsb's standard reply that they haven't been making penalty charges, rather they've been charging for the "service" of allowing me to exceed my overdraft limit (blah blah blah...) On the 18th I sent a LBA quoting s 4.21 of the OFT report re "disguised penalties". No reply. So my next step is to go to court. I looked through CAG's Particulars of Claim template but it refers to alleged breaches of contract etc resulting in penalty charges. HOWEVER, the letter from lloydstsb goes out of its way to say I wasn't in breach of contract- their £35 a time charges were for their alleged "services" in letting me go over my limit. MY QUESTION is: should I use this CAG template for my claim? OR can anyone give me the wording they used in a successful claim against people?