Just a quick note to say good luck for tomorrow. If I had spare holiday I would be there - I live within driving distance of Chatham. I'm waiting for other claims before i take on Egg but I got as far as the prelim letter and their reply actually said the charges were to cover costs incurred. After reading Yasmin's thread and yours and hearing about the bullying and delaying tactics I can't wait to see what happens tomorrow. You have a lot of people and the law on your side but remember not to be too complacent and make sure everything is clear in your head before the hearing. Good luck once again.

Does anyone have any experience of Coventry Building Society? Their basic account looks good and I've had a couple of recommendations, including a guy at Payplan I was speaking to. Also their fees for returned DDs etc looked reasonable (compared to Natwest anyway!) Also is it best to try and time an application for when you're not over your limit with your current bank (about 2 days a month in my case!) to have a better chance of success?

Sent prelim today. Total £545.64 including contractual interest at 15.9%. Nearly sent of the LBA first as I downloaded the 'letter for credit cards' from the library thinking it was another version of the prelim one but it's actually an LBA. Anyway, all sorted, double-checked and posted.

Excellent thread, very informative. I went to re-mortgage ages ago from a 2-year discount rate and whilst reading my original agreement I noticed the period during which I was liable to pay a redemption fee was invalid, it said something like 1st September 2003 to 1st August 2003. I phoned them and they said yes they had made a mistake so I didn't have to pay a redemption penalty even though I was within the intended period. Moral of the story - It's always worth reading your original agreements carefully. I might have to request all of mine just in case. It's got to be worth a shot in case any of them can't provide the agreements.

Hi, The fees can be reclaimed, plus interest charged on them but you'll need to use the spreadsheets in the library to caculate the interest. I believe some people may be claiming back PPI if it was mis-sold or not agreed to but you'll need to search around for it here as I don't know that much about that side of things. You can also claim previous charges if there have been any.

I've been saved the additional time and money of doing a DPA request as I actually managed to find all my original statements going back to when I opened my account. Total is £468, so sending prelim letter first thing tomorrow. My balance is actually only £297 so I'm not sure what will happen when they pay them back. I presume they pay it back into your account although mine has been suspended so if they do this I'll close the account anyway.

Thanks. I didn't know we could claim the SAR fee back which is nice. I've worked out £140 of charges in the last 6 months using their online statments but I'm going to do a DPA first and hope it doesn't take too long to come through.

Out of interest, although not wanting to hijack someone else's thread but everyone else seems to be if I don't need to send a DPA request should I try phoning them first with a total of the charges and estimated interest and see what they say? I'd rather do this and get a bit less than have to go through the prelim etc stuff as I really need some money before xmas.

Ok, I've been here a while and know the basics of claiming works, and I know you should be able to split claims to keep them in the small claims limits. I'm in a pretty bad way financially - put it this way, we're selling our house and probably moving to a campsite for a while when it's sold purely to pay back debts. Anyway I won't bother you with the depressing details but I do need some money pretty quickly. I've got thousands to claim back off Natwest - Last time I downloaded 6 months of statments there was about £2k of charges and that was a good period. So my query is, can I just start a claim straight away for the amount that I have details of (because presumably you have to provide a charges schedule in the court claim), as it's going to cost me £10 and at the most 40 days extra to do a DPA for the full amount over the last 6 years. This way I can go straight to the prelim letter stage with what I have at the moment, and also the court fees won't be so high, and then once I've got a bit of money back I can use that to find the rest. Are there any issues with doing it this way?

Hi, You need to be careful here. If you ask for the information as a Data Protection Act Request then they have to provide it, if that means sendign your statements and you have pick through them that's fine but the point is they can only charge a maximum of £10. If you just ask for copies of statements directly they will charge you £5 for each statement. They know all this - it sounds like they're trying to get more money out of you for trying to get you to request statements. How was your original request worded?

As NW took my cheque book away at about the same time as they forced us to take a loan even they we stated we couldn't cover the repayments( Can you etll I'm having a bad day?) what other methods do NW accept that others have done (if any)? I was thinking a letter signed by me probably isn't enough to authorise a deduction from my account. I could do a transfer but then I don't trust them to realise what it is for when it goes through. EDIT: I've since found a couple of threads suggesting sending a postal order (recorded delivery of course). So my question now is - Has anyone had any trouble with NW accepting these?

Paid back $5000 in one go on my MBNA card taking it to £294 I think it was. The next day they reduced the limit to £300, added on interest which took it over the limit, charged £25 for going over and £25 when the DD failed. That's ludicrous in terms of how much I owed on the account and the fact I had recently paid off a rather large amount. The best bit was the letter about the limit reduction, it said it was because of 'information sent to us by various credit reference agencies'. Firstly, I didn't think it worked that way round and secondly it's a bit of a coincedence.

Hi, You do need a separate case for each bank. Being declared bankrupt does not affect your ability to claim. If you supply your name, address at the time you held the account and possibly date of birth just to make sure they should be able to find details of your old account without any problem. Hope this helps. Please read the FAQs if you haven't already before you go any further to make sure you understand the processes involved.

I know I can read through the forum but there are silly amounts of posts since I wast last on - Late aug/Early Sep - so if someone could update me on any developments I would really appreciate it. Mainly I know what I'm doing but I was wondering if there's been any change to the way bank/credit card company claims are being done/dealt with and things like contractual interest (although I see a couple of threads on that so I'll check them out. I'm about to start claiming from a number of companies (finally!) and I want to hit one in particular (Natwest) with everything I can. I'm happy to try any as-yet-untested ideas.

I wonder if they had a litigation department before all this... They probably realised it's not worth paying massive solicitors fees just to keep settling out of court anyway.

I'd like to repeat something I said in a previous thread on this subjetc, which is that you may do better complaining to the FSA as the OFT already said it is up to them to investigate charges are far as bank accounts are concerned. However, it would still help writing to the OFT as at the least they would have to pass it to the FSA for investigation anyway. Actually I'm just going to write to both of them.

You should ask for a list of charges AND any evidence of manual intervention on your account (which you won't get because there won't have been any but that's the point). It stops them trying to use it as a defence later on.

Just a note, the time limit on a DPA request is 40 days not 14.

I found a useful link about the right of appropriation that might also help. I'm trying to find out exactly waht payments it applies to (basically whether I can use it for my salary). Haven't found out yet but it does say in the link below a bank is unlikely to want to honour it for more than a short while and would probably close the account after a while. advicewirral - Wirral CLSP

I found the halves and thirds thing quite interesting so I've just had a quick Google. Not much info available, but I did find this thread on another forum - The Black Horse car finance saga ... in The AnswerBank: Money & Finance so it's obviously a common issue (with Back Horse, anyway).

If this service is still deemed to be the responsibility of the council then the claim should be fairly straightforward, although the courts may have like it better if you had gotten three quotes for the work and taken the best one. Unless you're charging less than this would have been for your work in which case no worries there. Refusing to pay council won't get you anywhere except a bit of publicity maybe. It's like not paying bank charges before you start your claim - you still have to pay until you've proved you don't have to. I'm not sure which law(s) would cover this but I do know local authorities legally have to perform any duties that are deemed their responsibility and can be taken to court in the same way businesses and individuals can. Good luck and keep us posted.

Distance selling regs definitley worth checking. Also there's a lot of situations that would render this unenforceable because of the way the agreement was initiated (cold calling, cooling off period etc). I can't remember which law covers these though. Then there's trade descriptions, sale of goods, supply of goods and services... I think if you read those there's going to be at least a couple of relevant points in them. You may be able to adapt the information in the bank action forum for getting a default removed as it's a similar situation - default added wrongly.

On Saturday I noticed all the food in our firdge/freezer had defrosted. Further investigation (leaving an ice cude tray in it) proved it wa snot freezing anythign at all. Also the fridge part isn't cold anymore. So, down to Comet yesterday to start quoting sale of goods at them and see what happens. I actually managed to speak to the manager who happened to be sitting at the service desk. He was aware of the sale of goods act, but started going on about some new EU legislation (??) which he said I should use rather than SOG. He didn't however think that the retailer was responsible and tried to get me to contact the manufacturer until he realised I actually knew what I was talking about. Finally I got a number and address from him for a department where they deal with these queries although in his words 'it's a lengthy process and not many people do this as they don't know about it'. I said I will make sure I tell as many people about it as possible then. He also said (correctly) I would have to prove there was a fault, which shouldn't be too difficult to do. I had to buy a new fridge as I've got a second freezer but I can't live without a fridge. I intend to claim this back off them plus the cost of a new freezer and the £60 worth of frozen food I bought last week. I'm going to keep a diary on here of what happens. First step is to call the numebr he gave me and find out what the process is. And contact head office for a copy of the receipt (which I know they keep for 6 years as my wife used to work there). I shall keep you all posted...

That'll be never then. They already withdrew their comment about their ruling applying to banks, passing it off to the FSA who I assume also suffer from a lack of vertebrae.

Requesting a copy of the agreement under the CCA should be the first thing to do, as if this is not correct then the loan is unenforceable anyway. And yes, contact the police as stated above. Once you have a crime reference contact the bank to let them know the loan is the subject of a criminal investigation and they may halt the payments until it is resolved. I know they have to do this in certain circumstances but I'm not sure whether it applies here or not.