I am very confused with my new KEY meter and a little angry to say the least. We keep running out! I have only been on this key meter for a couple of months before we were on a card meter and we averaged £10 to 15 a week. Now I am paying £25 to £30 a week and I can not understand it, it ran out on my son on Tuesday and it had no emergency on it which I am 100% positive we never used. I bought £10 (bit hard up this week) and put it in the meter immediately it took £5 for the emergency and then totaled the meter, the final amount showing was £1.36 how is that what has happened to the rest? I checked Wednesday morning and it was showing just 80p so I thought I had better switch it over to the emergency (now when I used to do this it would add the remaining amount on to the emergency ie should show £5.80) I did this and it only showed £5 what has happened to the 80p? It is now Thursday morning checked it again and it is £1.01, so somehow I have used £3.99 in 24 hours it seems impossible I never used to go through this much and I have changed nothing in the power useage, there is no-one home during the day, I turn things off at the power, my boiler is off as I have no use for it during the summer, I do leave my immersion on constantly (which I admit I do not need to so I will stop this and see if it makes any difference) but I have always left it on, that is nothing new. Any suggestions it is driving me mad!

Just to keep this up to date, council have agreed to take back debt from the bailiffs and I am now paying them an amount I can afford over 24 months. This was done using Zoomans letter so thank you to him/her. Like a weight lifted off my shoulders no more avoiding the door. Now to sort out one more problem (PPI) and I will be sorted.:grin:

thats my problem as well i have no idea how my payments have been assigned. looking at my latest statement it does not show either?

After listening to the money advice on GMTV one day regarding PPI's and the way they have been sold, I decided to send off for my credit agreement from SPPL. The only reason I did this was because on two or three occasions we have asked for an early redemption figure and on these occasions they have sent back a figure that is way over what we originally borrowed in 2003. We borrowed £20,000 and the figures were in the of £25000. We never seem to be touching the loan or making any difference to it, our mortgage moves twice as fast and everytime we get a statement from SPPL it never seems to change. Anyway after spending lots of time reading various threads on here I have realised that we have definitely gone wrong somewhere. I received the CCA yesterday and it states that our amount of credit is £25800, this I can see now and understand includes the PPI of £5800. We have signed the form at the bottom where crossed but at the top of the form it has 4 tick boxes With single or Joint on top two and then single and joint life or joint and joint life on bottom two. A tick has been put in Joint & Joint Life. Now common sense tells me this is probably the top cover? Just one other point I was made redundant mid 2004 and we fell behind with the payments so much so that by september sppl were forcing repossesion procedings. We were forced into a position where we had to rob peter to pay paul. But my point is that we were obviously naive and knew nothing about this PPI and at no point were we offered the chance to take advantage of the PPI. I would appreciate as much help and advice if poss and perhaps someone could point me in the right direction of a letter I could use to write to these people.

i was wondering is there a letter that would help in this particular case as i can not find one that is relevant to secured loans - i have the same problem

i have just been reading your thread and i really hope you got all this sorted, i am just starting my own fight also, and no offence but i hope mine dont get as bad as yours.

If I start paying the council direct for this (I intend to start on Tuesday 19th Feb) will the bailiff automatically give up coming or trying to contact me, unfortunately he now has hold of my mobile number? Or do I have to stretch this out and be patient? I just hate avoiding the door and keeping my blind closed, although I can hear in his voice he is not from around my area deffinitely from up north so if anything I reckon he is not likely to visit everyday. I only wrote to the council yesterday and the bailiffs direct using a couple of the template letters on this site how long should I wait before contacting them again?

Yes no problem but as I am new I dont know how to.:?

I am in the middle of trying to sort out a bit of a mess also, over a year ago now I agreed to pay my council tax with the attachment to earnings. So every month out of my salary I paid a fixed amount, to me this was great as I hate council tax and begrudge paying it so not to see the money full stop was great. Cut a long story short I left previous employ and started a new job, I wrote to the council informing them and asking for a form so I could supply relevant details once in my new employ. Anway it is now February and I had forgot (stupidly!!), on the 31st January I received a Seizure Notice from CCS Enforcement for the sum of £1400 (I have no Idea how this sum is put together). I rang the bailiff (T COYLE) but had to leave a message - done this 2/3 times before ringing office direct and explaining everything to them and offering a payment plan. They told me it was not for them to arrange anything I had to do it all through the bailiff) but i could not get hold of him for ages, until Monday when he agreed I could pay in installments but it would have to be a short term agreement? Anyway he wanted to set up a meeting for me to sign a few things so I arranged it for this morning. After reading all the posts on here I changed my mind and wrote to the council using Zoomans letter asking for a quick response and I cancelled my meeting with the bailiff. So I am now just waiting for the council to respond, and avoiding the door.

I am presently on the phone to them regarding £146 of charges took out today the first RUDE man argued over the top of me constantly and told me these charges were correct and they were allowed to do this. I informed him that because of what they had done they had left me and my children without money for food etc for the rest of the week. He told me I should have made sure there was money in the bank to cover the charges, I asked him how many people does he know that get paid in the middle of the week? He was so infuriating I asked to speak to a manager he cut me off. I have just rang them again and I suspect I spoke to the same person as he would not pass me to a manager. He has reversed two of the lesser charges which does not help me one bit - he also gave me a number to ring and argue it out with them (08456039035) he then said "you will not be allowed any more reversals on charges for the next 12 months so ensure you stay in the black, this has been done as a gesture of goodwill" well i had to put the phone down before I let rip. My aim now within a month to move banks, any suggestions?

I am new to this and this is my first thread, I know there is bound to be other threads that can answer me but I am still getting to grips on how to work this site. I have just checked my bank balance this morning to find I am now £146 over drawn on an account that does not allow me to become overdrawn. This is because my Bank has taken out 5 lots of unpaid direct debit charges - 3 x £35, 1 x £15 and 1 x£25? Can anyone tell me why the charges differ for starters. Why is a bank alllowed to take out all the charges at once when they can see full well that it will leave us with no money and leave us skint. We have a lot of money going in and out of our account (this is a joint account) and it is our only account, so they can see surely when a good time is to take the money out. I will no doubt get charged now for being overdrawn. All these debits were admittedly missed but it was immediately after christmas so, no the money was not there, we had over spent as did every body else over the christmas period. You would think that the banks would allow everyone to get back on their feet, not totally screw them up for another month. Can someone tell me how to sort this out and tell me if they have experienced the same and what they did about it. Thanks very much, I look forward to hearing from someone soon