Have been thinking about my last letter, and need to ask a question. Do you know if the stay of proceedings is granted solely on the filed defence of the Defendant or is it applied as a blanket policy to all claimants cases at Northampton court?? I ask this, because after Cobbetts had entered their first defence, they sent me a letter the following day retracting their OFT case defence and entering a different defence with no mention of the OFT case. If they have retracted their request for a stay due to the OFT case, does this not invalidate the stay of proceedings for my Claim? allowing me to get the stay revoked and my case moved to a local court? I have attached transcripts of their two letters for information. Having looked through many threads on this site, the second defence appears to be Cobbetts standard letter and info request. I also remember seeing a thread about an argument that the court should throw out the banks defence on the grounds that the banks are abusing the judicial process as no case has yet come to court, but I cannot find that thread again. Any idea where it is? Many thanks for your thoughts on this. 004 Solicitor 1st response.doc 006 Solicitors 2nd response.doc

Hi again, Have finally received a reply from the court, but looks like the Bank has got it's delay tactics to a tee. Attached is a scanned OCR document of the letter. Any suggestions as to what to do next?? Cheers STAY remains response from court.doc

have sent the request & schedule on the 14th March, but not heard anything or had the AQ yet. Should I give it more time or call the court, do you think?

Thanks so far, I will send a copy of the schedule to the court along with my request to cancel the stay as suggested. I calculated the schedule using an excel worksheet, and when I opened it today to print, it has updated all the interest calculations to provide a larger figure than I originally sent. Should I send a copy of the original schedule or the updated one with the re-calculated interest to the court?

Hi everybody, this is my first posting and I hope you will be able to give me some help. Initial Info: I owned and ran a Pub under the umbrella of a limited company. I sold the Pub at the end of last year, and when someone told me that companies did not come under the remit of the OFT test case, I decided to claim my bank charges from Natwest Business centre following the advice on This Is Money website. The Story so far: I worked out my charges amounts from statements and accounts, using the This Is Money spreadsheet, calculated I was owed almost £4,500 and with interest this amounted to just over £5,000. I sent the first letter to my Northampton branch with the schedule in January and (no response) sent the second letter demanding my money. I had a reply from Customer Response Services Unit saying they would respond in 6 -7 weeks. So mid February I issued a claim through Money Claim Online (but didn’t realise I should have sent the claim schedule by post as well) so my Particulars of claim read: I am asking for a refund of the bank charges which have been levied from my business bank account over the last 4 years. I understand that the regime of fees which have been applied to my account in relation to direct debit refusals, exceeding overdraft limits and so forth are unlawful at Common Law and are considered to be unfair by the OFT. I believe these excessive charges had a direct affect on my business cash-flow and profit and loss balances, resulting ultimately in me having to sell my business. The claimant claims interest under section 69 of the County Courts Act 1984 at the rate of 8% a year from 02/03/2004 to 18/02/2008 of £596.70 and also interest at the same rate up to the date of judgment or earlier payment at a daily rate of £1.11 The bank solicitors say they are going to defend the claim. I have received copies of their defence but am still awaiting the Northampton County Court allocation questionnaire. The first defence letter dated 4th March asks for a stay pending the OFT test case. The court responded, Without Hearing, ordering 1) that the claim should be stayed pending the test case & 2) Liberty to apply with an extension. On the 5th March I received another set of copies from their solicitors saying they had filed the wrong defence due to an administrative error, and they had notified the court of the correct defence and a request for further information, plus could they have the wrong defence document back again. I am still awaiting the Courts Allocation Questionnaire at the moment. Although I have already issued the Claim, but without the Schedule, is it too late to reduce the claim figure (about £70.00) to bring my claim under the remit of the Small Claims Court Fast track procedure? I am very nervous about having to go to court and defend this in front of their solicitors. Any comments or advice at this stage would be greatly appreciated.