Good luck in your claim - it sounds like the usual saga (left hand, right hand). Just stick with it and have a good read through the Halifax threads and read up on this thread http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/guidance-notes/ and the FAQs. It took 8 days from claim to repayment into my account in my case, you're on the home stretch!

My payment showed up online as Cash. Have they made you an offer of the amount they credited? It may be worth calling them and asking about the credit. Make sure they are not under the mistaken assumption that you have accepted a full & final settlement based on a partial repayment.

You can strike out this part of the settlement, or put a price on it. You don't have to accept it if you don't want to, and if they really want to avoid court they will settle without it. If they really feel that there is something about your claim that they don't want getting out into the wild, then they should have to pay for the privilege. It never arose on mine, but I was prepared to ask 50% of the settlement value.

Sometimes they will write, other times they will call, and yet other times they do both or neither! There's no guarantee on how they will deal with the progress of your claim, except that they will pay out in the end!

I'm probably missing something obvious here !! Once i put a figure in the interset charged column then it works out the interest on penalties, but what do i put in the interest charged column.??

In this column you put the full amount of interest debited from your account. EDIT: See post #57 above for an example. The calculation looks at the total amount of charges up to that date, compares it with the overdrawn balance that you had in the month that the interest applies to and works out the proportion of the interest that was due to charges. You will notice that as you get more and more entries filled the proportion goes up to 100% as the entire overdrawn becomes due to charges. Please make sure that you don't try and align the interest with the charges - leave no gaps in either the charges or the interest columns for the sheet to work correctly.

Like I said once before in another thread, I would like to go into a bank to open a new account, sit down with an advisor and when it gets to the point of signing the contract I would go through it all and cross out all the clauses that I didn't agree with and lower all the penalty charges to realistic figures (max £1.50), initial all the changes and sign the contract. I know they will refuse the account, but I would feel so much better!!!

Hi,

 

2 days to go until i send LBA. I dont mind admitting i'm really struggling with the spreadsheet.

 

Problem 1) How do i know what the interest rate was charged to put in the column "interest charged" on the spreadsheet. On my statements it just says the amout of £ debited and the balance.

 

At the end of each month on my statements it says "Interest debited £2.11" etc etc.

 

Should i just total these up and use this as the interest charged??

 

Could it be that easy??

 

Hope someone can help.

 

Rob

Hi Rob,

Enter the amount of interest charged into the righthand side of the enhanced spreadsheet. In the blue columns, enter the date the interest was charged, the amount debited and the lowest balance for the month that the interest refers to (either the same month or the one prior to it). The spreadsheet will work out how much was due to the accumulated charges on that date and the amount will show in the yellow column. This is all assuming that you have entered all the charge information into the lefthand side of the sheet (ALL entries are made on the Interest and Charges sheet). Don't forget to enter all this information in date order, oldest first with no gaps.

Stick with - it will all come back to you in the end.

Why do they wait until court action before they pay up, they know they're gonna pay so why not pay up once the LBA has been sent, yeah l know that they are hoping we'll all go away, and we arent, but really you'd think that they know by now that once someone has issued the LBA they mean business....????? just a thought....you'd think they save everyone a bit of time, but of course we are talking about banks here so it isnt any surprised l suppose!!!

They are hoping that somewhere along the line you will either find it all too scary and back down or think 'I want £3000 back and they are prepared to offer me £300 - I'd be crazy to lose out on an offer like that! I'll take the money and run!'. Once it gets to a court summons they have no other option but to pay. I suppose enough people fall by the wayside or are so grateful for getting back 10% of what was taken from them to make it a worthwhile strategy.

They are usually related to the balance - the more you owe, the more they have to pay out (if they can't find a way of avoiding it)!

This is how I dealt with my joint account - it was all claimed in my name only.

You can also ask BT to block PR numbers from being dialled from your line as a further safeguard.

At what stage did you add this in?

I had it in my LBA letter with an explanation of how much, what dates it covered and why I had added it - so it wasn't hidden at all.

I think you will find that most of this is in place already for fraud protection, privacy, distrust of staff, money laundering regs, etc. This is why I won't believe the statement that they give out about not being required to log manual intervention.

 

Nothing happens on a bank account that doesn't get reflected in the audit trail, that includes viewing the account as well as making any change or transaction. The audit trail will include at least the account number, date & time of access, type of activity, staff ID (or program ID for automated processes), previous value & changed value with to & from account details (where a transaction has occurred). If they didn't do this the regulators would come down on them like a ton of bricks. And how do you think banking forensics work when they track down the movement of dodgy or terrorist related funds?

 

They use this line purely because there is no manual intervention to show when the charges are applied - because they are automatically applied - but they do not want to let you know that as their charges argument would fall flat on its face. They are being economical with the truth at many levels, as well as being extravagent with their charges and interest rates!

I think we need to campaign against excessive interest charges on overdrafts and CCs. On one of my CCs the standard rate is 5 times base rate right now, having gone up last month (even though the base rate hasn't changed in ages now). Normal overdraft rates are three times the base rate, and go up to around six times if unauthorised.

 

I think the rates charged should be capped at base rate plus 8%, rising to base rate plus 10% for unauthorised borrowing. This still leaves the banks with a good margin and would help many to get out of debt who can only afford to make the minimum payment. Couple this with a central register of debts so that banks have a transparent view of your total debt burden and then take a responsible view of your capacity to borrow and the world would be a better place!

 

Oh yes - I forgot two extra words - 'FAT CHANCE'!

Hi,

 

Is the spreadsheet supposed to print in red - or have I got a printer problem?

 

Thanks

I wouldn't expect it to - sounds like you are out of ink of one or more colours or got a clogged printhead in your printer. Check your ink levels and if they are OK, run it through a cleaning cycle (see your manual for instructions).

A further point on the scope of my claim on the joint account that I had forgotten - I only had seven years of statements, with the first 43 missing, so I added in an amount for 'Previous Charges (Estimate)' of £215 that I calculated as an average of £5 per statement. This means that they refunded charges going back to 1995ish without a quibble. On my wife's claim they won't pay anything over six years.

 

Don't you just love their methodical approach to this problem?

Hi all,

 

Just a quick catch up on spreadsheets. I haven't been able to be around much. I notice now that some of you are are fully competent on the ins and outs of the spreadsheets provided here, and able to advise each other.

 

This forum is designed for us all to help each other. As I am not now as available as I have been, it's nice to see you all helping each other, and hope you continue to do so.

 

I'm just completely gutted the world hasn't fallen down whilst I've not been around. Lol.

 

Keep it up folks. We're all here to help each other. Thanks.

No probs, it's been enjoyable to pass on my experience and help others out! Thanks for the Rep!

 

The only area I've stayed away from is the subject of interest charges on CCs, although I'm about to claim on the first of many soon, so I'd welcome your input.

That's exactly what I did with my wife's claim - I wrote and she signed! I paid for the claim, she gets the refund!

Congratulations.... Thanks!

 

You can just write to the court and inform them that the case is settled. It doesn't have to be too formal, just claim reference number and "Please accept this as notification that I wish to withdraw my claim on the basis that the defendant has made payment in full" - that sort of thing. I'll get that done in the morning and drop it round to the court.

 

One small point - did they include daily interest from the date of claim until yesterday? No, it wasn't, but it was only 8 days @ 93p so not a big issue.

Off to bed - an early night at last...!

At least the £120 will come back when they pay out, so in the end it won't cost you anything. Mine took 8 days from filing to cash in the account - but they are variable, I got paid after some others who filed the same day and before some who filed before me - no sense to it at all.

I have asked this on my thread but I wonder if I should ask for the charges further back because - they notified ME last november of 83 charges when I challenged them as disproportionate so I can only assume they have looked those up (not manually) but I have sent my request as of June 2000? Also had plenty of charges prior to that which I challenged with the basic premis of knock on effect blah blah but got nowhere.

 

I will be interested to see how many charges show up when I get my list of transactions and charges.

Hi Maybelline - I had original statements going back to early 1999 which I used to assess my charges. There were probably more on statements prior to that point that I didn't have as the account was started in the mid 90's, but I never got the data for that period from my DPA request (which I used mainly to fill in the gaps where I had statements missing).

 

On my wife's account we already had all statements back to the date of opening in the early 90's so I just put the whole lot into the spreadsheet.

 

I'm not fully convinced of the limitation on claiming back charges over 6 years old, which is why I gave it a try. I know there is the 'statute barred' argument, but that only normally comes into play when a debt has had no further transactions for 6 years, whereas I see this as an ongoing breach from the date of the first charge and still going on now (another £342 so far to reclaim on the joint account since the moneyclaim was filed)! But remember, I am not a lawyer, so don't trust what I say too much!!

Hi Mariana

 

Hmmmm thats interesting, have been chatting to someone else on here who has just had statements through and even though she is requesting refunds they are still putting charges onto her account!!! they really need to get their act together, left hand doesnt know what the rights doing, lack of consisitency!!!!

They don't see anything wrong with that - after all they are still blindly spouting that the charges are above board and fair. They will carry on doing this until a stop is put to it by a court (which is why they pay up rather than go to court) or the industry regulators (fat chance)!

Seven years ? That's very interesting.... :o

 

Well done

Strangely enough, the wife's claim is being negotiated as they won't accept more than 6 years on that claim (I did go back to the mid 90's though)!

Received notification that they intend to defend today on both claims.

 

Have now received the full amount (including costs & interest) on joint account claim, credited to the account. Survey filled in, donation funds put to one side awaiting alternate to PayPal, PM'd BF on settlement.

 

Final step is to inform court, but there's nothing on the court forms I got that allows me to notify them that the claim is settled. I filed with Form N1 - what do I need to do to close the action now?

 

By the way, the settlement was for charges going back 7 years (that's all I had statements for). No questions asked, settled in full as claimed. Got to start again now to get back £300+ charged since claim was filed - I asked today if they would remove the charges, but I still have to go through the motions to get them back!