With regards to the last point, the OFT test case was supposed to clear the mist on penalties argument and UTCCR 1999. With regards to UTCCR 1999 it very much made the air even worse since it didn't resolve it fully. With regards to charges themselves going forward, all groups have a significant voice to use. Personally, I cannot see the point of further litigation for the OFT on historic charges since it is the current and their current issues around the transparency of current charges that they should be mindful of.

Good luck to you guys but I have asked over the last few days about what relevance/purpose it has and I still haven't got it. I hope you get to 500 but I won't be one of them.

The OFT test case has provided some fantastic evidence that may well prove invaluable in later cases. The OFT had 4 judges agreeing with them and the SC did not exactly scream that the banks can do what they like. You need to read more, to be honest with you.

Can the person who has started the petition explain why it is important to sign and what purpose it will have? If you can then I am quite happy to sign it but I won't sign it blindly, thanks.

Hang a minute, can you. Have you looked at the CAG announcements? Are you aware that Martin Lewis is saying new templates in January? Do you know that it has been Christmas and even CAG mods and site team have family and are not simply here at the whim of one individual user? The OFT announcement as to their position is set out in OFT1154 and it covers most of the arguments in the mix. What arguments have you looked at? What digging have you done? What have you done to help CAG with new arguments and research? With respect, "ask not what CAG mods can do for you but what you can do for the benefit of all on CAG".

Did they vanish into the abyss of the homepage library or cagwiki maybe ? Maybe an ask to Team in order on that as it was a useful resource and be a shame if its gone fishing. I had a search but no joy.

Can you use the support received so far to aid the Treasury Select Committee conclusions report - House of Commons - Credit Searches - Treasury - send it to the OFT or something ?

Bumped it for you over on seagulls. Bit late, its a shame its gotten so close. yet so far.

Extrapolate (long word) templates for initial documents (if you decide to use them to assist arguments in the POC amended) and say you have requested copies of originals from bank. Much as you do with claims for charges when the banks wont respond properly to DPA requests for transaction lists. Also much as card companies and banks do when saying this is the T&C's which would have been in use at the time. Just an idea?

Aren't user names in big, bold letters those users who are under moderation ? Thats what I always thought it was anyway.

Letters with comments such as these :- "When you opened your account, you agreed to our terms and conditions which explained that charges would be applied if you did not keep to the terms of the account." "As previously explained, the charges you are asking us to refund are our fees for the additional work that we carry out when a Customer requests a payment without insufficient funds in their account." Can be used to assist with the imbalance arguments and the misrepresentation arguements. Sites are working on building a library of these letters and there are many examples throughout CAG and others. We know the letters were templated so although, in the absence of receipt of said letters under DPA requests, you cannot say 'I received THIS letter' you can say you ''received a template letter which in the relevant period was worded such as...'' (type thing lol) It would be nice if CAG would assist with this, based on their announcement of working together ref Ray Cox MSE etc, as all these documents are being used by the OFT in the ongoing work on PCA's Following from that, in the OFT decision documents they state Are CAG having any input into this process ? I know there is a PCA Market Study sub forum here but there doesnt appear to have been much activity.

For preparing POCs to cover utccr 5(1) and cca 140 and misrep you will need to go through your statements and pick out evidences of the imbalance of the contract and demonstrations of the unfair relationship. You will also need as many relevant terms and conditions and relevant letters from the bank from the period the account was held and charges claimed applied.

Some people have to get amendments in by mid Jan. Whats the state of play with the QC ? Do CAG actually know anything about the proposed POC's ? (barring Martins comment in the daily express and possibly a news article on his site saying third week of Jan possibly)

g) It is apparent that the individual Consumer is required to subsidise the running and/or operation costs of accounts other than that of the individual Consumer. In so doing so the Bank‘s charging structure reverses the usual pattern of cross subsidisation by delivering heavily subsidised banking services to those with the most financial competence or resources at the expense of those with the least. h) We contend that the Banks have control over the distribution of the Consumer‘s salary or benefits, and the relevant terms allow for the automatic application of the relevant Charges, with little or no notice to the Consumer. i) In our experience the Banks, by virtue of the relevant contracts, have priority over the Consumer‘s other debtors with regards to the application and payment of the relevant Charges to the Account. There is no consideration in advance of applying the charge as to whether or not the bank applies the charge. j) Additionally, the The Banks' contracts include a right of offset by which they are able to offset an unauthorised overdraft from a Consumer's savings or other account. An imbalance exists in the contract as there is no equivalent equitable arrangement in favour of the Consumer. There is no contractual means by which additional funds, required to enable payment of a transaction and which would otherwise trigger relevant charges, could automatically be transferred from a Consumer's savings account to the relevant personal current account by the Bank. k) In our experience the relevant terms have frequently forced individual Consumers into a cycle of debt, where the Relevant Charges directly or indirectly give rise to the application of additional charges to the account, without any restriction or limitation. 2) MISREPRESENTATION It may be possible to bring arguments under the Misrepresentation Act 1967 or, at common law, as a unilateral mistake from which the banks knowingly benefited. Historically either;  The banks misrepresented that their relevant terms were penal as opposed to contracting to provide services, or  The banks were aware of their Customer‘s 'mistaken belief' that their relevant terms were penal but failed to correct this, to the detriment of the Consumer but to the benefit of the Banks, or  The banks were aware that the relevant terms were penal in nature but realised they could argue they were in exchange for a package of services and misrepresented to the court accordingly. In any case, Consumers would aver that they had been acting on a misrepresented but reasonable assumption that the relevant terms were related to costs rather than service charges and would contend that the charges should not have been part of the consideration in exchange for any so called contracted 'package' of services. Should it matter if the relevant charges are for a service disguised as a penalty or for a cross subsidy disguised as a service? At the end of the day it is £2 disguised as £38 and simply a deceitful description. 3) COMPETITION Consumers suffered loss due to the anti-competitive behaviour of the Banks. The Competition Act 1998, Chapter II 18 Abuse of dominant position (1) Subject to section 19, any conduct on the part of one or more undertakings which amounts to the abuse of a dominant position in a market is prohibited if it may affect trade within the United Kingdom. (2) Conduct may, in particular, constitute such an abuse if it consists in— (a) directly or indirectly imposing unfair purchase or selling prices or other unfair trading conditions; The argument: • Chapter 2 is usually difficult to apply to oligopolies as it is hard to demonstrate the collective dominant position. However, the banks have publicly admitted to the collective dominant position via the British Banking Association (BBA) and individually all UK banks are members of the BBA – this covers 100% of personal current account providers. • The stated position is that free-if-in-credit is the banks' preferred model and there is general agreement to keep to this model. This model relies on cross-subsidy via the Relevant Charges. • The free-if-in-credit model is effectively price discrimination on the basis of property, i.e. the less money a customer has, the higher the overall cost of the package account. • This is evidenced by the OFT PCA study data showing customers with less than £1000 in savings are much more likely to incur charges. • Also, from the Supreme Court judgment, bank revenue from these charges accounts for 30% of revenue from only 20% of the customer base. • Banks, via the Relevant Terms, because the overall price of an account to be higher than in a competitive market for the people that incur them. This is evidenced by the OFT PCA study data showing a steep upward trend in Relevant Charge levels over the years. • Therefore the banks may be in breach of Chapter 2 by imposing unfair selling prices upon and engaging in price discrimination against their most vulnerable customers. We have long suspected that the banks collude to artificially maintain the price of insufficient funds charges. During a House of Commons Scottish Affairs select committee oral evidence session - 'Banking in Scotland' - in March this year, Group Chief Executive, Scotland, for Lloyds Banking Group, in answer to question 366, told the committee that ''The banking industry has generally come to an agreement that they will charge certain amounts for overdraft letters.'' Uncorrected Evidence 319 4) UNDUE INFLUENCE a) It has long been recognised that the relationship between banker and customer is that of debtor-creditor (Foley v Hill 1848) b) It is also recognised that when the banker transacts on the customer's instruction he does so as agent (Westminster Bank Ltd v Hilton 1923) c) These transactionary functions were originally described as 'superadded', or extra to the main bargain, 'by custom' (Foley v Hill 1848) d) The Supreme Court has ruled that current accounts are contracted as a package of services and that is the main bargain - these services are not ancillary or extra (OFT v Abbey National 2009) e) These services are provided not against the customer's money, as it is now the bank's, but against the resulting chose in action constituted by the account. f) It follows that in the context of modern current accounts the main relationship is no longer banker-customer rather service provider-customer; the majority of transactions are no longer deposits and debits between banker and client, rather credits and debits between the customer and third parties via the bank. g) Under common law Undue Influence lends support to this characterisation, not by automatically presuming an agent-principal relationship, but deriving the characteristics of such a relationship in the particular case (National Westminster Bank plc v Morgan 1985) h) The exact nature of a relationship is determined by contract but also by the level of trust, confidence, reliance, dependence and vulnerability of the customer. (Royal Bank of Scotland v Etridge 2001) i) Where the customer pays their wages / benefits into the hands of the bank it is submitted that to do so requires a high degree of trust and confidence in the way the bank will transact against the resulting account. j) Where most of the customer's outgoings are through the account it is submitted there is reliance and even a dependence upon the bank. k) Where the customer has no great savings in the event of misfortune, it is submitted that the customer is vulnerable. l) When all the above is true and where the customer is already indebted to the bank it is submitted that the customer is yet more vulnerable. m) It is not unusual for points (i) through (l) to be true in an individual case. n) Given that the customer allows the bank to make use of their money as if the banks own, or pays interest to the bank for their debts, it is submitted that it would be inequitable to allow the bank to take advantage of the customer's circumstances. o) It is submitted that any transactions entered into that are manifestly against the customer's interest are done so under undue influence. p) This undue influence arises either as an abuse of the agent-principal relationship when transacting against the account or alternatively, due to abuse of the circumstances described at points (i) through (l) above, amounting to the same. Also: q) The customer may be vulnerable in addition to the above because they lack understanding of the complex charge structure (item fee / daily fee / monthly fee) and how this will operate upon their account. r) Furthermore, daily maintenance fees are unnecessary to both the customer and the bank. When the overdraft assessment is initially performed the bank should be able to determine how long they are willing to loan the money for so a daily assessment is redundant. The customer understands that the overdraft is repayable on demand and is already paying interest at the 'unauthorised' overdraft rate. This is an artificial device to inflate the interest rate beyond what would normally be considered an acceptable level, again made possible by the undue influence of the bank. s) As noted above, when Relevant Transactions are manifestly not in the customer's interest they are only entered into because of the bank's undue influence. t) It is strange that companies providing such a fundamental service to our society cannot be assumed to be trustworthy? It's hard to imagine that caveat emptor should be applied to stock brokers, personal assistants or the Post Office for example - we should be able to trust these agents implicitly. u) The fundamental service isn't using our money for their own ends; it's in acting as our financial intermediary. 5) CCA 1974 (as amended), UNFAIR RELATIONSHIP a) We consider there was an unfair relationship in favour of the Banks per s140A & s140B of the CCA 1974 (as amended) due to the behaviour and conditions described above. b) Alternatively, or in addition, this unfair relationship existed because the relevant terms operated on the Consumer's account to create an unfavourable financial position, thereby limiting the Consumer‘s ability to switch accounts, or to negotiate. c) Additionally, the Banks further compounded the unfavourable financial situation of the Consumer by increasing the Relevant Charges over a number of years (contrary to and or in excess of what a competitive market would normally expect or allow). 6) THE COMMON LAW PENALTY ARGUMENT REVISITED a) Prior to the Test Case most Consumers believed the relevant terms to be unenforceable common law penalties. b) Justice Smith's High Court judgment stated that the relevant terms were incapable of being common law penalties, because it was not possible, using a contractual construction of the standard terms, to link the relevant terms directly with a breach of contract. c) However, Justice Smith only reviewed certain terms from certain periods from each of the Banks. Not taken into consideration were the Bank‘s charge notification letters. These letters clearly form part of the overall PCA contract just as the leaflets detailing the various amounts of the charges are an integral part of the contract. d) We are currently compiling a database of such letters for each of the Banks. Our initial findings convince us that these letters clearly link a breach of contract, on the Consumer's part, with the resultant charging term and amount. The charges were in respect of failure to have sufficient funds in the account to meet transaction instructions and were levied by the bank to cover the increased costs to which they were put as a result of the breach. These matters are linked in the letter whereas they are not linked in the generic terms and conditions. This further adds to the argument for misrepresentation. There is a wealth of documentary and anecdotal evidence than that shown below to prove this is the case. Example of typical wording on charge notification letters Halifax PLC " We haven't been able to pay the item (s) shown below because there wasn't enough money in your account. To cover our costs, we make a charge of £39 (maximum 3 charges per day) for any item we can't pay. We will take this money from your account seven days from the date of this letter. If it causes you to have an unauthorised overdraft, we will also charge you interest at the unauthorised rate and a monthly unauthorised overdraft fee of £28." The wording of the letter describes the reason for the charge (because the Bank didn't pay the item), the amount of the charge (£39) and what the charge is actually for (to cover costs). e) Furthermore, in 2007 in response to a number of complaints about charges, Halifax PLC wrote : "When you opened your account, you agreed to our terms and conditions which explained that charges would be applied if you did not keep to the terms of the account." "We apply these charges because when customers have insufficient funds in their account to cover a payment they have asked us to make, this means additional work for us. As a result we feel it is reasonable to charge for this service." "As previously explained, the charges you are asking us to refund are our fees for the additional work that we carry out when a Customer requests a payment without insufficient funds in their account." "If you continue to manage your account in this way, future charges will be applied to your account." "If you need greater flexibility, we may be able to help you by providing an overdraft or extending your overdraft facility. This can help to keep the costs of any unauthorised transactions down." and additionally a response from HSBC in reply to a Consumer‘s complaint regarding excessive overdraft charges during 2007: “In the Terms and Conditions prior to September 2007 the above stated explanation, would not have used the terminology of „informal overdraft‟ they would have described the fees being incurred as default charges as the account is not running within its agreed limit. In the most recent Terms and Conditions the charges are no longer described as default charges. I apologise for any confusion to you regarding his matter.” These letters and others like them, whilst not contractual, clearly link the charges to breaches of the terms and conditions, link the charges to failed transactions owing to insufficient funds and confirm the charges are intended to cover the costs of the extra work involved. This is contrary to the banks' submissions that the fees are for the overall package and meant to cross subsidise 'free-if-in-credit' model of banking.

Heres some views on the legal arguments which hopefully will help people having to prepare their own amendments to POC's. I have tried to deidentify where its come from as its not important but helping people with their claims IS. Burden of Proof 1. UTCCR Reg. 5(1) – An imbalance of rights and obligations, contrary to good faith, and to the detriment of the consumer. 2. The Misrepresentation Act 1967 or common law Mistake 3. The Competition Act 1998, Chapter II 4. Undue influence (common law) 5. CCA 1974 (as amended), s140A & 140B – unfair relationship 6. Common law penalty 1) UNFAIRNESS PER UTCCR 1999 REGULATION 5 (1) Regulation 5 (1) states: 5. - (1) A contractual term which has not been individually negotiated shall be regarded as unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations arising under the contract, to the detriment of the consumer. The Arguments: a) We believe that the Relevant Terms are contrary to the requirements of good faith, as they cause a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations arising under the contract, to the detriment of the Consumer. We are of the opinion that, by analogy to paragraph (e) of Schedule 2 to the 1999 Regulations: Indicative and Non-Exhaustive List of terms which may be regarded as unfair, that the Terms which are unfair include those that are ―Requiring any consumer who fails to fulfil his obligation to pay a disproportionately high sum in compensation Notwithstanding the belief that the UTCCR1999 regulations were not specifically intended to cover financial services such as PCA's it is unthinkable that the original intention of regulation 6.2 would be to totally preclude an assessment of fairness as to price under Regulation 5 (1) using some of the price based reasons for unfairness as referenced in the ‗grey terms‘ Schedule 2 including paragraph (e). We believe that regulation 6.2 must have originally been intended as a standalone clause in respect of a limited number of potential issues and not an all encompassing ‗get out of jail‘ free type clause. We believe that there is an incredibly strong case here for referral to the European Court as an integral part of a new legal action. Clarification on this matter together with other uncertain areas such as burden of proof‘ and cycle of debt caused by application of contingent fees' are areas where clarification by the European Court could be sought. We are presently still formulating our full argument in respect of this particular issue and will provide further information shortly. b) The other reasons would include (for example) arguments related to Schedule 2 paragraph e ―Requiring any Consumer who fails to fulfil his obligation to pay a disproportionately high sum in compensation.‖ c) We consider that the Banks can choose which service they offer without consideration for or confirmation of what the Consumer intended. For example Banks could consider a request for overdraft and pay or simply reject payment on grounds of lack of funds. In performing these services the Banks act as agent for the Consumer and therefore should have had regard to the Consumer‘s intent. The Consumer‘s intent may be for the request to be facilitated if there are sufficient funds, to be rejected if there are not or to be asked for confirmation (where practicable) otherwise. However the contract denies the Consumer the opportunity to express that or any specific intent other than that determined by the Banks. d) We consider that a request to pay is not necessarily a request for overdraft except by virtue of the non-negotiated contract terms. The overdraft assessment is not optional, additionally there was no opt out possibility at commencement of the contract and therefore it acts contrary to good faith and is therefore unfair. e) We suggest that if an 'overdraft extension request' was declined, there is no reason why the Bank's answer for any subsequent requests should be any different if the account balance has not changed other than by virtue of the Relevant Charges being applied? The Consumer could therefore not intend subsequent payments to be requests for assessment, and it would be to their detriment for them to be regarded as such. If the fee was argued to be for checking the Consumer's account, the Banks would actually be providing the same service as they otherwise provide for free and therefore no further consideration should be required unless the circumstances are materially different. f) It is beyond dispute that the relevant terms were not available to Consumers in advance, or have been included in the relevant contracts since conclusion. Either way Consumers have become irrevocably bound to terms with which they had no real opportunity of becoming acquainted before the conclusion of the contract or were unable to negotiate if they were included after conclusion

With respect, for the last 3 hours people have said ring the police. Please take their advice. You are reporting a robbery, it is for the police to determine if a robbery has taken place not for us to speculate whether a bailiff or a robber with a swag bag came in. Ring the police, it takes 5 minutes and they are sympathetic no matter what colour, creed, religion, education or country of origin.

Why a robber misses valuable watches and takes a PS3 and a laptop is irrelevant and furthermore, wouldn't a bailiff have also taken the watches for their value. The advice is call the police to investigate the issue. Please call the police and then post up once you have spoken to them. You need certainty and if the police come back and say it was a bailiff then at least you'll know who has the goods. The longer you leave it the less evidence there will be of any offence.

If you want help with your letter, post up a draft and give me a shout

John Varley is CEO of Barclays which includes Barclaycard. The issue is not that they took money but that they took money from Housing Benefit that was there to payoff your arrears.

Email the CEO of Barclays with the issue and with copies of the bills scanned and attached to the email. Here is the email addy: [email protected]

Write to the CEO, cc it to the FSA, send proof the money was backpayment from HB intended to pay your rent, and ask for it back.

You are the OP----Original Poster

Worth asking them IMHO.

MBNA example. How much would basil have charged the customer for that account ? £450 and 10% ( £1903 ) = £2353 Where does Basil get the other £2358 from ? Other peoples fees ? Isnt that a bit of a Ponzi scheme ?

Furthermore, I think I would mention in any complaint letter that the agreement was to pay back a certain amount but that the interest meant you were repaying none of the debt so you are asking them to look at this issue further since them taking your money has left you still in financial hardship.