If you paid the £10 by cheque - have the cheques been cashed? That's the surefire way of knowing if they got delivered... Oh, and welcome *waves*

Hiya Craig, welcome *waves* The problem with requesting copy statements via e-mail is that you *might* possibly get some. What you won't get is 6-years worth. The DPA letter in the templates section is the best way of getting all statements without arguments and within a legally defined timescale (40-days) and for the guaranteed fee of £10 (instead of the random number per month the bank might ask for). My understanding of the DPA request, is that you are asking for *ALL* data that the company holds. If they hold details on 4 accounts, then the £10 and one letter covers all four - you just need to tell them all the account numbers on the letter. Get back to buzzin' mate!

Hiya Mike, Welcome *waves* 1) Going in to your branch isn't going to help much, unless you only want the last 6 or so months of statements. You really need to send the DPA letter from the templates section asking for 6-years (remembering to send the £10). This is the proven quickest/cheapest way of getting statements without any arguments. 2) You can certainly do credit cards as well. The general advice is to not start dozens at the same time, simply because you'll soon be swamped with deadlines, reminder letters and court fees. Start a couple, get a feel for the process and then do the rest over time (using the recovery from one to fund the next, etc, etc). Good luck.

The Courts will obviously appreciate that time has progressed as you've been trying to negotiate a settlement, so it's only fair that you add on any additions.

From personal experience, if you have a single default, not matter how good the rest of your finances are, you are mostly untouchable. Everything becomes more difficult to get, even secured loans. I've had two defaults in my life. The first one was unjustified and I took BMW to court to get it removed. I have just started the process again with A&L who had the barefaced cheek to default me for non-payment of their bloody penalty charges (Thick end of £5k now being claimed back). I know that you build up "points" for regularly making payments on cards/loans etc, but you need to find out why your credit rating is in the toilet first, to make sure this will eventually "clean" your rating.

Have you got your credit file from Experian? If so, what is the cause of your "poor rating"? It can be many things, but if you have an open default, adding another creditor isn't going to help... Neither will the deduction of points you get for the credit search they do when you apply.

It's on my list to do. But no experience ... yet ...

Tosspots. It seems almost stupid that they are still denying claims right upto the point that you add 8% interest and court fees. Unless a high percentage of people say "oh well, at least I tried", it's just wasting their time *and* their money. Go get 'em!

Data protect act - £10 maximum charge for as much paper as you like (or that they've got). Send the DPA letter from the templates folder and a cheque for £10. You'll get the lot. And that's the law...

It looks like it will all come down to the "subject to satisfactory refs.". Is it likely one of your ex-employers declined a reference? (you can't give bad ones - but if you decline, it's like saying "he was crap"). On the basis that they only received "satisfactory" references, you could certainly argue for unfair dismissal. Give ACAS a bell (08457 47 47 47) and see what they think. 'Course you are! But I do so hate it when employers try to muck around with staff.

Welcome Chris *waves* In reverse order; We should only be claiming back the excess bit of the charges. If it costs the bank £2 to send a letter but they charge £12 then, lawfully, you can only claim the £10 difference. But... and it's a big but, the banks point-blank refuse to say how much it actually costs. So the only option is to claim 100% of the charge and let them challenge it. So far, the banks haven't risen to the bait, preferring instead to just pay the lot. As for post-action relationship. Well, it could be tricky in your position. Were all the charges on the business account? I'm guessing you were a sole-trader, so effectively the "business" account is a personal one? Because it doesn't mean anything, I'd send the DPA request off to head-office and get your copy statements. Once you know how much is owed, you can make a better judgement - if it's £300 then you might decide it's not worth the agro. If it's £5,000 then you might decide it is! Good luck!

I nearly fell into the trap of sending nine DPA letters on the same day, before I got some common sense and just sent three. My plan is to start a new one as they get settled (just prepared one for next week!). Apart from anything else, it's the continual costs, My bundle of recorded deliveries tomorrow are going to cost £3.00 and even with just three active claims, I seem to be going to the post office every couple of days. Nine would be a living nightmare.

I've already told you I struggle with the whole interest thing! It would be a boat-load of extra cash mind.... Now where's that spreadsheet with the interest thingy...

Hiya Gaz, Couple of things; (a) What does your contract of employment/offer letter say about references - this is crucial because if it says "we offer you the job subject to complete references since forever" then you *might* be in trouble. (b) Have you been in correspondence with them since February about the witheld salary/hols etc? If yes, when was the last letter? The reason for asking is that you only have 3-months from when the "incident" occurred before making a claim to the employment tribunal. As you got sacked in February, you'd already be out of time - but if you've been writing letters/etc to resolve the issue, then the 3-months runs from when you realised you couldn't solve the problem. © Did you have a final payslip? Was this paid in full or did they withold some of it? As far as holiday money/notice is concerned, what does the contract say? (d) How long did you work for them before dismissal? Where you still in a contractual "probationary" period?

Hello Zabby *waves* Your's is a depressingly familiar story, but don't despair. Huge numbers of people on here (myself included) have taken a positive step towards stopping this sort of financial tyranny. If you don't think your charges are that high, or they don't go back too far then by all means try to get customer services to send as many recent statements as they will for free. As MJanet says, the surefire way is to send a DPA request for the last 6-years, but you will need the £10 to do this. If you've got it stuffed down a sofa somewhere, it might be the best tenner you've ever spent! Good luck.

It was £5,035.25, but somehow two of the very earliest charges got ... er ... missed off the spreadsheet... ;-)

No reply to the preliminary letter. I am so upset. LBA in the post tomorrow, answer required by 1-July.

After waiting 30-days from DPA for the copy statements, I received this morning a staggering 8cm pile of paper (about 800 sheets!)... It was only that size because each sheet contained a maximum of 11 transactions. The idiots. Anyway, after a back-breaking job of going through the pile (which included about 50 duplicate pages, for some reason), I've calculated the charges since June-2000 as a whopping £4,993.25. April 2003 was a low-point in this relationship with £520 of charges. The most I have ever been overdrawn is £850, so the costs are very disproportionate. Preliminary letter, following the BAG template, is going tomorrow by recorded delivery. Parachute? Fully deployed...

(Although I feel like I'm holding a one-person conversation...) Spoke to HFC Complaints Dept. today and explained that we needed to get a bit closer to the claim amount. The very nice lady asked what would be reasonable (and because I was feeling especially lovely) I said that £800 would do the job. Agreed without batting an eyelid! I can't believe how easy this whole process had been. Expect cheque next week. I *will* complete the survey and I *will* (promise) be ponying up my 5%.

Not telling! Not Scottish are you?

Yay! Don't forget to fill out the survey.

No need to wait. After all, having replied, they're not going to suddenly get wobbly just as the 14-days expires and send another, better reply are they? Move straight to the LBA.

New prediction : 26-June. Just over a week to go...

Out of the blue, and kinda unexpected, HFC have offered £600 in full & final settlement... I'm going to try to negotiate that up a bit closer to the £855 I'm claiming, but this is a right result! Total time from DPA to £600 offer - 1 month!

I think the law is the same, but English & Scottish law differs on the fine details of the small claims court. No idea if NI uses English law for this or if you have your own system. Maybe a phone call to your local county(?) court would answer the question? Unless somebody on here already knows the answer... Edit : And it's best to start your own thread, maybe in the General area rather than "threadjack" this one - it's less likely to be read here unless somebody is already following this thread (like me...)