Might do that. I agree to settle for the whole amount. How does that sound?

To be honest, never had so much trouble over such a small amount. Looks like they're just dragging it on as long as possible in the hope I'm going to go away..

Right then. I just did some quick number crunching on the redemption charge, and what would happen if it went to Court.

The charge itself is £4388.36. Interest from the date it was charged until today is £266.46, and will increase at 97p a day until date of judgement or sooner etc. Court fee is £120, so the grand total of the claim would be £4774.82.

They've got four days until the 14 day LBA deadline expires, and I need to find £120. Hmmm..

Guess what? They had until the end of today to file a defence. And they just have, according to Moneyclaim.

Got to wait for it to materialise now, along with confirmation of the transfer from Northampton to my local Court.

Well I've just put the claim details into Moneyclaim, and it's currently sitting at £947.29 (£745.50 of charges, £121.79 of interest and £80 court fee).

They've got til Tues or Weds before I push the button to submit the claim.

Sounds fine to me. Why would they withdraw the offer? They'd be stupid to do that. Notice how their letters don't have 'without prejudice' on there? Nor should your reply. If they cause any trouble or mess you around, you can take that lot in court and explain to the judge they're deliberately wasting court time by making offers then withdrawing them. Most judges would take a dim view of that..

If you state in full and final settlement you will loose the right to any further claim you should state uncondionally

Mmm, but I am doing F&F in respect of one claim, which I believe I made more than clear in my letter to them (just in case it gets queried in the future).

What they wanted me to sign was:

"I accept £772.00 in full and final settlement of all matters related to my complaint and any claim against Birmingham Midshires, Halifax, or any of their subsidaries, directors, officers or employees in any way connected with"

Which I'm sure you'd agree is complete nonsense, and would throw any future rights completely out the window.

Yep, here goes:

Mortgage Account Number: XXXXXXXXXXXX

Your reference: XXXXXXXXX

 

Thank you for your letter of [DATE OF OFFER LETTER].

 

I accept £[AMOUNT] in full and final settlement of my request for refund of charges levied to my mortgage account as set out in my letters of [YOUR PRELIM LETTER DATE] and [YOUR LBA LETTER DATE], and can confirm that providing this payment is received in cleared funds within the next 14 days, no further action will be taken over this matter.

 

My account details are as follows:

 

[YOUR BANK ACCOUNT DETAILS]

 

Alternatively, a cheque for the full amount will be acceptable.

 

Yours sincerely, etc

You are basically accepting the amount - and nothing else. You're laying out the terms, and referring back to your initial letters just in case at a later stage there is any doubt exactly what complaint you're settling.

Hope that helps

14 days from the LBA is up today. And today, I received another letter.

Sorry you've felt the need to make a complaint, etc etc. From 'Jayne Jones' at the Smile Complaints team. Pretty much word for word as I got from Lee Saunders a while back.

Moneyclaim going in on Tues/Weds, as I'm going to give them a few more days.

OK, so Monday is D-Day?

I was wondering-could I issue a claim for the late payment charges in Northern ireland,and use an address in England to go to moneyclaim in order to go after the ERC and the product swap fee?

You could do I suppose. Of course the question might be asked why you're doing that, and your answer is 1. it's two separate cases, and 2. the NI limit forces you to do the ERC/product swap one in England.

Remind me, did you put them down in one complaint or two? How long ago did your LBA(s) expire? Sorry, but saves me straining my brain having to find it in the thread

I know it was discussed that their DPA screw up was a bargaining chip, but I wonder whether it's making your complaint more complicated? BM have caved in to my penalty charges refund request this morning, but refused the redemption penalty charge refund request (see my thread).

Reams of paperwork this morning from Birmingham Midshires.

Firstly, a letter about my penalty charges. I had previously sent a 7 day prelim and 7 day LBA, which expired yesterday. The claim was ready to go on Monday morning, but today I got a letter.

The basics are that they are not going to 'uphold my complaint', and under the T&Cs of my mortgage contract they have the power to recover costs that are incurred in taking appropriate action to recover all or part of the mortgage debt.

I'll quote the next bit, as it's quite interesting.

However, as we cannot guarantee that we included a copy of our leaflet 'Fees for additional mortgage services' with your original mortgage agreement, we will, as a gesture of goodwill, recredit the charges we added to your account which amount to £772.00.

It then goes on to say they appreciate I'm going to be disappointed over this decision, they do take complaints very seriously, etc etc.

Disappointed? I'm quite pleased actually. I wanted £772 refunded, and to all intents and purposes I've got it. They want me to sign a piece of paper that waives all my rights to claim anything ever against BM, Halifax, and pretty much anyone else on the planet - which I'm not going to sign. However, I will write a letter confirming their offer on my terms - not theirs.

Second, quite a bulky letter about the redemption penalty. Included was a copy of my mortgage approval letter from 2003, along with some apparent T&Cs and product details. Anyway, the letter says they're unable to uphold my complaint, etc. Lots of bits from the template letter about penalty charges.

In 11 days the redemption LBA runs out. After two letters they still haven't explained how they calculated my redemption charge, so I believe that is enough grounds to press on with the action.

Confirmation from DG Solicitors this morning that they'll be crediting the whole amount to my bank account within the next day or so - which is impressive as I don't think I've ever told them where I bank nowadays. Anyway, a quick fax sorted that.

So I guess that's it. I won. Whoop Just waiting for the money now..

It's not too difficult to change the service address with Moneyclaim, just give them a call. Then call them again 24 hours later just in case they forgot to do it. Also might be worth calling 3-4 days later to make sure they remembered what you said about reminding them when you called the second time. They can be a bit forgetful sometimes, from previous experience.

Also I'd recommend Royal Mail redirection. Takes a little while to get going, but worth having - plus not hugely expensive.

Slightly later than shown in some listing magazines, but..

Claim for £1060 plus £98.53 interest and daily rate of 23p made this evening. Total (including court fee of £120) £1278.53

PS: and to get your claim listed (you don't have to, but it's nice to see it up in lights so to speak) on the site, just PM a moderator.

wooohooo my first claim of many down, completed...almost.... can someone please direct me where to look for what to do next??

 

oh and do i put my claim no on the site somewhere dont i??

 

 

jade ;-) ;-)

Here's what happens next.

MCOL will issue your claim from Northampton County Court, if all goes according to plan, tomorrow morning. They'll post it, and then five days later it'll be 'deemed to be served' - ie the defendent would have received it. It's supposed to be less than that (it's actually set down in black and white), but MCOL can't count apparently. No really.

Once that five days is up, they have 14 days to file either a defence, or an acknowledgement of service. That AOS gives them a further 14 days before they have to enter a defence. Whatever happens, the maximum time they have is 28 days from the date of service to file a defence.

Hopefully by that time you'll get a letter from DG Solicitors offering you the full amount in return for your silence forever more. Tell them to sod off on the confidentiality (unless you want to take it), and if the offer is right take it. Then you should contact MCOL and withdraw the claim (assuming you've got your money and it's cleared).

That's the gist of it..

"been a long day" i hear on that one

It's only Tuesday, but feels like Friday.. which means tomorrow will feel like Monday, and so it goes on!

thanks for that. everything done and ive taken the charges without interest and multiplied them gave me 0.1122 so is that 11p per day then??

Yep.

Tidy up the formatting, and pull it all together so it looks like one whole paragraph. The site is particularly fussy about number of lines as well. Also I've shortened your claim slightly, see below..

I had a bank account with HSBC xxxxxxx conducted on their standard terms and conditions.I am claiming return of money taken by the defendant in way of charges between Feb 02 and Apr 03, total £510.

These charges are a disproportionate penalty and therefore unenforcable as they are contrary to a common law. Further,as a disproportionate penalty they are invalid under the unfair(contracts) terms Act 1977 s4 and under the Unfair terms in consumer contracts regulations 1999 para8 and sch2(1)e.In the event the charges are not a penalty then they are unreasonable within the meaning of the supply of goods and services act 1982 s15. I have repeatedly asked the bank to justify their charges but they have declined to do so. I also claim interest under section 69 of the county courts act 1984 at the rate of 8% a year from 7/2/02 until 8/8/06 of £155.57 and also interest at the same rate up to the date of judgement or earlier payment at a daily rate of 11p

the rate of interest x 0.00022 =0.0342254 how am i supposed to put this in there. 34p??

 

??????

There's four figures you need to work out for your claim.

[1] Total of all your bank charges.

[2] Interest at 8% from the date they began to today on 1. (your spreadsheet should have worked that out).

[3] Court fee

[4] Daily interest rate

The total claim amount is [1]+[2]. Put that on your particulars of claim. Then the interest [4] is [1] x 0.00022. If it's come out at 0.0342254 then [4] is 3.42p a day, but round it down for simplicity. [edit: I can't count this evening, have fixed it now!]

The grand total will work itself out automatically as [1]+[2]+[3]. [4] isn't included in the claim itself as it will increase day by day, and thus won't be a fixed claim. That causes untold trouble, and confuses the hell out of Court staff (especially if you work in Brentford County Court, where I had the pleasure of being today sorting something else out).

Hi Thunderpuss2k,

Thats that cleared up, so basicaly if I loose I have to pay their costs, what a bummer! It won't put me off though as I feel just in my cause.

Regards,

Chris

What's the exact claim figure MINUS the 8% County Courts Act interest? That's what's used to figure out what track it belongs in. Of course whether the Moneyclaim website knows that, I doubt it.. so if your actual claim is under £5k and it's just the interest bumping it up to the figure you've given (a long shot I know, but worth asking!) you might have to resort to an N1 form down your local County Court.

Besides, it's not always automatic that you pay the other sides costs - it's at the judges discretion. Also, as far as I know out of all the cases, hardly any bank has gone all the way to an actual Court hearing - so you're safe for the mo.

just do it in two lots once one is done a dusted start an other, don't do them both at the same time as the judge could stick them together

There is that possibility, or your bank could apply for them both to be heard together. Whatever you do though, if you're going to separate them and you get to the stage where you're about to settle out of court, BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SIGN! Some banks try to get you to waive all future rights to take legal action. That in itself could be ruled illegal, but just something to bear in mind.

Cool, Wales comes under the same laws as England with regard to the County Court system so all fine.

Small claims, fast and multi are just different 'tracks' - of the County Court system. Small claims is up to £5k, Fast between £5k and £15k, and Multi £15k and above. Also has to do with how long a case will take to hear. Small claims is actually quite unique from the other two as it has it's own special provisions for awarding costs, and can be almost thought of as a 'court within a court'.

Sure I've raised more questions than I've answered, but to go back to my original point, your £9k+ claim would be fast track. By doing so you'd lose the protection of the small claims track where either party pays their own costs, and costs aren't usually awarded to either side against the other.

Not sure where you live, but re: the 'County Court limit'.. Small claims track limit is £5k in England & Wales. No idea about Scotland, and I know it's lower in NI. Above £5k the sky's theoretically the limit, but you're getting into the world of fast track and multitrack.