Right then. You know that post I made a while back with what you should put in your 'particulars of claim'? That's what needs to go in the box. The purpose of your spreadsheet is to detail every single charge transaction, the date it occured, how much it was for, and then it'll automatically work out the days since the money was debited and how much interest at 8% you're owed under the County Courts Act. You shouldn't have had these in there in the first place Lets go back a few steps here.. what did you send with your preliminary letter and LBA? It should have been a copy of said spreadsheet. The total interest you're claiming is the total of the interest column between the date of the first charge and the date you put the claim in, then a daily rate of whatever your claim is (not including the court fees and the interest!) multiplied by 0.00022. Round that up or down to something sensible so you have xx pence or xx.xx pounds, and that goes into the bit about interest at the end. I think that should help. Hopefully! Been a long day so sorry if it's not too clear - but just shout if you need it explained a bit more.

Sorry, got cut short by an emergency trip to feed someones cat Will post properly after I've had some food and stuff, back in a bit

Well done! Did you get any other correspondence previous to the offer letter?

No you don't cut and paste it in to the little box, it wouldn't fit anyway

Course it can, but why would you want to do that? Be strong, the force is with you, etc.

Got a very strange letter this morning from BM.. Interesting. What was step 1, ignore me completely? It appears that they're referring to a previous response they've given, which I haven't had the pleasure of reading as I haven't heard anything from them until this point. I am, however, quite impressed. After nearly four weeks, and four different letters, they got the letter they refer to yesterday, responded yesterday, posted it yesterday, and I got it today. Why couldn't they have done that with any of the other letters? I could reply, but there's no point. I've made myself clear in the LBA what my timetable is - 21st August is the deadline for a response before I take legal action to recover the redemption penalty.

Jesus christ though, 400 SARs? I had enough work on my plate dealing with 10 or so.. Anyway, sorry to hear it's all gone a bit wonky. Any news today?

This is it.. I've sent four letters now since mid-July, all four confirmed delivered. Have I heard anything? Nope. Not even a confirmation that they've got any of my letters, or they're looking into either of my two requests.

Never got a response to that letter, so pushing forward with Moneyclaim this afternoon.

14 day LBA re: redemption charge signed for today, so they've got until 21st August to unconditionally accept my request for a refund.

Right, to cut a long story short here's what's been happening the last week or so. Somewhere along the line, a duplicate claim was issued. I phoned up Moneyclaim literally seconds after pushing the button, they took all my details, and promised to cancel the duplicate. Checked the next day, and two claims had been issued. Again phoned up Moneyclaim, they said 'theres nothing on the system about a second claim', and I should wait for a refund. On Friday 31st July, both claims were acknowledged. I then called Moneyclaim *again*, who said I'd never phoned to cancel the duplicate and they knew nothing about it. I gave them exact call dates and times, and who I spoke to (note to anyone who ever phones Moneyclaim: write these details down as you might need it!), they pulled the tapes, and after about an hour phoned back saying I was indeed right, and they'd sort everything out. Meanwhile, a letter arrived from DG Solicitors saying that they assumed one of the claims was a duplicate, and could I clarify - which I did by return post. Fast forward to last Friday. Got a letter from DG Solicitors, offering to settle the full amount - including court costs and the 8% interest, ex-gratia, no admission of liability, etc. Only issue is they wanted me to sign a confidentiality agreement. I replied, advising that I'm happy to accept the settlement but I'm not going to sign a confidentiality agreement, as not only will it incur more costs on both sides to draft a proper confidentiality agreement (and not just a few words of 'I will not talk about this', as they'd put on their letter for me to sign), but also that I could not guarantee details of these proceedings would not be released by the County Court service, either under standard disclosure or the Freedom of Information Act. So there we go. More news as it happens..

8th is fine. Have you got all your figures in order and ready for making the claim?

14 days has passed since the prelim request to refund the redemption charge, so a 14 day LBA has gone in the post today. Also, the 7 day LBA re: penalty charges reached them today - even though it was posted 1st class recorded two days ago. Good ol' Royal Mail..

Well still nothing from Lloyds solicitors. What started as a simple request for £140 to be refunded is currently sitting at £180.99 (with court fees, interest to date of claim and daily interest since). They've got a week left til they have to file a defence, otherwise I can get judgement in default.. tick tick tick

Well, it's a little complicated. The Limitation Act 1980 section 5 says that the time limit for an action founded on simple contract is six years. However for a special document - which a mortgage deed falls under, as it's under seal, it's twelve years. With me so far? That's the easy bit. However, there are some further clauses in the Limitation Act 1980 about mortgages, in section 20: This means that the lender can take action to recover any capital payments for up to 12 years. However, in terms of trying to recover any arrears in interest payments, it's six years. I personally think the simple answer to your question is twelve years. Any argument that you couldn't claim interest on the charges as the interest began accruing over six years ago could be an interesting one. The County Courts Act 1984 says you're entitled to 8% interest from the date the sum began due to the date of judgement - but I'm not sure how that would be affected by the Limitation Act 1980.

Irrecoverable from their point of view yes - under English law Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Co Ltd v New Garage and Motor Co Ltd [1915] AC 79 a contractual party can only recover damages for actual or liquidated losses incurred from a breach of contract. It's similar under Scottish law, and went as far as the House of Lords - Castaneda and Others v Clydebank Engineering And Shipbuilding Co., Ltd [1904] SLT 498. This is one of the main points that you are making when you ask for your bank charges to be refunded. You ask the bank to show that the charges are fair by providing a breakdown of how they are calculated, and to what loss and expense they are put. They refuse, so you can only assume they are not actual or liquidated losses, and therefore as they are not actual or liquidated they are not recoverable under law. Or to put it another way, they can't get the money back from you. By charging you these fees it's technically theft. But don't hold me to that last bit I'll respond to everything else in the morning, it's getting late now

Back on track with this. Going to compose a letter and get it in the post tomorrow. Hopefully can nail this one down, it's going round in circles at the moment.

Which is true. Sort of. However, the OFT did say: Back to your letter.. Yes all very well and good, but it does not tell you how the charge was calculated. In the absence of this information, you can only assume that does not accurately reflect the actual costs and losses caused to them by you terminating your contract early, so by the absence of that it is a penalty - and therefore irrecoverable, etc etc. Final response? Fair enough. If they won't explain how they calculated their charges to you, as their customer, maybe they'll explain it to a District Judge? So to answer your question, yes I'd go ahead and issue a claim.

Seems to be three separate bits of information. 1. Statements. 2. Screen grabs from a Windows application, and 3. Screen grabs from a host-based terminal application. They kindly provide a large bundle of explanatory notes, which I'll try and get a chance to read through later today.

7+7 on arrears etc penalty charges yes, as it's quite straightforward - and there's no love lost between me and BM. 14+14 on the redemption penalty. 7 days on the prelim for the arrears penalty charges refund was up today, hence the LBA. 14 days for the redemption penalty up on Friday, if nothing by then I'll be popping an LBA for that in the post. So, in a nutshell, they've got til 10th August to do something about the arrears penalty charges, and 18th August for the redemption penalty.

Seven days has passed since they got the charges prelim letter, so LBA in the post today giving them another seven days before legal action.

.. which it has. Whole ream of information from Egg. Happy days..

OK cool, makes more sense now. There's a thread somewhere around here about reporting harrassment, might be worth having a read of that if you haven't already.

But you said that Egg still own the debt? What did the results of your DPA SAR from Egg reveal - was there any of the information you'd requested from CSL under s77/s78 of the Consumer Credit act in there? If you told CSL not to phone you, and they still are, then I'd write one more letter to them insisting they stop, otherwise you'll be forced to take further action.

Did Egg supply you with the documents you were after under the Consumer Credit Act? If so, why did you write to CSL asking for them? If not, you should have written the CCA request to Egg. If CSL aren't the legal owner of the debt then they'll just throw your letter in the bin. They have no statutory obligation to supply you with anything, they're just acting on Egg's behalf.