Anyone?

Hopefully someone can help me understand my rights here - it is not strictly a landlord-tennant issue because I own the flat I live in, however the property is leasehold and the council is the landlord (or whatever the correct term is for this situation!). They have recently carried out some maintenance work on the communal areas and outside area of the property (it contains 4 flats). They provided the 4 owners with a breakdown of costs, totalling about £550. The vast majority of the cost (£500) was listed as being for internal and external decoration. I did not sign any agreement or anything else, but they said if there was a problem with their proposal to contact them before the work started. In principle this sounded fine to me, so I didnt say anything. When they came to do the work, all they actually did was paint our garden fence (listed as a separate expense from external decoration) and paint my front door. As you can imagine paying £500 for having my front door painted does not appeal! I have emailed the council a few times with my concerns and got nowhere. I absolutely do not intend to pay them the amount they have billed me. Of course I will happily pay for the work they have done, but to give you an idea, they charged each resident about £20 for painting the fence, and it took the painter about 2 days. Painting the front door took him 1 day so I do not see why it should cost £480 more than the fence! They also have not done various other jobs, eg ivy removal that we will be billed for, and I have seen no external decoration at all. What can I do about this? I do not have £500 to chuck away on nothing and I dont intend to pay that much for the small amount of work thats been done. Any advice gratefully received!

It's just that some of us are doing it because of a genuine sense of injustice and desire to help others in the same situation, and some of us are just interest in making money from it. Let's face it, your business relies on the existence of bank charges, yet you expect me to believe that you are fighting the good fight? Pull the other one amd drop the righteous nonsense until you're willing to fight the banks for free.

Hi beetlejuice. Over the weekend I will try to catch up and answer any questions that have gone unanswered so far.

Not sure if Lucid has sent them, but if not I will sort it when I get home.

As you say that is just plain incorrect - however should the sum of your charges exceed the negative balance of your account, then the spreadsheet will (correctly) apportion 100% of the interest paid as due to charges. That is correct. the way interest is calculated is different for each bank, so the interest incurred due to charges figure is an informed estimate. It should be pretty close bu its just not possible to get that figure 100% correct on a generic sheet. That formula uses some custom functions i wrote for the sheet. The later version of the sheet doesnt have this as I removed for Open Office compatibility. The actual formula is pretty complex. I will break it all down for you over the weekend but as I only have 20 mins till I finish work for the week I dont have time to do it now. If you want to have a look in the mean time, you will need to refer to the hidden column N on the Charges & Interest tab which is where the meat lies: =IF(-'Charges & Interest'!H20*('Charges & Interest'!I20+VLOOKUP('Charges & Interest'!G20,'Charges & Interest'!$B$20:$E$771,4,TRUE)-'Charges & Interest'!I20+'Charges & Interest'!J20)/('Charges & Interest'!I20+'Charges & Interest'!J20)>'Charges & Interest'!H20,'Charges & Interest'!H20,-'Charges & Interest'!H20*('Charges & Interest'!I20+VLOOKUP('Charges & Interest'!G20,'Charges & Interest'!$B$20:$E$771,4,TRUE)-'Charges & Interest'!I20+'Charges & Interest'!J20)/('Charges & Interest'!I20+'Charges & Interest'!J20)) This is the part that actually estimates how much interest was paid due to charges. To be perfectly honest I would not bother replying just yet. Get your head round how it works first (i will try to explain it well). Even then in your reply I would reiterate that your calculations, although meticulous, are those of a layperson, and should they wish to provide more accurate figures you will be happy to review them. I'll update over the weekend with more info

Funny, I remember pointing this out to you (as did plenty of others) a few months back. Still i suppose it took a qualified legal professional for the message to have any effect. Oh the irony.

No the end result will be less people's money finding it's way to unqualified cowboys instead of actual legal professionals. Anyone who doesn't want to claim themselves can easily employ a solicitor rather than some chancer who doesn't know what he's doing (as so aptly demonstrated by yourself in the first post of this thread ).

Somebody shake that Judge's hand.

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No you are quite right thanks, somehow I managed to undo copying that formula down before I saved New version is below: Download CC v1.1

Right, the sheet is below: Download v1.0 BE WARNED! I have not tested this as much as I would like. The interest paid on interest section is not as accurate as I would like due to the varying ways credit cards work. I will be working on this, but for now its not 100%. It should be as accurate as the existing sheets, but I dont claim it's as accurate as it could or should be. If you are not claiming interest owed on interest, then there should be no problem. The contractual interest on the charges themselves should be as accurate as the bank charges sheet. Feel free to use this sheet, but do so at your own risk! If you do find any problems with it please let me know.

Hi Tracie, It depends on what their conditions of settlement were. Why don't you post up the conditions they made sot hat we can see what you have signed. They may not have made that condition - you never know. Lucid EDIT: Sorry I've just seen that I've posted as Mindzai but it is Lucid

Excellent! Well done elsinore! and congrats on the granddaughter too

It is ready, however I'm not happy about making it available yet. It works out the sums as accurately as the existing sheets, but I'm not sure that this is really accurate enough. However making it more accurate is easier said than done because there are so many different rules for the various cards concerning things such as balance transfers, interest rates on purchases vs cash etc.

Yes, however the spreadsheet takes this into account for you. The reason you enter interest charged each month is because from the first time you are charged, a portion of your interest may be caused by the charges, even if you were not charged in that month. The spreadsheet takes into account the fact that your charges may or may not exceed your balance/overdraft limit and adjusts accordingly. All you need to do is enter the interest you have been charged each month from the date of your first charge. No! The spreadsheet will adjust to your computer’s regional settings. If your computer’s region is set to USA then it will deal with dates in the US format. Most people’s will be set to UK, and so it will deal with dates in the English format. I would suggest you check your PCs regional settings and adjust it to UK if you are having problems with dates, because it will be system wide not limited to Excel (or this spreadsheet) so you should probably sort it anyway. It’s under Control Panel.

If you've sent the letter I would personally stick to it, however the chances of them properly reading it, let alone discussing it with you are slim so it will probably make no difference if you just file the claim as originally intended. Like I say though, in order to stay completely come-back free I would personally now wait the extra 14 days you have given them.

If you need to calculate 8% simple, my sheet linked by bill above also does this if you are having problems getting hold of vamps ones.

Not that anyone asked for my opinion, but I would disagree with the above. Say you are owed £3000 (for example) including contractual interest, of which £1500 is charges (A) + interest paid on those charges (B), and £1500 is contractual interest on A+B. If the bank refund £1500 charges and interest paid on charges, that does not mean that proceeding to court would be to reclaim contractual interest only imo. They have paid £1500, but the total sum owed as of the date of the claim is £3000. If you proceed to court for the other £1500 therefore, you are not just reclaiming the contractual interest, you are claiming back 50% of A, 50% of B, and 50% of the contractual interest. That seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable way to allocate the £1500 against the total amount owed. However that's just my opinion, and I hesitate to even post it as certain people seem to be getting a lot of hassle for having an opinion that disagrees with certain site mods, regardless of how researched and sensible it is .

Lloyds time for complying with the Judge's order was up yesterday. we haven't received anything, so we will be posting this today:

Well done elsinore :D :D

It's finished, I just need to test it properly but I've been very busy the last few days. No, add interest for every month whether you were charged in that month or not. I would put in your balance before anything was taken, but to be honest it is only an educated guess at the interest owed on interest anyway, so it probably doesn't make to much difference either way.

I don't want to confuse things, but when you are preparing to file a claim, you can change this date ti the date you will file on and it will work out your charges/interest into the future up to that date - just so you don't have to wait till the day you file to get it printed!

Yes that would certainly make sense. You would have to make sure you have written to them telling them this though so you can rely on it later.

I wouldn't do that personally. The interest alone they may well argue about, and may be succesfull. The charges + interest, no chance, they just don't want to defend those in Court. I would send them a letter declining the whole lot, telling them to either pay the rest or have it gone from your account in 7 days.