They would be in some serious trouble if they were to cause her problems for enacting her legal right to persue justice.

As the argument is the same for either, I see no reason not to claim unauthorised. If anything this holds more water in my opinion because you didn't authorise the bank to use your money. If a Judge will dismiss one, they would almost certainly dismiss both. With the prelim and LBA just stick to one rate, dont mention both and give them a choice.

yep i would have thought so.

Very commendable, so I assume your operation will be non-profit? As you maintain your motives are help people rather than extort them, I'm sure many of us on this site would happily help put together a pack containing template letters and information. Should cost no more than a few of pounds and those without computers would have no problems. I also assume you will directing anyone who does have a computer to this site as this would be easily the most cost effective way of helping as many people as possible? Incidentally in answer to your question: I would help her and then let her keep all of her money. After all, as you said, it's "rightfully theirs"

Because you are charging for something that is available for free. You are therefore taking money from people that they needn't have spent. There are thousands of people here (me included) who had absolutely no idea how to go about getting their charges back, yet every day more and more of these people are doing just that, and without being fleeced for any more of their money in the process. The whole point of the small claims process is that it is accesible to everyone without needing to enlist the help of 'professionals'. All you need is the information that is freely available here. Charging people for this information is, in my opinion, almost as bad as the banks charging £30 for an automated process. (Only 'almost' as bad as your customers would at least get something for their money, even if it is only information they could have got with a few clicks of the mouse) Incidentally I think you it is incredible patronising of you to suggest that the public require your voice in order to get the banks to listen. I think you'll probably find the banks are getting the message loud and clear.

Personally I think people making money out of this are almost as bad as the banks. This sort of information should be free.

The £5k limit doesn't include interest or court costs. A Judge may still allocate to a different track at their discression regardless of the value of the claim, but in your case it will be under £5k so it's unlikely.

You should write to them, it may speed up a full offer. You could write saying you accept the offer as partial settlement on the understanding that you will continue to claim the rest. Dont sign anything that says full and final unless it really is the full amount owed.

I was astounded by the first apology letter, I almost fell out of my chair to read they've done it again! Who says lightning doesn't strike the same place twice!

Thanks for the replies! I have drafted this letter which will be sent tomorrow in reply to their settlement offer:

It is really, but they are right, you do have to pay their true admin costs. What they fail to mention is that these costs amount to more like 50p than £30. To prove this point of their defence they will have to reveal what their true costs are, and if they did that it would mean big trouble for them

Yes, me So far the bank have offered to settle but their sums are a bit off, they have only calculated at 8% but they will pay the full amount unless they want to see me in court. People have most certainly won cases with contractual interest involved (or rather, thay have got settlements including it) but you need to be sure you read up on it before you go ahead just incase it reaches a judge - you need to be able to justify why you claimed it.

Contractual interest is the interest rate(s) set out in the contract between yourself and the bank. Normally this is what they'd charge you, but there is a strong argument that it can be applied recipricolly and you can use it to charge them in place of statutory 8% interest. Compound interest is the term used to describe a specific method of calculating interest in which at set periods the amount owed is re-calculated to include accrued interest. For example, if you borrow £100 in January with a 2% monthly interest rate, in February you will owe £100 + £2 interest = £102. This figure then becomes the basis for the next interest calculation, ie you don't pay 2% of £100, you pay 2% of £102, or £2.04. Total now owed is £104.04, and the next month you pay 2% of this and so on. As you can imagine this mounts up quicker and quicker the longer it goes on. After a year you would owe £126.80, so you can see that rather than paying 2% interest as you would think (2% x 12 months = 24% = £24), you have actually paid £26.80, or 26.8%. It gets very tricky working this out on each and every charge applied in some cases, so should you need it I have made a spreadsheet which does all the hard work for you which you can download via the link in my sig.

If you get no joy with the Google sheets you could try this one: http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/general/51736-excel-contractual-interest-spreadsheet.html

They absolutely are not within their rights to charge you. They will charge you, but they have no right to do so. This is why we are all suing them after all. To clarify, in response to the original question, they can and will charge you while action is underway, but as there is no legal basis for this you can reclaim the money back as normal.

As there seems to be some issue with signatures I'm posting this thread as a place to point to this spreadsheet: Download v1.9 It works with most versions of Excel for calculating statutory and contractual (compounded) interest and printing a scedule of charges. Any questions feel free to ask.

Im going to enjoy writing this letter! incidently we most certainly can claim back overdraft interest as it arose soley from their imposition of charges. I dont expect to see this money any time soon as like Lucid says, we will not be accepting anything less than the full amount without any conditions. Cheeky buggers they are too trying to impose conditions. Seems they need reminding who is suing who!

As a subscriber to the Banking Code they shouldn't (see section 13.6) howeer I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them. I'd ensure you write to them pointing out that carrying out this action would breach the Banking Code and enclose a s10 DPA notice. Will do absolutely no good, they will still bully you all they can, but at least you have it to prove you warned them.

I had already sent my prelim before discovering CI, I just went ahead with the adjusted LBA. I personally feel it's no big deal and hasn't made the slightest bit of difference, they fob you off just the same. The 'proper' thing to do though would be to resend the prelim. So essentially it's up to you.

Just about to leave work so I will have a look at this when I get in. A couple of people have asked for an OO version so maybe I will make that and upload. Doesnt help much for you right now though as you will have to transfer the data anyway, but remember that you can always copy & paste your charges etc from OO to Excel rather than re-typing everything .

Personally I would reject their offer and wait for them to pay out the CI, but it really depends on your own situation.

I suspect you may be using Open Office rather than Excel? I use custom functions in Excel to keep things neat, and Open Office doesn't support this, and gives the #NAME? error. I will be making an Open Office version when I get a minute. In the mean time, the following should fix the issue in Open Office. I dont have it installed on the PC I'm on so I can't tell you how to unprotect the sheet, but it will be in the menu somewhere. Get the Charges & Interest tab unprotected then follow these steps: Go to the 'Charges & Interest' tab Click in cell K21. You should see the following in the Formula Bar: =IF(ISERROR(INTONPEN),0,IF(INTONPEN Delete the above and in its place paste this: =IF(ISERROR(IF(-H21*(I21+VLOOKUP(G21,$B$21:$E$772,4,TRUE)-I21+J21)/(I21+J21)>H21,H21,-H21*(I21+VLOOKUP(G21,$B$21:$E$772,4,TRUE)-I21+J21)/(I21+J21))),0,IF(IF(-H21*(I21+VLOOKUP(G21,$B$21:$E$772,4,TRUE)-I21+J21)/(I21+J21)>H21,H21,-H21*(I21+VLOOKUP(G21,$B$21:$E$772,4,TRUE)-I21+J21)/(I21+J21))H21,H21,-H21*(I21+VLOOKUP(G21,$B$21:$E$772,4,TRUE)-I21+J21)/(I21+J21)))) (you can see why I used custom functions to keep this neat!) Place the cursor over the little square handle in the bottom right of the box that highlights the currently selected cell. The cursor should change to a cross to indicate it is in the right place. Then left-click and drag down to fill the formula in all the other rows. Go down as many rows as you need, it doesnt matter if you go too far. Depending on whether you have already filled the rest of your sheet in, you may see the figures or you may see nothing. You should see figures in any row that is filled in and nothing in for the other rows. Let me know if you get any problems.

Go to Tools > Protection > Unprotect Sheet Go to Tools > Options then click on the 'View' tab. Tick the box that says 'Row and Column Headers' towards the bottom, then click OK. Resize the columns containing the ###### symbols. You can do by right clicking the column header (the actual letter at the top of each column) and selecting 'Column Width' then entering 10 in the box. You can also just drag 'the column to the right size. You will need to adjust columns D and K on the 'Charges & Interest' tab, and column C on the 'C. Interest (Daily)' tab. Remember you will need to repeat steps 1-2 for each tab. It might be an idea to reprotect the sheets afterwards by going to Tools > Protection > Protect Sheet. I set it up so that only the cells that require input are clickable just because its very easy to accidentally type over a formula. Ive checked the sheet still prints OK so you should be good once you've made these changes. I will adjust the sheet to reflect these changes so anyone else with big claims doesn't run into the same problem

No that wouldn't apply for you - just leave it blank or put a 0 in there.

Hi Sorry for the lack of updates, after a 6 week battle to get a broadband tag removed we'll finally be able to get off dial up and start posting more regularly again. At the moment things are relatively quiet. Lloyds have stopped phoning me after I informed them that doing so every day amounts to harrasment and if they don't stop I'll report them. They are now shifting their atention onto Lucid who has the same letter ready to post as of Monday. I will post this letter in the next couple of days in case it is of any use. Lloyds have still not supplied me with my original contract (wonder why, maybe it doesn't mention these fabled 'service charges'!) or any of my recordings as per the S.A.R - (Subject Access Request). Their time for compliance with this is now well and truly up, so I will be sending them the following letter on Monday, and preparing to lodge a claim and a complaint to the Information Commissioners Office should they not comply. Obviously that contract will only work in my favour so I really want to get my hands on that. Aside from this, I have been preparing my case. So far I have broken down their defence point by point and countered everything they say. I don't know if this is the correct approach, I still need to read up on how to actually present my case, but at the moment I'm just trying to build up an arsenal of information. I feel I've got all points of their defence covered after reading alot of the info posted by other members of the site, although I'm going to keep preparing as much as I can. I will post up my current counter to Lloyds defence shortly. I recommend anyone who has a court date to start preparing for the day, doing so has really cemented in my mind just how wrong they are in the eyes of the law to be acting the way they are. It also makes you feel much better about their defence, which at first glance seems pretty convincing. When you get right down to it though, you can really tell they're just clutching at straws. People on this site have done so much work, there's a wealth of info out there. Although I'd rather have my money back with as little hassle as possible, part of me is actually hoping they forget to settle or something so I can get them in court! Finally I have written to SC&M as they have requested time to settle pointing out I'm ready and willing to do so. I really dont expect anything to come from this as we all know this is just another tactic engineered to put claimants off, but it's something to show the judge at least: