Martin, I wish you luck with your claim,man. Thanks for this thread. I am just going to start claim for business account and one for personal as well. I know a lot about personal but I was a bit worried about the business one. By reading your thread I am much more encouraged. I know that all circumstances are different, but I can see on your case that determination goes a long way. Thanks again, man and I am looking forward to join you in giving hope to others.

Thanks again for your answer and link, Johnny. I know about personal accounts so much as I already went to court before and won! After the last case I behaved, but last October our child benefit stopped without warning and I did not noticed what happened until statement arrived. At that moment it was already too late as we were short of £178 on ChB and went overdrawn (the bank let us go overdrawn £160, but of course applied charges and took together over £300 from other incomes - in addition to £160 they took another £150 on charges). It went on every month until January this year, we were short on ChB and in addition on charges. After we had no heating for one week in freezing weather I threatened ChB office that I will go to ombudsman as we have no money for oil and there is frost on the walls in our home. 2 days after that I received letter with apology and next day all money was in account. But the charges made the real problem. In fact nearly whole ChB which arrived in January was already swallowed by charges! If not the charges we would be able to manage, sort of. Afterwards, in March I lost work and again went overdrawn. I've got no benefit as my former employer did not send P45 in time and Job Centre refused my application. Few weeks later I've got new job but being again overdrawn, the charges are still killing me. Yesterday I had call from bank and decided that I had enough. They put me and my family in misery and they are having none of it and trying to intimidate me. Enough is enough. Now they will get their own medicaments to try. I will not stay still and watch another chunk of my hard earned money to be swallowed by them. Sorry for being so harsh here but I am REALLY P!$$£d 0f. At least I know what to do .

Hi Merky, as SilverFox stated you should move your money away. I know, I was there few years ago. And in fact I am doing this again right now. Go get the new account. Any basic account with direct debit facility and standing orders is good. You don't have to get new overdraft. But DO NOT LET NEW BANK TO CHANGE ALL FOR YOU. Because they may pay your overdraft and you will be where you started. It will take bit of work from you but its not so difficult to contact your suppliers with new account details and set new direct debits. After you will have your salary in new account, you will have back your power. Until then the bank has power over you. Wish you luck

Hallo everybody. I just registered today and read a lot trough the forum. Already downloaded letters making sure that I saved them as bus or pers, respectively, to avoid confusion when sending them out. Thanks to this forum and my previous experience I am pretty sure, what I have to do with personal account. Send letters in sequence |=>PDA=>preliminary=>before action | - get responses refusing settlement and take matter to the court. In meantime I already got new account (actually old one I did not use for few years, but I checked - its working and the bank is only happy to get me back on board). I wonder if they forgot that I claimed from them £800 back in 2006 and was awarded over £900 by court in early 2007?. Anyway I will transfer all income, direct debits and standing orders to them. When that will be done I will send another letter to HSBC stating that I will not put any funds on the account as the overdraft facility is slightly bellow my claim. Furthermore I will advise them, that they may not charge any other interests, close account or put default into my credit file as the account is now in legal dispute. All these actions will result into me having nearly all my money even before going to court (by not paying the overdraft back). Plus after test case will finish I will get some nice interest and the rest of charges. This part is easy enough. However I am not so sure about business account. Taking in account development of Test Case, I can not see what are exactly my legal grounds to get charges from business account (it's Ltd. company). Anyone can advise? Thanks upfront P.S.: I will send business letters anyway, they would not do any harm, do they? However what to do, when court stage will come?