Well, it's been a while since I last posted and we have moved on a few stages since then too!! We've now received a copy of the bank's AQ and yes, no surprise, they have ticked for a one month's stay. We have our response letter ready to send to them stating that the bank has previously refused to enter into any further discussions and that they stated that their last letter was their final response so we are now somewhat bemused by them asking for further time to negotiate? (You all know the letter I'm referring to ;-) ) Anyway, we're a little unsure about one thing they have done on their AQ ..... they have said that there will be 1 expert that they will be calling upon?????? Is this normal as we haven't heard anyone else mention it around here before? Is this something new, or just the same old, same old? We'll keep you posted how things go for us - I've just downloaded the court bundle from your templates library (my, what a lot of paper and ink is required...... good job I can get the missus to print it off in work :grin: ) I know it's a little early for this yet as we're nowhere near a court date yet, but I'm sure we'll be notified of one soon enough! Your thoughts are welcomed, as always re the expert witness bit.

We submitted our N1 yesterday having followed the template specifically and with regards to claiming interest, we were advised to re-read leaflet "hmcs EX302" specifically page 5 - "interest" Apparently at least 1 claim may have been rejected recently (interest part only) by a county court (not specifically a 'bank charges' case) due to incorrect wording for the claiming of interest. We had used: 5 c) Interest pursuant to the section 69 County Courts Act as set out on the attached list of charges or at such a rate and for such periods as the court deems just. Is not correct according to leaflet "hmcs EX302" page 5 'Interest' Which reads: The claimant claims interest under section 69 of the County Courts Act 1984 at a rate of 8% a year, from [date when the money became owed to you] to [the date you are issuing the claim] of £ [put in the amount] and also interest at the same rate up to the date of judgement or earlier payment at a daily rate of (enter the ammount of interest] Now bear in mind that if your claiming multiple amounts over a long period of time the wording does not cover this. Furtunatley Mrs USSFF thinks on her feet and had already been tracking our daily rate of interest at **pence per day (which women doesn't?) so amended the N1 to read: The claimant claims interest under section 69 of the County Courts Act 1984 at a rate of 8% a year, from [date when the 1st charge you are claiming from] to [the date you are issuing the claim] of £ [put in the amount] and also interest at the same rate up to the date of judgement or earlier payment at a daily rate of (enter the ammount of interest] ...with schedule attached to clarify matters, letters from both parties etc.... We will let you know!

Its interesting that this thread started in June... and encouraging that they have not changed tactics yet! ...and yup - we've had pretty much the template standard responses through September - N1 was completed and presented this week!

I'm now wondering if we should have BOTH signed each letter to the bank? Any thoughts?

I've been 'tuning up' on the claim front, and we are pretty sure that we will go with the N1 and do it the old fashioned way mmm... should we both sign up or just me? :-? But having just been "around the houses" this last week with Lloyds over 'seperate profiles' on joint accounts I'm suddenly wondering if we have a dropped the ball? We (Mr & Mrs) are claiming bank charges from both our joint accounts. Our Prelim letter to the bank was written with BOTH account numbers from a joint 'Mr & Mrs address block' and edited to read as 'we' or 'our' where applicable, signed by me (Mr), Lloyds to date have been writing back to Mr - The LBA was signed by my wife as I was away, but still applied as if in joint names. I'm now wondering if we should have BOTH signed each letter to the bank?

Update: LLoyds response to our prelim was to ask for two weeks to investigate: We responded with "OK you can have two weeks." We were working on the basis that if we give them 14 days in a prelim letter and they answer back - "We hope to resolve this and will be in touch in 2 weeks..." Then WHEN we end up in court, we did all we could to assist the bank. Of course we got the brush off after 8 days, it was their final response on the matter! But have stuck to 2 weeks from the date of their first response to the Prelim letter. Because they have given us their final response, we have added interest (at 8%) to our schedule (and the £125 Lloyds has charged us since we started) because I'm sure we now both expect to be in court. LBA sent 15 Sept, clock is ticking until we register our N1 at court... and the claim is getting bigger each day

We were struggling in June and sent the cards/cheque book back for 1 of our accounts which was around £250 over the £100 limit with a nice letter and a suggested plan of £42 a month before they wrote to us! That Month Lloyds tried 3 or 4 times to get hold of us on the phone... we were worried but eventually we connected, and to my surprise they wanted to offer us a cheaper home/buildings insurance deal - we already had a Lloyds policy underwritten by Royal & Sun Alliance - but they had gone down another avenue and could save us £80 a year, which considering the problems we were having would help a lot. We don’t have to do anything – just agree over the phone and they would cancel the existing ones and move us over. At the end of June Mrs USSFF ended up on the phone with the collections dept who agreed a payment plan of (surprise) £42 per month with the overdraft made official now nearly £400 and there being no more penalties (except interest) as long as we stuck to the plan and didn’t access the account. Now I had a good pay that month and we could have hammered it almost to nothing, it was destined for holiday money, but we would do it! She was advised by the collections dept that it wasn’t necessary, keep the cash and enjoy our holiday because the plan was absolutely fine and the bank was happy. Early August and our statement arrived and we noticed a further £125 in charges due on Sept 1st - taking us well over the agreed limit?? So I made the second call to the collections department.... They were very sorry but the advisor had not taken advanced charges into account when setting up the '10 month plan' that we had incurred during June - we had no choice in this, the charges were legitimate, so they shoved the limit £596 to include the charges. We had been at £350 OD 6 weeks before when we sent the Card/Cheque book back???? Action was needed, so having seen Trevor on TV! Accessed here – open a Parachute account and prelim letter sent 21st Aug! They respond with “Please give us 2 weeks to investigate” on 31st Aug. In the mean time Royal & Sun Alliance are close to defaulting out credit agreements and adversely marking our credit rating for cancelling our DD’s for insurance! Now that was another 2 phone calls all on their own, which worked out fine – but was the result of very BAD advice from our Lloyds TSB branch!!! Sept 7th arrives and so does our statement - we have another £30 OD excess charge due to go out in Oct!! But we've not used the Account since June... So I'm firm, calm(ish) and talking to a lady at the collections dept, that tells me not to worry the charge will not take us over the agreed limit when its applied, so not to worry! Your having a laugh says I - WHY has the charge arrived at all? Having been put on hold she comes back with, don't worry sir on this occasion we will cancel the charge... To which I thank her and ask "What was the charge for?" HOLD again... Then I'm told that when the plan was re-set up in August - advance charges were not taken into consideration and... at this point I stopped her flat! We haven't used the account since JUNE, AGAIN What was the charge for because I'm baffled and would like to avoid the possibility of calling again next month! She starts to fluster and cannot answer the question, puts me on hold and her supervisor takes over. Now I'm told that this matter will be delt with seriously because only 1 of our profiles on our joint account was altered on the second phone call - I was not exceeding the limit but my wifes profile on the joint account was being charged because the bank charges of £125 had put her side of the account over the limit! Before I could gasp - I was told that there would be no charge, a credit of £35 for the inconvenience and a serious reprimand would be issued and that this would be followed up in writing. He also agrees that the only recent management happening on the account is down to us not Lloyds! So then I asked WHY our OD limit shown on our statement was due renewal on Sept 28th 2006 - I was assured we had a 10 month plan on their computer and to ignore my statement, to which I answered - Had I have done that over the last 2 months we would be having a very different conversation!!!! Finally he agreed that the plan was in place and would again be set out in writing... What we actually got from the collections dept today was our "banks final response letter" LBA is just about ready!

Well we got the final response from the bank today - as per previous members here - dated 9 days after the, "investigation" letter. ...and of course they have nothing to offer. We have however, started to fall foul on 1 of our 2 accounts and mounting charges - miss communications etc. on an account with a payment plan on! Including a charge that they have just had to withdraw as it was applied due to the banks error! We're off shopping now - I'll post details later

Interest at 8% adds up to £412.41 for both accounts to date - this is actually a lot more than I first estimated Can you please advise if I can still push to claim for this now - my LBA is due to be sent tomorrow (Monday 4th September) if I am going to ignore their "standard" response received on Friday and could do with knowing whether a) to include this sum? b) is four years correct? c) can we do two accounts with one LBA? Basically my LBA would be based around "you had your chance to sort this out.... now you've got to cough up including interest blah, blah" Many thanks.

Here is the letter that we received from the Birmingham Customer Service Recovery Centre on 1st September dated 31st August 2006, in direct response to our prelim letter dated 21st September and posted to our branch in Sleaford Lincolnshire. This seems to be a lot less aggressive than letters received by others like Mindzai & Lucid. We notice that M & L gave modified figures in their LBA as per my previous post, now that I understand more about the interest charges, can I include these in my LBA or is it too late to ask for this money? With regard to Lucid's comment above, regarding sticking to our deadline of 14 days, the letter we have received (in our eyes) does seem to be positive?? (Especially in comparison to how you're being dealt with!! :o ) Should we give them their 2 weeks and be seen to enter into a successful dialogue with the bank (which Bankfodder has consistently advised)? Obviously we expect to be blown out of the water with a big "NO" but then I'd like to respond with our LBA including interest at 8% and charges received since 21st August (date of our prelim) - does this sound reasonable?

I have completely mis-interpretted the "interest" factor in all of this having read back again through other posts and now looked at your spreadsheet for calculating interest at 8% against each of the unfair charges. I am going back to the drawing board and will see what the total amount adds up to.

Interesting Birmingham???? We sent our Prelim letter to our branch (21 August), the response came 10 days later from 125 Colmore Row Birmingham, signed Janet Burns - Assistant Manager. ...wonder if the 2 weeks has anything to do with Mindzai & Lucid's case LOL

Well done RTS - I'm just at the start of what looks to be a pain of a procedure that just has to fly its course - but following your path has proved its worth the work involved - thanks for the boost!

3 questions before we proceed. 1 - Can't find a reason why 6 years is the limit that everyone is going for. We have only gone back 4 years on our schedule with the Prelim letter, because that's all the online system had to offer - is this a problem? Should we have requested copies statements for the further 2 years - total 6? I'm not sure that the extra 2 years would make much of a financial difference to us - as I was earning pretty good money back then, its only since my redundancy in Dec 2002 that things got tough and our charges went through the roof. Just wondering if we only claim 4 that we will get nailed in court for a technical error? 2 - We have 2 accounts - both well over 6 years old, both joint accounts. One is actually 20+ years old and was just in my name when I opened it. After I married Mrs ussff (19+ years) it became joint and the second one was opened in joint name sometime after. I have noticed that claimants are breaking down multiple accounts with seperate actions - we stuck both accounts on the one letter and enclosed a schedule that showed both accounts. Is that a problem/technicality that could lose us the claim? 3 - The figure for just DD refusals and overdraft excess fee's is over £3k in 4 years - from both the accounts, so thats what the prelim letter claimed. It would be nearly impossible to seperate the interest incurred soley due to bank charges - But I do know there were months that started a snowball rolling with a previous months charges putting us in the red - several DD's failing, 6 days later salary arrives - DD's clear and we have £210 in DD refusals hitting us next month plus the overdraft excess fee... which just got right out of hand. Should I get out a calculator? There is about £900 in interest to wade through - but both accounts did have agreed overdraft facilities on them for most of the 4 year period with legitimate interest charges. Again have we fell short of the total claim and risked losing it? I'll be honest the % of the £900 interest that is due to charges will be small fry to the +£3k in DD refusals and OD excess fees that we would be happy to see back. We are just a bit worried that before we decide to launch the LBA that we have already messed this up - either by not going for the full 6 years + valid interest or the combination letter.

Reply received... Moving over to the LloydsTSB forum here we go...