Received letter from lloyds over the weekend. the standard response stating the bank will not be changing its position etc, will not be refunding charges. So, on to next step now through the courts. Will read the FAQ's again before i do this to make sure i get it right.

Hi Yasmin, you're doing better than me with this bunch. So far they have ignored my Data Protection Act request, and ignored the reminder i sent after 30 days. The forty days is now up, so i sill write again threatening action for non-compliance and also will report them to the Information comissioner. i'll watch with interest how yours progresses.

well done!! i have sent a DPA letter which they failed to acknowldege. I then sent a reminder after 30 days pointing out they had only 10 days remaining to comply, otherwise i would report them to the information comissioner. Still had no response! I will use the name you have posted a send a further letter reminding them that they have failed to comply and will report them to the information comissioner. well done again!!

same here. enjoyed reading your postings. Wishing you the very best:-)

Hi Janet, i've taken your advice and done just that. Sent LBA today recorded delivery.Revised my claim removing the claim on overdraft interest as i couldn't be 100% sure which charges were legitimate and which were not. Claim amount now £3386.71,

received response today from lloyds following my preliminary approach for repayment of charges. Seems to be the same as or similar to those i have red in other threads. here is the response. Dear mr xxxx Thank you for getting in touch with us. I am sorry you are unhappy over your account charges. Like any business, we do make a charge for some of our extra services. When a customer doesn’t have enough in their account to cover a payment, this always means additional work. We must either make the payment for you via an overdraft or send the payment back. Either way this needs to happen speedily. We feel it’s only fair to charge for the extra work involved Of course it is only fair, too, that we’re completely open about any charged-for –services before you take them up. That’s why we take care to provide every new customer with the latest guide to our charges. You can also get up to date details of our fees and borrowing rates at all of our branches, via our helpline and on our website. Just as importantly, we do everything we can to help our customers avoid charges altogether I’m sure you know how easy it is to keep a running check on how much is in your account. You’re free to get an up to date balance at any of our cash machines, over the phone, online and even nowadays on your mobile. If you know a payment is going to take you over the limit, you’re welcome to see if we can raise your limit- we can usually give you an answer straight away. You might know, too , that we only charge fees if it’s the first day in 12 months that you gone overdrawn without agreeing it with us beforehand. And we never charge for an overdraft excess fee more than 3 times in any month, however many times you go over your limit. You’ve mentioned the new guidelines from the Office Of Fair Trading on credit card default charges. We don’t agree with the OFT’s thinking on this and we’re still talking it through with them. But the important thing is that the guidelines only concern default charges. The fees we charge for going over an overdraft limit and for returned payments are not any kind of default penalty. They are fixed standard prices for the service we provide in these situations. So according to our legal experts, the OFT’s guidelines on credit card default charges do not in any way apply. I do hope you can see that we make our charging system as fair as possible- and why I cannot agree to cancel your charges. If you’re still unhappy please do not hesitate to tell me what more you would like me to do. If we cannot agree a solution at that point , I can help refer you to the Financial Ombudsmen Service for independent review. So long as you feel I’ve dealt satisfactorily with the points you raised with us , there’s no need for you to reply. If I have not heard back from you by 12th September 2006 I will take it that matters are resolved between us – though of course I will be happy to hear from you should you come back at any point afterwards Mandy Horton Assistant Manager So, its all our fault for not staying in credit and causing them all this extra work. Denying the fact that they are penalty charges, and as they insist these are not penalty charges but charges for services. Some service!! take money off you in charges which in turn send you over you limit and incurr more charges. I feel the need to add some comments to the LBA. will post it up for opinions/advice before i send it.

Received letter of acknowledgement of prelim approach letter from a Simon Rogers. Seems to be the standard response letter from reading other threads. "sorry to hear you are unhappy with us......one of our assistant managers will investigate...will take a couple of weeks....will respond fully at that stage...etc"

Hi Reload, i have a gold account which comes with a standard £100 overdraft which is interest free. there was a period of time where i had an authorised overdraft above this amount (put ther by teh bank by the way, not at my request) the higher level overdraft is not free but charged at a reduced interest rate in comparison to the standard rate. I did change it back to the standard level a few years ago. So, on reflection, taking your points on board, i think i have reviewed the interest only for the period of time where the overdraft went back to the standard £100 (at my request) which is free. Any interest in this period would definately be a result of charges levelled as the only time i ever exceed this is when the take charges which either put you overdrawn or past your agreed limit, or both!!! you know the scenario... They have done that to me 3 times in the last few months. Last week they took £125 pounds which took me from being in credit to exceeeding my overdraft..causing 2 DD's to be returned...incurring more charges etc etc.AAAARGHH...sorry off on a rant!! Back to the point, if i just take into account the interest for the period of standard interest free overdraft that goes with the figure reduces to £161.32. If it simplifies the claim process i think i will probably ignore that and just go for the charges initially. I will add in the wording as you suggest in my LBA letter and include the latest charges they have advised (£160!!!!) Thanks for the advice. ps step one account now open.

Hi reload, couldn't be absolutely sure of that. It's not always that easy to see which are valid and invalid interest charges. Most of the penalty charges incurred on my account were in the last 4 of the 6 years that i have the statements for. I have basically included all of the major interest charges in that 4 year period. I have seen lots of discussion re-interest charges and whether or not to include them, but as i saw some threads claiming back o/draft interest i did the same. I hope i haven't screwed things up! The prelim approach letter has already been sent, should i just wait for a reply, and then remove any claims for interest in the LBA?? Or should i just leave them in and see what happens?? Advice would be much appreciated.

Hi All, first posting in this particular forum, previous postings in lloyds forum. Sent DPA letter to co-operative bank for information on charges for a credit card i had with them. The account is no longer with co-op, they have sold it on to a debt collection agency event though i was keeping up with the agreed payment arrangements. Received letter of acknolwedgement from Janet Evans, customer advisor, (22/06/06) confirming reply will be received withi 40 days

Preliminary approach for repayment of £3650.77 (£3202 charges and £448.77 in overdraft interest) sent recorded delivery 10/07/06 toMandy Horton, Colmore row, Birmingham. was i right to include overdrfat interest, (most of it was caused by lloyds taking charges anyway!)? So, lets sit back and wait for the reply....we know what that will be though. LOL!!

Hi, if by actions you mean the status of where you are against each bank etc, modify your signature via the user cp and put it all in there.

Hi Adamski, thanks for the reply. I will probably go for the colmore row address purely because there is a contact name. Posting it off today.

Oh..one more question. I sent my DPA letter to Penny Berryman at the Chiswell street address in London. Where do i send my prelim approach for repayment? local branch or main Birmingham branch? Sorry if its a dumb question..

I have finished looking through the charges and totalling them up. £3686, i was gobsmacked! I knew it was would be high but never guessed it would be quite that high. I tried to make sense of the customer notes using the list of abbreviations that lloyds included. As it turns out the list was far from comprehensive..many of the abbreviations being used were not on the list..more smoke and mirrors!! From what i could see, as we all know, most of the letters are automatically generated, in fact some of the older notes actually state this. About 20 items on the list have names against them and a code number. As the same code numbers appear against different names i guess this could be a branch or terminal code. Where names do appear it does not state this was manual intervention. It was also not that easy to cross reference the notes to the charges as multiple charges can occur from one letter as we all know, and there is often a gap of several weeks from the letters before charges are taken. So i decided not to bother with that excercise. Simply claim back all of the charges and put the onus on llyods to prove there is any manual intervention.. and if they can then they would have to justify the cost associated to this. Is this the correct approach to take? Assuming it is, and assuming i have followed the FAQ's etc properly, i will know send of the prelim approach for repayment. I received and application pack for the step one account, so hopefully i will have a parachute account sent up soon.

Hi KJB i sent my Data Protection Act on the 8th june recorded delivery. Got my information last week, 29th june. So if they keep to the same time frame you should get it by the end of this week.

Hi Reload, thanks for the reply. I have just completed the online application for the ntawest step account. I received my information back from LLoyds today. It included a summary of charges on the account going back 3 year, and copies of statements for the 3 years prior to that. They have also include a set of customer contact notes and a key to explain the abbreviations and letter codes (I seem to recall reading a thread where somebody was asking for details on what these mean) So i will spend the next few days going over this information and see if i can make sense of it keep you posted.

Watching the grass grow while waiting for repsonse from lloyds!! I have had no acknowledgement of them receiving my Data Protection Act letter yet. I have checked the post office web site and the DPA letter delivered on the 12th June. In the meantime i decided to keep myslef busy by checking the online statements that go back three years start adding up the charges. So far i have only gone back 12 months and the charges already add up to nearly £600 pounds!!!

Hi MDTD i can empathise with what you are going through.I too have equally nasty experiences with MBNA, doubled up as a card i had with A&L turned out to be provided by MBNA.!! As clayts said, they really are "the most obnoxious, uncaring and sneaky of them all". For three years i had multiple daily phones calls, very often of an aggressive and threatening nature. I too had all the threats of legal action, and it was only after getting adviced from the CCCS (both excellent and free as clayts said), and sending in letters and budget plans drafted by the CCCS to the MBNA that they backed off. At that point I was contacted by someone with a modicum of decency who froze the interest and agreed to a realistic payment plan. So dont worry yourself unduly, stick to your guns and they will eventually agree to your payments. They probably ask for regular reviews but keep sending them the same budget and advise them nothing has changed and they will accept that. At least that is what has happened in my case. In terms of taking you to court, as others have said in their posted replies, the fact that your a dealing with an organisation managing your finanacial affairs and offering regular payments in line with the budget set by CAB would be acceptable to any court i intend to start action to reclaim charges from MBNA for both my accounts, so i will watch your progress with interest. good luck

congratulations!!!! its encouraging to see people taking on the banks and winning. I have just started the process myself, and am being both encouraged and educated by all of your postings. keep up the good work all!

Brilliant! ate him up and spat him out!

posted DPA letter to lloyds last friday. Lets see how long it takes for the statements to come back. Had another letter on Saturday telling me they will be taking £125 in charges from me next month!! Will be going to set up a parachute account on wedensday just in case. Any suggestions anyone? will they be likely to ask why i am setting up an account with another bank?

Hi adamski, thanks for the info. Sending letter to lloyds today, recorded delivery. Also sending one to GE capital bank as well

Hi All. this is my first posting. I have been reading around the site for a few days now, and i have to say i am really encouraged by the messages i have read. Lloyds have charged me thousands of pounds of the past few years, most of the charges as a direct result of their actions. In the last 3 months they have taken over £250 pounds from me. This week, as they have on many other occasions, they took £65 in charges from my account. This has taken me past my overdraft limit, and will incurr an excess overdraft charge. It will probably result in another couple of transactions not being completed as well, incurring further penalties and the whole snowball effect starts over again. Well enough is enough, time to fight back!!! I will be sending off DPA letter as per the template. let battle commence!! fingers crossed PS do i use the same template letter for store cards/credit cards??