The money went in my account today!!! Another win for the CAG/BAG!!! A donation is on the way, and I'll be filling out the survey too. Thanks to all on here as you made it so easy for me. A note for newbe's - take your time, read the FAQ's, read what others have done and don't let the banks bully you into giving up or accepting less than you are owed. :D:D

OK, so I got a letter from DG yesterday saying that they are awaiting my response to their letter of the 21st (being their half-offer letter). So, I wrote a new letter stating that I had replied by both fax and post on the 22nd and that "I find it highly unlikely" that neither of these had arrived at their office, and both faxed and posted this. I also called and left a message on their answer-machine to call me back. They called about 30 minutes after my fax and said that they did have my letter and a response had been sent out to me. Is this a new stalling tactic? Anyway, their offer of full settlement arrived this morning (dated 31st) and I, of course, have crossed out the confidentiality clause and faxed and posted my acceptance back to them along with a letter saying that I am more than happy to negotiate a fee for my silence. (oops!) So, just waiting on the big wad to fall into my account now. A donation to the CAG will be made once I have my hands on all that lovely lolly!

Does anyone have any idea how this affects international postage? I ask as I run an internet shop in tandem with my retail shop and we've just had an instance where a package sent to France has not been delivered (allegedly). All we have is a receipt from the Royal Mail showing that we posted it. As mentioned on the previous post, the contract is between us and the carrier, so how does that work if the carrier employs a third party (french postal system?) to finally deliver the package? Of course, in this case we don't know where the package went missing or to be honest that the package wasn't delivered at all. I know that we should trust our customers but we've been bitten so many times in the past...

Usually, threatening to cancel your subscription makes them a little more accomodating.

Hi all, My O2 contract was just due for renewal, and checking my bills I realised I wasn't using my free minutes/texts each month and as I was already on the cheapest contract (O2 25) I worked out how much it would be on PAYG. This turned out to be cheaper for me so I called them up and told them what I wanted to do. They then offered me an 18 month contract, O2 25 for £6 per month, plus a re-sign credit on my account of £100. So, 6 x 18 = 108 - 100 = 8! £8 pound for 18 months phone service (as long as I don't go over my free 25 minutes/25 texts each month). I was a bit suspicious at first and so asked them how they could do this to which they replied that wanted to keep me as a customer and that if in future I wanted a new phone or more minutes/etc that I would stay with them. Nice to know that sometimes mobile companies do value their customers.

Faxed and posted my response to the half offer today - stating that I will accept it as an 'unconditional partial payment of the full amount of...' and also added something along the lines of 'full amount of ..... plus .... additional interest accrued since the date of my claim'. On the court claim it does state (in my case) 0.68 interest per day until settlement - so I just worked out the amount since FD were deemed to have been served and added it on.

Got the letter from the court this morning saying that FD have acknowledged. Also got the letter from DG offering half settlement. I'll reply today with the usual "unconditional part payment" type of response, and then post again once DG get back in touch. L8r!

FD have acknowledged my claim! Next post when DG write to me.

Moneyclaim just filled in and successfully submitted! It turns out that the 'technical error' can be caused by the 1080/24 particulars still not being right. Sometimes it tells you the problem on the same screen, sometimes it doesn't and says there's a technical problem. The helpdesk said it can be caused by having pound signs, slashes, percent signs or brackets. My tip: remove as much as possible, use GBP instead of pound signs and make sure that no line has more than 45 characters on it. So, the total of the claim? Including interest et al it comes to £3907.55 Next post when they've acknowledged it.

So, FD's time limit is up and it's time to submit my claim. Off I go to moneyclaim, register and fill in all the details, have a few attempts at the 1080/24 particulars fiasco, finally get it sorted, click submit with credit card in hand and baited breath and... Due to a technical error you cannot submit your claim at this time!!!! Arrgh! It helpfully suggests you try again later! Personally I blame this forum. The moneyclaim site is probably overwhelmed with all the charges claims going in. [i am joking of course ]. I guess I'll try again tomorrow. Ho hum... the best laid plans of mice.

Matheos95, have you already filed your Moneyclaim? It seems to be the advice on here to allow the bank the full 14 days even if they respond in the meantime disputing your claim - makes you look more reasonable should it get to court.

Got the standard "we don't agree... yada yada... section 6.9 of T&C's yada yada..." letter yesterday. I guess this was their response to my first letter as they would have only received my LBA on the same day they must have sent this (possibly). Just another delaying tactic by the looks of things.

I asked the same question when starting my claim for charges - the response was that loans are governed by a separate contract and they cannot demand repayment if they close your account. Don't be scared into not claiming - that money is yours.

FD's first 14 days are now up - so LBA in the post today. They haven't even responded within the 10 working days they suggested on their previous letter - no matter, we're on my timetable not theirs. Watch this space in 14 + 2 days...

I would give the Citizens Advice Bureau and maybe even Trading Standards a call and see what they advise. It does seem like FF are being unreasonable. If you speak to FF it might help to mention you've contacted the CAB and TS - it seems to make them realise you won't be bullied. Do you recall if in the contract you signed it said that they own you for the duration of the contract?

Got the standard response from FD this morning... "we acknowledge your letter yada yada we'll respond withing 10 days yada yada here are some leaflets to read in the meantime yada yada contact the ombudsman..." Let's see what happens next - I just read a post on here saying that FD paid-up after the first request letter to avoid court charges and interest - are they finally realising they can save themselves some money if they pay before the claim goes in?

Natwest mistakenly credited my account with £10,000 instead of the £1,000 I had actually paid in - it was of course taken out almost immediately and the correct amount credited. At no point did I consider the £10k to be mine - if anything, it shows that the bank staff can make a mistake just like anybody else. Taking the £10k would have been theft. No argument.

Hi all, Lasy year I left my full-time (and reasonably well paid) job to focus on the shop that me and the misses own - and the abject poverty that goes along with being self-employed. We had a plan. Everything would be rosy. Then they closed the main road in front of our shop for 6 months to do sewer repairs and as a result our takings took a hit. The road is open again now and finally we are starting to see something of a recovery to our business. Anyway, the point of this post is be very careful about how honest you are with your bank regarding your financial situation - and don't expect them to care/help one little bit! Because things got very tough for us, I had to stop drawing any money from the shop leaving just the money my wife was drawing - this led to a shortfall between our income and outgoings. I worked very hard cancelling and/or reducing as many payments as I could, trimming our weekly spend on food etc. and managed to get the shortfall to around £400/month. As we had an overdraft facility and a credit card with a fairly good limit I figured I could manage this for a short while until the shop started making more money again and I could plug the hole. Of course, six months is a long time. Looking at my expenses the biggest one I have is a bank loan for £400/month. Hmmm... so a payment break on the loan would an ideal solution for me. I called my bank and explained the whole situation to them and they said "let's fill in a statement of accounts to see where we stand". So we went through all my income and expenditure and arrived at a shortfall (which they miscalculated at £633/month). I suggested a payment break on the loan to which they said there was no such facility available. They offered a three month break but I would have to pay all three outstanding months at once after that time, so that was a non-starter. The other thing they "helpfully" did was immediately put a block on my visa card so I no longer had access to those funds. Then they said the only other thing they could do would be to "withdraw facilities". Now, maybe I'm being a bit dim, but how can not having access to *any* funds be helpful to me? Ah!!! this is where I was mistaken, they weren't trying to help me at all, they were just trying to protect themselves and in the process ensure that I exceed my overdraft limit. As this was happening I started a claim for unfair/illegal charges over the last six years for £3k, which would be more than helpful at this moment. My worry is that once they realise what I'm doing they're going to "withdraw facilities", which would be disastrous for me right now. So the moral of this story - don't tell your bank squat about your financial situation as they are only in it for themselves. That'll teach me for being honest and hoping they might help! Which bank is this? Our friendly FD. You have been warned!

Just had a message from said gym - the manager has spoken to the general manager (of the whole company?) who says that as this kind of thing doesn't happen very often they will write the amount off. Yippee! It does seem like the magic words "trading standards" did the trick though.

Hi again, First letter requesting payment sent off today - the clock is ticking FD!

Hi all, For anyone who was following this - on the advice of the CAB we wrote to both the gym and the credit control department stating what had happened and that we were disputing their demand for an extra months subscription. Both of these letters were sent recorded. They were given 10 to respond. When my wife originally spoke with the credit control people she had said that we would be contacting Trading Standards (and I've read something on these boards about TS being all over gyms about their contracts) and this seemed to unnerve the person on the phone. Anyway, we had a message left today from the gym manager saying that she'd been on to credit control and had asked them to write off or waive the extra charge. She said she'd contact us again once it was all sorted. The thing that really winds me up about all this is that we, in good faith, called the gym for instructions on how to quit, and then followed those instructions. OK, so maybe the letter was never delivered, but once we'd had a letter asking for the next months subs and called and explained that should have been the end of it. The issue then seems to be one of trust. It goes like this: Does the gym believe us when we say we wrote cancelling the contract? If yes, then they have already received the subs they were expecting and had that been the end of it we might even have joined again in the future and would probably have recommended them to friends. If no, then they are basically accusing us of lying in order to get out of paying £28 (hey, times are hard - but not THAT hard!). The result of this is that we will never deal with them again and we will actively warn other people away in order to save them from having to deal with crap like this in future. If you were the gym and reading this, which way would you prefer things to go? As it is, they haven't lost any money, but unfortunately for them they have definitely lost two potential future customers. I own a shop and I know that the way to keep customers coming back is to be nice to them - any company which starts threatening or suing its customers doesn't deserve to stay in business (music industry take note!).

Hi all, Just finished totting-up now! The total taken from me over the last 6 six years is: £ 3,081.50 :o Unbelievable! Letter going in the post tomorrow morning. Watch this space - it should all be over in the next 28 or so days. L8r.

Hi all, Finally got my pack of statements by courier this morning. My misses is going to go through them today and highlight all the charges. I expect I'll have the first request for refund in the post tomorrow morning. I'll post another message once I have the total amount of my claim. L8r dudes!

Actually my wife hadn't used the gym for some months, which is what lead to her wanting to cancel. To be honest I'm turning into a stubborn git - I'm getting sick of companies thinking they can just keep taking money off people. Unfortunately, we only have the letter on the PC, and as the CAB people said, we could just type up a letter and put an old date on it. Not that we would do something so underhanded just to save a few quid! ;-)

Hi all, My wife recently decided to cancel her gym membership with fitn*ss f*rst - she'd been a member for about 18 months. As she couldn't lay her hands on any paperwork from when she signed up, she called them and asked how to go about cancelling her membership. The member of staff told her to write a letter to the manager stating that she was cancelling, and that there was a one month notice period after which we could cancel the ddr. Job done. OK, so she dutifully sent off the letter, and one month later cancelled the ddr. Then we get a letter from fitn*ss f*rst saying that the June fees have not been paid and could we forward a cheque. So my wife calls them to explain that she cancelled yada yada yada - they say they will look into it. Next thing we get is a demend from their accounts department saying that if we don't pay in seven days they'll pass the debt on to a collection agency - again we call them and explain that the membership was cancelled. They now claim they have no record of our letter and that we should have sent it 'recorded delivery' and that we should then have called them to make sure they'd gotten it. "it's all in your contract" was the snotty attitude of the person we spoke to. When we offered to send a copy of the letter they said that "we could just be making it up" to which we replied that so could they be "making up" that they never received our letter - why are they necessarily more trustworthy than us? We've called Citizens Advice who advised us to write to them explaining what had happened but said that as it was a case of proving we sent the letter we might have no choice but to pay the extra months fees. This just seems so wrong to me - why after doing as we were told by this company should we have to pay more? Just imagine if they 'lose' everybodys cancellation letters how much extra cash they can get for nothing! Does anybody have any advice or experience which might help us on this? Thanks all.