Mr XXX XXXX 00 XXXXX XXXX Manager XXXXXX HSBC Bank XX0 0XX 00 XXXXXXX XXXX 13 December 2006 XXXXXXX XX0 0XX Dear Sir or Madam, LETTER BEFORE ACTION ACCOUNT NUMBER: 000000000 SORT CODE: 00-00-00 I am very disappointed that you have failed to respond to my letter of the 28 November 2006. I would point out that in that letter, I stated in terms that the letter was to be taken as a formal complaint. Your failure to acknowledge the letter therefore appears to place you in breach of the Banking Code. I now understand that the regime of 'fees' which you have been applying to my account in relation to direct debit refusals, exceeding overdraft limits and so forth are unlawful at Common Law, Statute and recent Consumer regulations. I would draw your attention to the terms of the contract which you agreed to at the time that I opened my account. It is an implied term of that contract that you would conduct yourselves lawfully and in a manner which complies with UK law. I am frankly shocked that you have operated my account in this way as I had always reposed confidence in your integrity and expertise as my fiduciary. I calculate that you have taken £2,579 plus £1,406.63 which you have charged me in overdraft interest for the sum which you have taken. I also require an additional payment of £5,990.89 which may be taken to represent an interest charge on this sum. Please note that this sum has increased since my initial letter, since another full month of interest has accrued.This brings the total to £9,976.52. I require repayment in full of this money. I am enclosing an updated copy of the schedule of the charges which I am claiming. This supersedes the copy I sent in my original letter of the 28 November 2006. If you do not respond within 7 days, and in any case if you do not comply fully with all of my requirements within 14 days, then I shall begin a claim against you for the full amount plus interest plus my costs and without further notice. Yours faithfully, XXXXXX XXXXXXX Account number: 000000000 Sort code: 00-00-00

The Manager 00 XXXXXXX HSBC Bank XXXXXXX 000 XXXX XXX XX0 0XX XXXXXX XXXX XXXXXX 28 November 2006 XX0 0XX Dear Sir or Madam, Excessive charges 1. As you are aware I have been a customer of HSBC for about ten years. I have taken out loans and a mortgage with the company. The bank's behaviour has in most matters been acceptable by the prevailing standards among high street banks, and I look forward to continuing my relationship with the bank. 2. However I have always been unhappy about the distressingly high level of charges applied to my account over the last nine years. I am writing (1) to lodge a formal complaint about these charges, (2) to dispute the validity of your statements of my account balance and (3) to ask you to refund these charges and make further payments as detailed below. 3. Due to recent publicity, I now understand that the regime of fees which you have been applying to my account in relation to exceeding overdraft limits are unlawful at Common Law and under statute. Additionally, it has been confirmed that your particularly high level of penalties are considered to be unfair per se by the OFT, who reported on the 5th April 2006, and are therefore presumed to be unlawful in the absence of specific proof to the contrary. 4. I would draw your attention to the terms of the contract which you agreed to at the time that I opened my account. It is an implied term of that contract that you would conduct yourselves lawfully and in a manner which complies with UK law. I am dismayed that you have operated my account in this way as I had always reposed confidence in your integrity and expertise as my fiduciary. 5. I consider that your repeated representations that your charges are fair and reasonable are deceptive and that they have deceived me into agreeing to pay them. Your concealment of the true nature of your charges has prevented me from asserting my right until now. Please note that in view of this this fact alone, statutory limitations, laches, estoppel etc do not affect the validity of any part of my claim, including that part relating to charges levied more than six years ago. In addition, the entirety of the claim falls well within the FSA's time limit for the lodging of complaints. 6. As well as taking these excessive and unjustified charges, you have further unjustly enriched yourself by levying interest payments on the sums taken. I require restitution of these payments. I consider further that you ought to pay me interest on the sums retained, at the appropriate contractual unauthorised borrowing rates. This reflects reciprocity in our contract and by your own example reflects banking usage. You will no doubt continue to have in your contemplation the fact that it was to be expected that I would need to borrow money at high rates while maintaining my debt level below or around the authorised level, in fear of further charges and/or recall of the debt. I feel that your making this payment to me provides an equitable way of resolving the issue and moving on. 7. I calculate that you have taken £2,597.00 plus £1,406.63 which you have charged me in overdraft interest for the sum which you have taken. The interest I am claiming on these deductions amounts to £5,990.89. Total £9,976.52. 8. I enclose with this letter a schedule of the deductions and interest thereon which I am claiming. The schedule shows the calculations used to derive the figures. The columns span two A4 pages in landscape layout. Pages are numbered from left to right, then top to bottom. In other words, odd-numbered pages contain the left-hand side of the schedule, even-numbered pages the right-hand side. Our continuing relationship 9. Notwithstanding this unfortunate situation, I adjudge your services to be as good as any of the high street banks. Although the application of these charges has occasioned some mental distress over many years, I am keen to resolve this issue in a spirit of reconciliation. I hope that your payment to me will wipe the slate clean, and we can resume what has in most other respects been a satisfactory relationship. I note also with some approval that HSBC is not one of those organisations which have announced a policy of attempting to close the accounts of customers who seek to reclaim unlawful charges. 10. I am a long-standing customer of HSBC, having current, savings, loan, credit card, business, and (formerly) mortgage and home insurance accounts with you. In the ten years of our association I have never had any facilities withdrawn, nor any warning that such action was imminent. Neither have I run my account in an irresponsible manner. During the entire life of my account, I have found only three occasions on which payment was refused due to insuffucient funds. My borrowing has never to my knowledge remained over the agreed limit for a whole month, nor has it exceeded that limit by a sizable margin. I have also improved my money management skills recently. This year, I have exceeded my overdraft limit only once, on which occasion the account was over the limit by £9.20 for two days and £33.44 for one day. 11. I therefore do not expect to be faced with any withdrawal of facilities - in particular overdraft facilities - especially since (1) the payments due to me from you will bring my account into credit, and (2) I am hereby lodging a complaint, and such action by you could only be interpreted as a retaliatory measure. I would also point out that any attempt to declare the account in default will be in violation of the Banking Code since the amount owed is in dispute. 12. I do not wish to repudiate the contract under which I now operate my account. While I have never negotiated or explicitly agreed to any particular level of charges, I do not regard the charges as an issue for the future, both because I am confident that I will not incur any, and because I expect that such excessive charges are in the process of being eliminated from the terms and conditions under which you operate such accounts. Just as you have for many years tolerated my past repeated minor breaches of your terms, I am willing to tolerate the existence of an equally unconscionable charging schedule since I will make my best endeavours to avoid incurring any charges. The fresh start I propose and expect will be very helpful in ensuring that my account remains well within the contractual limits. 13. Furthermore, I may find it difficult to open another account should mine be closed in such circumstances. This is likely to have a disastrous effect on me and my growing family - leading to considerable distress and hardship. Under such circumstances, I would consider that our relationship had irretrievably broken down, and I would have little alternative but to pursue my claim to the greatest extent English law and equity permit. I am sure we are both concerned to avoid such open-ended litigation and the publicity attendant on appearing in higher courts if at all possible. I stress that I do not consider that our relationship has broken down in this way, and mention it only to avoid misunderstanding and emphasise the gravity of the situation which might not, without proper instruction, be apparent to bank staff. Action required 14. I hope that you will enter into a sincere dialogue with me about this matter and I am writing this letter to you on the assumption that you will prefer to do this than merely respond with standard letters and leaflets. I also request that you inform me of the name and contact details of the person dealing with my complaint. I also recommend that you notify me of an email address to which I may send electronic copies of the attached schedule of charges and interest. This ought to speed what must by now already be a well-established process of investigation and deliberation. My email address is [email protected]. 15. If you wish to contest any or all of the facts of my claim or the acceptability of the timetable set out below, I require that you supply me with particulars supporting your counterassertion. For example, if you wish to claim that any of your charges represents liquidated damages rather than a penalty, you should supply such evidence as: computer logs, time of transaction, evidence of any manual intervention, including name of person who intervened, time taken to reach decision, their salary, calculated at a cost per minute, any general office overhead and any other information that is used to show the true and actual cost incurred by your company for each of these penalty charges. 16. I will give you 14 days to reply to me accepting, unconditionally, my request in principle and letting me know a date by which I will receive payment. If you issue an unequivocal and intransigent refusal to recognise my claim, or if the 14 day period elapses without the matter being resolved to my satisfaction, I shall send you a letter before action giving you a further 7 days in which to reflect. 17. I believe that these targets are sufficient for a large company such as yours with dedicated staff and departments, particularly since there is no reason why negotiations or other communication should not be carried out by email (address as above) or by telephone (I may be reached on 000000000). Please note that any such conversations may be recorded in order to assist my memory or for evidential purposes should it prove necessary to resort to court action - an eventuality which I am confident we can avoid through an open and timely dialogue. 18. After the issue of a letter before action, no further communication will be initiated by me and I shall issue a claim at the expiry of the second deadline. Yours faithfully, XXXXX XXXXXXX Account Number: 00000000000 Sort Code: 00-00-00

Hello all. My HSBC claim is in full swing. I'm claiming for nine years of charges + all the interest charged on them to date, and I'm claiming compound interest on the amounts taken at the rates charged by the bank at the time for unauthorised borrowing. This means the interest I'm claiming in substantially more than the claim for charges and interest itself. I've sent my initial letter, LBA and made a claim on MCOL. I'll add the details of each in separate posts. Any comments welcome. I'd like to add my spreadsheet too, but it looks as though I'm not allowed to add attachments. Could a moderator lift this restriction, on a one-off basis if preferred? [edit in response to some concerns expressed below:] NB - the letters and particulars of claim are my own, tailored to my own circumstances and the nature of my claim. They aren't endorsed by the Bank Action Group, and are included only to give others ideas and to get feedback. If in doubt, you are probably best off making the standard claim using the standard tempates.