Thank you johnnymitch for your advice and encouragement to make my claims myself. I have just been awarded £9,000 from First Plus and have launched two others. The experience has been very positive as the process was quick, simple and stress free. I'd encourage anyone who needs to make a PPI claim to do it themselves or ask a friend for help instead of using some greedy solicitor who will frustrate you and finally take a huge slice off your cake.

Johnnymitch, I would like to express my appreciation of your advice and encouragement to make my own PPI claims. Just to encourage those who may be considering using solicitors to make the claims on their behalf, I will tell my experience. In mid October, using an online claim form, I started with First Plus with whom I had had a large-ish amount of loan for two years before making an early settlement. A week after mailing my form, they wrote to me promising to respond to my claim by 25th November, and about two weeks later they wrote again to say they were still going to respond as they had promised. Yesterday, 11th November, I got a letter awarding me nearly £9,000, which includes interest, which solicitors will tell you that you will not get if you don't get their help. First Plus has exceeded my expectations with their efficiency in this matter. The beauty of this is that I will not be sharing my money with some greedy solicitor for completing a very simple form with information that they would have obtained from me. This experience has been easy, straight forward and stress free. I have now completed and sent out two more forms to Santander and Barclays

My loan of £34,000 started in December 2004, which is just over six years ago, and I paid it off in September 2007, less than six years ago. I also had credit cards which started more than six years ago and paid off and cancelled in September 2007. Are these claims valid or have I lost the money?

Thank you so much Johnnymitch for your advice and encouragement. I believe that's all I need to at least get started. I'll keep you updated of my progress.

I'm grateful for this forum because I might have made the mistake that so many have made of using Claims Financial for PPI reclaim. I contacted them and they sent me the form, which they followed up with several calls, but I decided to research them performance online before filling the forms. Thank God I did and thanks to everyone who is posting their concerns here so that others can avoid the crazy pitfalls. My problem is that I have several companies to claim PPI and bank charges from, including First Plus and I feel overwhelmed. Does anyone know of any decent company out there that I can use or do I just struggle and do all of them myself? If I chose to do the claims myself, is there anyone on this forum who has successfully claimed and can offer step by step guidance please? I have twice attempted to claim back bank charges using the templates provided online, but both times the bank said they had correctly made the charges and would not be refunding me any money. I don't want to go through this again and prefer to pay a percentage to some honest company to make the claims for me if this would ensure some success. Help someone