Thanks for the reply, i'll just send a mail today and see what comes back.

Hello all In January 2010 I paid up front for a 'red belt' course in kickboxing. This was £450 and guaranteed you to be red belt standard. In June 2010 I was doing my second of three gradings as per the course I purchased. During this grading session, I fractured my patella by leaning/pivoting on my right leg. I was hospitalised and off work for two weeks. In September I was about ready to go back, but then I was hit by a car on September 18th. I was hospitalised for two weeks and immobile for two months. Subsequently, I tried to claim for injury but the driver was untraceable. I included the final 1/3rd of my kickboxing course as part of the costs i'd like back, but of course this is no longer possible through the solicitors. I was notified in March 2012 that the solicitors would no longer work on my behalf as there was nobody to claim against. I began to call the kickboxing club in March 2012 and asked to speak with the owner regarding the refund of the final £150. I have called four times and haven't heard from him. I am about to write a rather blunt email regarding this, but I'd like to know of any opinions or facts regarding the following: When I fractured my patella, I was in a "mass grading" session. That is, there were a lot of us all doing the exercises being watched by judges. This particular exercise, I ended up being paired with a girl, a staff member and fully trained, about 5' tall. I am 6'3" and was by no means any good at the entire aspect of my stance, positioning, blocking...I was getting a good hiding simply because I had no experience...you get the picture. Due to existing issues with my left foot, I had to wear footwear as you were either barefoot or footwear clad, no socks. The footwear gave absolutely no room for pivoting, if you wanted to do a particular kick, you were forced to jump slightly off the mat so you could move your leg to the direction it was required. This meant of course that when you were stood in a certain way, there was no way your feet were moving sideways. The issue above is the main factor for the fracture. The particular move I was performing required I lean backward onto my rear (right) leg. Having someone 5' tall trying to punch your head, leaning back, with no way to pivot your feet, my knee simply gave up. So, my knee is experiencing slight discomfort every so often and that's why i'm writing this. I don't want to be a complete arse with the owner of this club, but I already know he's a bit of a cowboy and he's ignoring my phonecalls. I'd like to tell him that if he doesn't respond and simply give me back what I feel is due to me after an injury under his care, i'll be speaking with an injury lawyer. Can anyone give me an opinion on this please?

Good luck with your DMP. It's not as hard as it sounds, especially if you get sent 5 Income & Expenditure forms...you'll have more clue about your money by the end of the month guaranteed. One thing to watch out for is something called "negative disposable income". This is where, for example, you earn £1000 a month, but your bills (before debts) come to more than that. You don't have a penny to give back to the creditors, and they will simply default on you and send you packing.

The online banking is as "real time" as you can get without confusing people. The reason why anyone has an issue with the online banking - and i'm being as nice as I can here - is because they don't keep track of their own spending. The ONLY way you can lose out with co-op online banking is by spending money on your card and not keeping note of it. The money won't show online until the day the retailer comes to collect it, which is around 2 or 3 days after the transaction was made. Also weekends and bank holidays are a bad time for many people who tend to forget about direct debits due out on the Monday, and therefore spend the money that should be in for the bill. What happens then, is the bank bounces the bill but it still shows on the screen, making you think you've still got £50 in your account and the £55 direct debit was actually paid. The co-op cannot include outstanding authorisations because of the above reasons, and also because many retailers don't check the account balance before authorising a card payment. It's called a floor limit, and if you spend below it, neither your bank, online banking, nobody can tell you what's due out on your card over the coming days. Cash, funds transfers, standing orders and direct debits are displayed to you in real time, but only if the money is in the account for the latter two. The online banking cannot calculate spending from the 3rd of one month to the 2nd of the next. I'm afraid it's going to be a lot of copy & paste or calculating for you.

Sounds more to me like the money was held in Bali. I know it leaves the UK quite quickly and the time taken is through the clearing banks. Maybe someone mis-keyed the international bank account number and the clearing bank in Bali didn't have a clue what to do. It's a shame though, but I wouldn't say it was done on purpose. Even the people in the life and savings department who were shelved some months ago kept their spirits high and didn't go about doing dodgy stuff like that.

You can open a Cashminder over the phone. I don't know what the process is to have your ID verified, possible sending copies of letters, passport or something like that. I forgot you can pay cash into the post office. Cheques too, but it takes a while. I've never lived out in the sticks before so I can't reflect on your predicament, but then I tend to use internet banking even whilst living in the big city.

The Co-op have merged with Britannia. You can open an account there, and pay in through their counter. If you've got a Britannia branch i'd recommend looking into it. The co-op stores won't be able to help you i'm afraid - however, I did hear they may be trialling in-store banking. Probably a long shot. They used to do it years ago with something called "handy banks", but even cash credits took up to seven days. The newer branches will of course be instant, should they be installed.

You must specify your intent to open a Cashminder account. If they attempt to open a current account, not only will it be declined but it'll mark your credit file as a search. Also, DO NOT let this account go overdrawn. You will be shut down after three occasions.

It's a ... slightly more watered down version, but it does the job I hope. I know your frustration but keep in mind what i've said and you can't go wrong. All it takes is one of their money management guys who knows what they're doing to explain it all and it's as clear as day. I only know so much because, well, I helped design the rules and helped build the systems money management use today. I no longer work there, but I can be trusted to know what's what.

Assuming you're already set up to do counter debits then yes you'll be fine - providing someone doesn't get trigger happy and close the account early. It's unlikely but it does happen. The thing is, you can't just carry on paying £10 a month, it's not 'allowed' and is drilled into their advisors during training. Just because your personal circumstances haven't changed, they'll still push for more money, as if everything else stopped costing so much. Continue making payments and you should avoid further action, apart from the impending account closure of course. I suggest you speak with another bank and have a basic account set up. I have seen recommendations for a co-op Cashminder, if that's any use. Have your JSA details changed to your new bank ASAP or you'll be out of money.

CCCS will normally only be able to take on the case if you have a salary. I don't know about PayPal. Contact them anyway, they will send you a lot of helpful information. To be honest, Barclays should really be able to put you on a temporary payment plan with the assumption you'll be back in work as you're on JSA.

I personally have never experienced an issue with cancelling direct debits or standing orders. Had I needed to cancel some, and been unable to do so because the system didn't work, I would have hot footed it to the nearest phone or a different computer. The bank offers internet banking as one of many services you can use to do you day to day banking. If one doesn't work, there's a branch or a telephone banking option for you. Also, you can contact the originator of the direct debit to cancel it at their end. If the issue is still ongoing and you can't cancel direct debits I literally have no idea, the only thing you can't cancel is a standing order to one of their own loans, and trust me, they don't invent 'glitches' just so people will get charged. It is unfortunate what's happened but the best you can do is write a letter to have the complaints team look into it and perform a full investigation with the IT guys who monitor internet banking.

You're at the final stage of the collections process before you go to recoveries. The £20 must be deemed insufficient. That is based on two things: 1) The amount you pay should naturally increase over time because (apparently) your wage rise or whatever should increase... 2) The debt is so large that £20 doesn't meet the minimum spend. If you send the information they will help, if you don't then you're in for a hard time. The least they want to see from you is an income and expenditure.

The error is nothing to do with the Co-op. The originator (Talk Talk) have requested the money. The Co-op tried and failed to make the payment for you. The issue lies with Talk Talk. If there's a dispute, ring Talk Talk, tell them you've been charged by your bank and they must refund the charge. If Talk Talk are at fault, they should do it. If they won't and they're not at fault (i.e. they notified you of a change to the payment date) then Co-op only has to offer a gesture of goodwill refund. If your account has been running fine and/or you've had no previous refunds, they should offer half if not all of the charges back.

Online banking only shows you an online version of what you'd have been sent in the post. The statement frequency is as follows: Every 25 transactions (if you have charges or interest) the 5th of each month. A date you specified. As a result, you could get one statement on the 1st because it's hit the 25 item cap. One more on the 2nd because you asked for it. One more on the 5th if you're utilising an overdraft facility, or went over limit between the 6th of the previous month and the 5th of this month. Online banking will copy the same timescales, but there's no longer wasted paper.

Can you prove the money didn't arrive in Bali?

It takes around 6 months for Moorcroft to get involved, and by now there's little chance you'll be able to get the account sent back to the Co-op to have their recoveries department deal with it. From the point of view of the bank, your £600 overdraft entitlement was given based on your initial credit score, coupled with the banks own scoring system. To ring them and say 'my income is dropping, please can I have some more debt' just rings alarm bells. I apologise if this seems blunt, but that's the bottom line of the request. In your mind it was a viable solution but really, the bills should be coming down before the temporary lending facilities go up. Who told you about a reducing facility? A reducing overdraft is actually offered as a repayment overdraft, it should only be given in times of complete dire straits, when you're already over limit, or if you're coming up to the end of your overdraft term and can't pay it back in full. Over time, with the constant in and out of staff in the customer service area, the facility got bastardised into a free-for-all option. Consider this: the reducing overdraft is offered by the debt management department, not customer services. You shouldn't even have known it existed based on the circumstances as at that time your account was clean as a whistle. However, from your side, you did everything you felt appropriate - and I must say you did it correctly. You told the bank of your impending difficulties but were unfortunately not assisted at the time. The issue was compounded by your partners illness, and i'm sure the last thing on your mind was dealing with your account. That's where the issue begins i'm afraid. Without speaking to the bank while the issue exists, it will run out of control with the system indiscriminately charging you until finally the facilities are revoked and the bank just wants the money back. In all fairness, they do limit quarterly charges. You won't be charged more than a certain amount in a 3 month period. The reason charges continued is because after your initial charges were refunded, the pre-notified charges (over limit charges that are put on after the event occurs) then apply. It's up to the advisor whether they refund those or not, but it sounds to me like they didn't deal with the pre-notified charges. These are notified to you at the bottom of your paper statement, but again probably not the first thing you'd read. Without seeing the wording of the letter, i'm afraid I can't see how the bank had admitted liability for the circumstance. Your initial overdraft refusal for £800 was rejected based on the lack of income, lack of history, internal and external credit scoring. That's not to say you're a bad customer, you just didn't fit the criteria for more money, especially when your income was about to drop. Did you go elsewhere, ask for a credit card from another provider? Speak with the creditors elsewhere? Virgin Media? Gas, Electric? How much was your rent/mortgage? Again I apologise for sounding harsh but this isn't the fault of the bank in its entirety. Your income dropped and your partner was very unfortunately taken ill. All of this resulted in the issues you had. It MIGHT have helped if you'd had an overdraft increase, but for how long? If your income was less than your outgoings, the issue would have happened a month later anyway. For now I wish you good luck with speaking to the co-op. Tell them about these circumstances, they might buy the debt back and reduce the charges, maybe even wipe it out if it's all charges. Write to the executive office, that'll get your complaint dealt with effectively.

Do you still require assistance with this?

The reason why they say this is because they can't change it in their system. There's nothing stopping you physically paying the money in one day later, but what happens there is the collections systems kick in and show you in arrears every month. You'll end up with a credit report that shows a continuous line of 1's where you want 0's. Now I believe they're right about the consumer credit act. Your agreement was signed for that date only. What they would need to do is make you sign a new agreement, but they can't, because that's a new loan and their systems probably don't want to offer you any more money and that takes customer services right out of the equation. Your option, should you require it, is to speak to their money management team and request a consolidation loan. This will only be offered to you if you're in financial difficulty though. It doesn't affect your credit file, but it will restrict future lending as it's seen as a call for help - so no overdraft, credit card or loan until it's paid off. Not the best option but it's absolutely perfect for some people in dire straits, believe me.

Credits and debits have transaction codes. Debits are 01 to 50. Credits are 60 to 99. Your statements lists transactions per day by ascending item code. If you get a salary paid in, but go to the cash machine twice, you'll see this: ATM £50 ATM £200 Salary £1000. Now, let's say your balance was £0 before you got paid. You'll see the following balances: - £50 - £250 £750. You only need to take into account one balance - that at the end of the day. The bank KNOWS you're not overdrawn, it's just the strange way the statement looks because the items are presented to you by transaction code. The only time to worry is where credits have come in late in the day. This is cash credits or same day BACS/Faster Payments. Credits that are allowed are 'mandated' like a salary, benefits, a BACS that's hit at 00:01am, Standing Orders. This is why you don't get charged for being overdrawn on those days. You will be charged for a bounced direct debit or standing order if you pay in on the same day. Online banking is not helpful, so ring the bank if you're ever worried a bill is taking you overdrawn. As the bill was likely bounced before you even woke up, the unfortunate fact is that your balance now shows you as being back in credit, even though there's a mortgage Direct Debit on the screen.