I shall never return to Halifax after they deliberately tried to prevent me from closing my account on which they had reduced the interest rate without bothering to tell me.They delayed me for 80 minutes in what I do not accept was just incomptence. They have NEVER sent any letter containing interest rate information, even to my wife who was foolish enough to leave money there when they stopped being a Building Society and became part of a reckless casino-style bank. From their TV ads it is quite clear that I am not the sort of customer that they want eg someone who leaves large sums of money on deposit and does not check the rates.

Halifax deliberately conceals its rates from all its customers. There are no letters containing rates and no advertisements in the branch. Furthermore they conceal the fact that they are cutting rates. That is why they are losing so many customers. They now behave like bankers not building society employers.

Certainly there was no bonus. Instead, after 12 months, the rate was reduced to 1p per day per thousand pounsds deposited. No rates of any kind are quoted either in the Kensington branch or in any of the very rare letters that Halifax sends its depositors. In my honest opinion, this is simply because they wish to attract new depositors with a slightly better rate than they pay to "loyal" customers. I WAS BLOCKED AT EVERY TURN, WHEN CLOSING THE ACCOUNT, HAVING TO QUEUE TWICE AT THE COUNTER, SEE THE MANAGER TWICE, SEE A WOMAN AT A DESK TWICE AND A MAN IN A GLASS ROOM ONCE. EACH DIRECTED ME TO SOMEONE ELSE IN AN ELABORATE GAME OF PASS THE PARCEL.

Halifax branches will offer a new customer an interest rate, which it tells you is fixed. But after 12 months this is reduced to just net 0.4% per year, paid monthly. The bank does not bother to write to tell you that it has lowered the rate. Instead, when you come into the branch to query matters, staff does everything that it can think of to prevent you from closing your account. At the Kensington branch in London, it took 80 minutes to get my money out. Every device imaginable was used to delay me and persuade me to leave from sheer frustration, Much of the time I had to listen to their absurd TV commercial. Nowhere in the branch is their interest rate posted. On every £1,000 of deposit Halifax is paying out just over 1p per day or £4 per year. I note that on an unauthorised overdraft of the same amount, they would charge £300 per month or £10 per day. This is 1,000 times as much as they pay me for my deposit, which finances somebody else`s overdraft. These people owe their jobs to the British taxpayer, after their insane frenzy over buying debt and debt-laden banks. This is how they show their gratitude. I am told that Halifax customers are moving their deposits in droves to other Building Societies in Kensington..

Deal directly with the 3rd party insurers and cut out all the middle men. You only need a quotation from a repair garage and if you have whiplash a signed letter from your GP and an estimate for physio charges. It will be much quicker if the 3rd party has accepted liability. It sounds as though Carpenters will only slow things up and raise everyone`s insurance costs. .

Your insurance company may refuse to pay your legal coss if you use a lawyer that they have not approved and is not paying them a commission to get the business. Some of these lawyers are so inefficient and send out so many letters that they will use up the total fee before a Court Case. Then they will dump you on your own to prosecute the case. As the other party`s insurer will have immediately cancelled their no claim bonus, they may counter-claim for the costs of this. If you lose this case do you think that a firm like Carpenters of Birkenhead will repay your losses? Your insurance company may refuse to pay your legal coss if you use a lawyer that they have not approved and is not paying them commission to get the business. Some of these lawyers are so inefficient and send out so many letters that they will use up the total fee before a Court Case. Then they will dump you on your own to prosecute the case. As the other party`s insurer will have immediately cancelled their no claim bonus, they may counter-claim for the costs of this. If you lose this case do you think that a firm like Carpenters of Birkenhead will repay your losses? There has been a huge increase in whiplash claims during 2012 despite the fact that accidents have reduced as people are driving less in the recession, Many of these claims are fraudulent. They are taken on by firms like Carpenters of Birkenhead and Ashfords of Exeter that are unable to get enough proper work, on a No Win No Fee basis. This raises the cost of motor insurance for everyone, by an estimated £100. In the Karachi Sting, four people usually from a single family and the same religion cruise around cities in a batterred old car, looking for victims, which will be a single driver ideally with a car with a scratched or batterred front. Sometimes they do not even bother to reverse their car into yours before filing a fraudul;ent claim.

t is rarely possible for the customer to prove that an ATM has not dispensed cash In this case, Raphael`s Bank has confirmed that there was a malfunction, but I cannot claim the money directly from them and Barclays was too incompetent and lazy to do so. Instead they sent me some dirty trick letters in the hope of fobbing me off. They failed but I won through only with the help of the Press.

Adniral and Elephant raise your insurance premium as soon as there is a claim, even if the claim is fraudulent or not your fault. In my case some fraudsters tried the whiplash game with some dodgy lawyers. Admiral and Elrephant immediately raised the premiums and tried to take money from my account, which they falsely claimed that I had agreed to. They also pretend that if they have sent you a renewal quotation and you have not expressly declined it, you are still insurd and they will try to take money off you. In this case they will maintain that it is a joint policy and that you are also able to pay. You should invest in a solicitor`s letter direct to Henry Engelhardt. The rest of them are a waste of time.

Always reply to any threat in writing, preferably in a moderate tone. It is dangerous to leave anything unanswered. Copy all letters to Admiral. The ceo is called Henry Engelhardt, an American, widely applauded for being good to his staff. His genial attitude does not apparenly extend to customers. |Send your letters to him. I cannot see any reason why you should be responsible for your son`s debt. But after writing threatening to cancel my policy, they claimed that I was still insured and asked me for the money to pay for the time that elapsed, whilst they dithered. Needless to say I did not use the vehicle during this period and I doubt that they would have paid up had there been a claim. Try approaching the Press Help columns with your problem. That can work.

These are most unpleasant people to deal with. They are cavalier and do things without bothering to inform you. I had two cars on the road and approached them for a multicar policy. BEWARE of doing this. It is cheaper to have two separate policies with Elephant, which seems to be Admiral under another name. I told them about two minor speeding offences- 30 mph concealed speed traps - and the premium was calculated on this basis. With the second car the two offences had to be reported again. Admiral check with the DVLA and will sometimes automatically void a policy of they find an undeclared speeding offence. In this case they got the dates wrong and worked out that there were four and not two speding offences, They then decided that two of them must be undeclared and immediately took money out of my account, without telling me, They also threatened to cancel the policy. i had never given permission to take money from me. They are a complete nightmare to deal with as nobody in the Call Centre seems to know what is going on and they send out threatening letters that make no sense at all. They then cancelled my no claims bonus and asked for £600 for 3rd party Only. Despite repeated requests for their terms and conditions, these were never sent. I will never insure with Admiral or Elephant again and would advise you to do the same. Unfortunately as your son had an accident - although not his fault - this will count as a claim and both no claims bonuses will be cancelled. That is why they are now so expensive. They will tell other insurers about your no claims discount, so you are probably skewered. They seem to me to be very sharp people and very unpleasant to deal with. I should avoid them and go elsewhere. There is no saving in the Two Car scheme, despite all the advertising. You can perhaps report them for harrassment to the FSA.

I do not believe that this is mere incompetence. I suspect that it is quite deliberate. They prefer to let their customers down and save some money, rather than go to the trouble of checking that the machine has extra notes at the end of the day. All ATM operators do this as a matter of course, every day. but they are unable to tell which customers have been short changed, or as in my case not dispensed at all. Take the matter to a newspaper and ask them to publish your comments. That is the only way in my opinion that Barclays could be made to react to my loss of over £600, which was sitting all the time at another English bank. Yes they are indolent but they are also scheming, in my personal experience. The Bob Diamond culture lives on.

Barclays is selling most of its ATMs as it prefers to focus on more profitable activities like manipulating LIBOR. I used one in Gibraltar which I was told belonged to Barclays. It debited my account for the sterkling equivalent of 800 euros. But it dispensed no cash I would not have risked so much if I had niot thought that it belonged to Barclays. Actually it ias owned by Raphael`s Bank, a London bank which specialises in foreign exchange. I went to Barclays branch in Gibraltar to complain. They tried to send me away but I said that i was a Barclays customer and had used a Barclays Debit Card. After two hours on the phone, they faxed a claim form which I filled out. I spent another 2 hours at their branch in Faro, Portugal trying to expedite matters. Nothing happenned for 60 days. When I got home I found a letter asking for more information and saying my case would be dropped if I had not replied within 7 days. This was obviously impossible as they should have known since they had my fax from Gibraltar on file . After more complaints I received a fraud form from my Branch which asked me to sign away my legal rights, if nio spare cash was found in the ATM. I refused to sign it. I phoned Raphael`s who told me that they still had the cash but that Barclays had not contacted them. Barclays told me that it was too late to contact Raphael after 60 days. I wrotwe to the new CEO, who claimed that he had not received the letter. I was told that the bank had written back biut that certainly never arrived. The matter was only resolved, without any additional compensation for my worry, loss of holiday and so on after I went to the Press I personally am of the opinion that Barclays has a deliberate policy of trying to fob off ATM incidents, whether in its own or other bank`s machines. This includes the use of dubious fob-off letters. The only answer is to go into the Branch and lengthen the queues. I have already cut up my Barclaycard because of their excessive charges.

Judges invariably reduce the legal fees of firms like Carpenters in cases like this, even if you are succesful. They are well aware that most solicitors working this particular trade inflate their fees. If the total amount exceeds the legal cover provided in your policy, which happens quite frequenetly, you will be expected to pay up the difference. This is what the Mail on Sunday has reported. "A management company that acts for motorists involved in accidents is still advising callers to make bogus injury claims despite last week’s Government pledge to clamp down on fraudulent whiplash cases. A saleswoman at the company told a reporter posing as a motorist hit by another car that he should submit a claim even though he told her he had suffered no pain. The employee at Legend Claims, in Keighley, West Yorkshire, who called herself Shaz, spoke to the Mail on Sunday reporter on Thursday, a day after Transport Secretary Justine Greening held a summit with insurance firm bosses on stamping out fake whiplash cases. Bogus claims cost the insurance industry £2 billion a year and have raised the annual insurance premium for every motorist by £90. From 2005 to 2010, whiplash claims soared by 70 per cent, even though road traffic accidents fell by 23 per cent. Legend Claims is known as a claims management company (CMC), which makes part of its profits by referring motorists with personal injury insurance claims to no-win, no-fee law firms. The Mail on Sunday approached Legend Claims after receiving a tip-off claiming that the company was handling a high number of suspicious whiplash cases. We approached five other CMCs and law firms we were told were involved in similar claims. The reporter told all the firms the same story, that he had been hit in the rear at low speed by another car while his vehicle was stationary, leaving a small dent in his bumper but no injuries to himself. The five other companies refused to submit a whiplash claim and Shaz at Legend Claims also gave the same advice initially. But when the reporter said he still wanted to make a claim, Shaz replied: ‘Then you might as well, because at the end of the day, you might as well.’ She later advised the reporter that he can hope to receive £2,000 to £3,500 for a whiplash claim. Legend Claims owner Shafiq Ahmed said that Shaz, real name Shamiela Mahmood, had been dismissed and two other employees caught submitting fake whiplash cases were sacked. Yesterday Ms Mahmood said: ‘I was not authorised to handle the cases. Because you get referral fees from each claim, I thought I could get a bit as well. I accept what I did was wrong.’ Transport Secretary Miss Greening said: ‘The Mail on Sunday continues to do some excellent work to highlight the challenges around motor insurance costs. ‘I can assure your readers that we have already taken decisive action by reforming no-win, no-fee rules and cracking down on fraud.’ The Claims Management Regulator is investigating the case. He is now also investigating Carpenters. Neither the Claims Management Regulator nor the Legal Ombudsman will protect motorists falsely accused of having accidents and causing imaginary whiplash. The photographer sent by insurers to take shots of undamaged cars that have not had accidents, says that he examines hundreds of such vehicles every week just in London, alone. Across the country there must be thousands of such false claims being pursued by No Win No Fee lawyers who have found clients who are prepared to invent or distort the facts in the hope of gaining a few thousand pounds. It seems that Justine Greening the Trasport Secretary who believes that she is sorting this out has been misled by her Civil Servants. It is not even a criminal offence to make such fraudulent claims. All to the profit of people like Carpenters of Birkenhead. This fraudulent activity of course must also make things much more difficult for genuine claimants.

Police in London are completely uninterested in helping with anything of this kind. They prefer to spend their time on easy wins such as setting speed traps or accusing motorists of driving in bus lanes. You can even see them coaching young recruits in the right kind of lie to use when a motorist disagrees with them. I have even been stopped when another driver, a French woman with a notorious accident record ran into my car and drove off without givng her insurance details but then reported me for not stopping. Fortunately the District Judge understood French very well and she was unwise enough to make rude remarks in French. I need hardly add that her husband was a rich banker and that the Midland bank paid for solicitors, barristers, photographers and interpreters and to fly her back for the case. To no avail. Fortunately there was no personal injury and the faulty driving was clear to all. If your damages amount to less than £5,000 I would advise taking the matter yourself to the local County Court and obtaining written evidence of your injury from your general practitioner. The DIY approach will certainly work better than getting enmeshed with a firm like Carpenters of Birkenhead. You can do this at any stage by simply asking Carpenters to send you all the case materials and writing to the other party to say that you will file papers at the County Court if you do not receive an amount which you should be able to justify as genuine extra expenses within 7 days. In my case this was a deliberate [problem] by a mugger, who approached my vehicle and failing to get money from me made completely untrue and false allegations. Unfortunately the police hand over insurance details without any proof that an accident has ocurred, which in this case it had not.

Carpenters seem to be utterly incompetent. They send threatening letters to people who have not even had an accident, demanding immediate payment. This means the expense of photographing your vehicle to prove that it has not had an accident. What can be done to stop them? If you are making a claim for personal injury your insurance compamny will try to push you towards a company like Carpenters not on the basis of their performance on legal cases but because of the size of the fee that they will pay to your insurance company to get the business. Beware that Carpeneters can easily use up the full limit of your legal cover before completing a case. Then they will be on to you to claim more money from the injured party. If you do not pay they will dump you. It is much better to decline legal motor insurance cover and be free to choose your own adviser. The whole thing is a rip-off to motorists and enables incompetent firms to keep going.

The Legal Ombudsman has replied to say that he can only intervene where somebody is a customer of Carpenters. Clearly nobody who reads the threads here is going to consider that. But they are clearly taking on [problem]s for people who have not even had an accident lwet alone any injury. Let us hope that the Web will starve them of business as they clearly deserve.

The company is clearly incompetent given the enormous number of complaints. I have also personally found it to be dishonest. They send out threatening letters demanding money for personal injury claims without checking any of the facts or providing any evidence. This has even beenm done where no accident of any kind ever occurred. All this does is to raise the cost of motor insurance for everybody. If they send a threatening letter to you, when you have not had an accident DO NOT REPLY. Contact your own insurer and take photographs of all aspects of your own vehicle to prove that there is no damage. Then report them to the Legal Ombudsman. When he gets enough reports of this [problem] he might even take action.