The first refund offer involved closing down the current loan account with the PPI included in it, setting up a second loan account less the PPI and then issuing a PPI refund. I agreed to this offer and sent back the signed paperwork. The second offer involved paying the PPI refund directly to Metropolitan. The loan account had already been closed and sold to Metropolitan, leaving me with a £9,600 default on my name. HSBC are now trying to use the rule of set-off to pay the PPI refund money held by them to a supposedly independent third party. I refused this second offer as I had already accepted the first one and this one would have only cleared £7,200 of the debt still leaving me with a £2, 400 default and still in debt. The third offer was to set up a new loan account, use the money to buy the debt back from Metropolitan and remove the adverse default marker from my credit file. Obviously, neither Metropolitan or HSBC are going to want to run the risk of refunding all of the PPI in the hope that I pay off Metropolitan, especially as the debt that they are holding was unenforceable.

http://www.isthisbankfraud.com

Hi everyone. Ok, here goes. As recommended by the Judge at the hearing for my new DCC, I have been applying for permission to make an out of time appeal against the decisions made at the original hearing. This was done even though HSBC decided to send me a letter threatening to take out a vexatious litigant order against me if I did so with huge costs attached. Anyway, at the informal hearing, the Judge made it clear that permission would not be granted as almost six months had gone by since the original hearing. At this point the HSBC solicitor jumped up and asked that the judge should make out the order to include that the appeal application was made totally without merit. At this point the judge put her firmly in her place by making it very clear that the only reason it was not being granted was the time issue. He also made a point of saying to me that my litigation was now at an end. So anyway, I submitted to court an application to vary the order attached to the £11,000 CCJ. In the application I offered to pay HSBC £5 per month, 25% more than the judge recommended. Strangely this was declined by HSBC so the court made the decision that I should pay £20 per month. Should only take around 46 years to clear the debt. Phase 2 With the litigation now finished, I have built a website dedicated to showing what has been going on over the past few years including copies of the HSBC internal emails from May 2011 and some of the HSBC phone recordings. If you go to isthisbankfraud.com you can read all about it and comment on what has been going on. The main reason for the website is to determine if there is a case of fraud or not via the gosh test. This is a well known test for dishonesty used by the courts. 1. Was the act one that an ordinary decent person would consider to be dishonest (the objective test)? If so : 2. Must the accused have realised that what he was doing was, by those standards, dishonest (the subjective test)? I would love it if CAG members browsed the site and left their comments.

Just a brief update. At the hearing for my defence to counterclaim, the Judge made it clear that the evidence that I had supplied to court would be an abuse of process as it brought into question the decisions made at the original hearing where my claims were struck out. However, the Judge did concede that the HSBC documents provided did indeed show that my loan account less the miss-sold PPI to be only £7091.03. With this in mind, he made it perfectly clear to the HSBC barrister that he was unwilling to make out any order for more than that amount and advised him to go and talk to HSBC. After an hours recess, the barrister explained that HSBC were making a business decision to accept the lower amount in full and final settlement rather than any further court action. This meant that HSBC did not have to admit to pursuing me for the wrong amounts for the past two and a half years. The Judge also refused their claim of £14k worth of costs, and cut that down to £4k. So at the end of the hearing the judge made out a CCJ for £11.5k and said that I should offer them about £1 a week. He did also quite carefully point out that in order to present the evidence that I now have, I would have to make an out of time appeal against the decisions made at the original hearing. So as you read this, I am just finishing up my appeal application which should be at court by the end of the week.

Hi all, A few things have happened that you might find interesting. As you know, I submitted the new defence to counterclaim in April 2013 pointing out that HSBC were pursuing me for the wrong amount meaning that every demand sent to me so far is unenforceable and any resultant default based on this unlawful. We have been waiting for a hearing date for the court to decide if my new DCC should be struck out, when lo and behold, HSBC send in an application to court for a hearing to have my DCC struck out? This application to court also had 14K of costs attached to it. The court decided to hear this application on the 21 June 2013 (which should have been for the actual hearing we were waiting for) and at the hearing the judge pointed out that I had not had the proper 14 days notice to prepare a witness statement in reply to the application and refused to go on with the hearing. As you can imagine, the HSBC solicitor was a bit upset and was trying to convince the Judge that CPR rules allow for the court to ignore that point and just dismiss my claim but the Judge was having none of it. I was given 14 days to submit a witness statement in reply and that was submitted to court yesterday along with a skeleton argument explaining why everything HSBC have submitted to court is unenforcible. One really interesting point. In their application to have my DCC struck out, HSBC admit that I am correct in my defence in that the amount that they are pursuing me for is wrong. Their counterclaim states that I owe them £9,142.4, which is wrong, they have now changed that to £8,887.03, which is still wrong. How can they claim that my defence should be struck out and then admit it is correct? Evidence that HSBC have already submited to court clearly states that my loan account without the PPI should now be £7,091.03. I have cut and pasted the complete skeleton argument below. Many thanks to all Caggers who contributed the information used in it. .................................................................................. IN THE BRIGHTON COUNTY COURT Claim No: ############ BETWEEN Dustmonkey Claimant -and- HSBC Bank PLC Defendant First Skeleton Argument for the re pleaded defence to counterclaim on behalf of the Claimant Dustmonkey In this Skeleton Argument: References to page numbers are references to exhibit “DCC3”. Second and Third Loan Defaults 1. The claims made by the Defendant in their counterclaim are that the Claimant owes £9,142.48 on the third defaulted loan. This sum is incorrect. 2. In the recent application to court to have the re pleaded counterclaim defence struck-out, the Defendant has admitted that the Claimant was correct in stating that they are pursuing him for the wrong amount. After another re-calculation, the Defence now puts foreword the figure of £8,887.03 for the third loan. This sum is also incorrect. 3. These figures all stem from the original wrongly defaulted second loan figure of £9,622.09, which is also incorrect. 4. The correct amount for the second loan should have been £7,091.03 once the PPI element was removed. This correct amount was included in the first PPI repayment offer dated 21 June 2011 and was submitted to court by the Defendant. Page 10 5. Both default notices for the second and third loans are defective to the requirements of the Consumer Credit (Enforcement, Default and Termination Notices) Regulations 1983 (SI 1983/1561) and Amendment Regulations the Consumer Credit (Enforcement, Default and Termination Notices) (Amendment) Regulations 2004 (SI 2004/3237). 6. To be valid, a Default Notice is required to be accurate in terms of both the scope and nature of breach and include an accurate figure and a prescribed number of days to remedy any such breach. 7. Failure of a Default Notice to be accurate not only invalidates the Default Notice (Woodchester Lease Management Services Ltd v Swain & Co- (2001] GCCR 2255) but is an unlawful rescission of contract which would not only prevent the court enforcing any alleged debt, but would also give rise to a potential counterclaim for damages where damage has occurred to the Claimants credit rating (Kpohraror v Woolwich Building Society (1996) 4 All ER 119) 8. Breach of contract has now happened twice in succession, by the Defendant cancelling both the second and third loan contracts unlawfully. Further to the default notices being defective, it should be noted that the second loan was placed into class 862 on 13 May 2011 with a review date of 13 June 2011. Page 2 The Claimant’s loan account was confirmed as being in class 862 in an internal email between arrears collection and ##### #####. A non-edited un-redacted original copy of this email is on pages 2/3 while a redacted and edited copy sent to the Claimant is on pages 4/5. This is a term used by the Defendant to mean that the Claimant’s loan account is no longer with arrears collection and is not subject to the collection procedures as defined in Consumer Credit Act 1974. The final demand sent to the Claimant on 31 May 2011 was therefore unenforceable not only because it was for the wrong amount, but also the Defendant had no right or reason to enforce the debt or send any further demands until the agreed review on 13 June 2011. Conclusions It is clear why the Defendant desperately wanted the Counterclaim defence struck out; it undermines their whole claim. Presently, the Defence seem to have no grasp of the actual amounts owed and obviously have no appreciation for the absolute carnage that has have inflicted on the Claimants credit file and financial reputation for the past two years. Statement of truth The Claimant believes that the facts stated in this Skeleton Argument are true. Signed…………………………………. Full Name: Dustmonkey Dated this .................................................................................... Many thanks for everybody's help and backing. Speak to you as soon as we have had the next hearing. Dustmonkey

Just a very brief update. I still have not received anything from court telling me the date of my next hearing yet even though my new defence to counter-claim was submitted at the end of April. I have removed all reference to HSBC from my Crocodile website because at the moment I am in the middle of raising funding for the project. This has a deadline of June 26 2013 so I will be completely revamping the site to include all of the recently uncovered evidence for all to see.

Hi everyone, As I mentioned, HSBC made an application to court to have my claims struck-out, my defence to counter-claim struck-out, to make me liable for their £14,000 of costs so far and also have the court make me pay them the estimated £10.000 outstanding loan account. So here goes. On the 4 April 2011 at Brighton CC, I spent three hours going through my claims and the evidence I had when the claims were submitted. The basis of my claims were that HSBC were in breach of contract when they registered the default in July 2011 because of the agreements made with me, unfortunately the court's view was that these arrangements were not contractual (No consideration) and so ultimately all my claims were struck out. As was my defence to counter-claim. In his summing up, the Judge stated to the HSBC Barrister, that I had lost on a mere technicality and that in his opinion the whole case stank to high heaven. He went on to say that in his opinion HSBC had been withholding evidence and that at least one email had been edited in an attempt to cover up what had been going on. He then made orders that he was making HSBC fully liable for all costs to date with no right of appeal. I was then instructed to re-plead my defence to counter-claim using all of the new evidence supplied to me since my original application to court, nothing from the original defence could be used. This was submitted to court last week. My new defence is based around HSBC's Negligence when dealing with my complaint, specifically the arrangements put in place on the 13 May 2011 and the registering of the default. I have learnt something quite interesting while investigating things over the last couple of weeks. In the 13 May email, arrears collections are agreeing to a hold on any action being taken against me using the term class 862. HSBC use this term when dealing with a loan account that has been sent to collections. The only way to stop the demand process is to actually take the account away from them, it is held as class 862 which means it is no longer with arrears and is no longer subject to the collections procedures. My account was in class 862 from 13 May 2011 till a supposed review date of the 13 July 2011. The final demand was posted the 31 May 2011. I will be updating my website with the unedited version of the 13 May email and transcripts from the phone calls so that everyone can read what was being said, discussed and agreed by HSBC management. I am now waiting for the next hearing date where HSBC are going to have to try and explain why they are suing me for the wrong amount, why they have registered two defaults against me for the wrong amounts etc and come up with a good reason for the edited email.. I have been talking about re-submitting my whole claim to court based on Negligence. I will let you know when I have the next hearing date, HSBC are still refusing to sit down and talk about the situation to try and resolve things.

Hi Dougal, Many thanks for the advice. I have already made covert recordings of phone calls to HSBC, and one meeting with a business manager in 2012. DG solicitors emailed me a draft witness statement from the business manager with regard to the meeting which was completely fabricated. The recording of the meeting I have could show possible perjury. During my SAR request in 2012, I was being told that phone recordings from 2011 which I had requested had either not been made or had been deleted after six months. DG solicitors over the past couple of months have recovered half a dozen missing recordings, the most relevant one seems to have been edited from 46 mins down to 17mins. One of the recordings has a manager talking to the PPI team who is explaining that my loan account will be reduced from £9,600 to £7,020 once the mis-sold PPI is taken out of it and a PPI refund is made. HSBC passed on a debt to Metropolitan for the full £9,600 a month later, even though five departments at HSBC had agreed to not do this. Are you serious about making a report to the CID. I am essentially accusing them of fraud in court already next week.

Hi everyone, Its been a while since my last update so here goes. I have been dealing with HSBC's solicitors for the past few months but things have not been resolved. HSBC have now made an application to court to have the case dismissed as they say I have no case against them, this hearing is due to be heard on the 4th April 2013. Unfortunately for HSBC, the 250 page application they submitted to court included copies of bank internal emails as evidence from 13 May 2011. One set supplied to me in redacted form and the other unredacted from the solicitors own investigation. The solicitors version is different to my version. It seems that before the email was sent to me as part of my SAR in 2012, someone decided to edit out a complete sentence in the middle of the email. This sentence states: "My concern is that we will end up with a further complaint if demand is made and one that we will struggle to defend given that the bank will be upholding the claim of mis-sold PPI". I have also received half a dozen phone recordings from May 2011 which I was told were either deleted or not made. Many of these recordings involve the same manager who sent the 13 May 2011 email, and he is basically stating to three other departments that actually registering the default against me could land HSBC in court as they are now admitting mis-selling the PPI. It also becomes apparent after listening to the recordings that my loan account of £9, 600 should have been reduced to £7,020 once the PPI payments are removed. But someone at HSBC had the cool idea to register the default and send a £9, 600 debt to Metropolitan Collections before that could happen. It also means that the new loan that I was issued in September 2011 should have been for £7,020 and not for over £9,000. I will let you know what happens on the 4th April.

Well at the moment there is an ongoing investigation into whether or not HSBC delayed sending me my PPI repayment offer so that they could actually register the debt. The registered debt then allowed them to cancel the first offer and make the second offer repayable to Metropolitan/HSBC. This kind of puts a whole different skew on the legal interpretation of what should be payable in damages.

Did you actually take anybody to court over it or was it an out of court settlement? Were you accusing the bank of making a mistake/error or were you saying that they registered the debt on purpose?

Its at this point that I will remind everyone that my claim against HSBC stands at £10,000,000 in court and £1,000,000 for an out of court settlement. The FOS and HSBC are offering £300 at the moment. I am going to do my best and try to make my court case as public as possible, a kind of Crocodile Vs Goliath case. I am going to be a litigant in person going up against one of the biggest banks on the planet with more legal resources than they know what to do with. My witness list is going to look like the HSBC Christmas party. All it takes is to have a judge in a court who decides that it would be interesting to have HSBC explain their actions based on their own paperwork. This is what is happening with the ICO at the moment, they have been asking HSBC to provide evidence as to why they registered a debt in my name for £9,000 last year. There answer so far has been, "Um, yes, er we will have to get back to you on that!" They now have till the end of this week for that one, at which point the ICO will be asking why they instructed Metropolitan to register a second debt in my name which was not even mine. HSBC have to come to the conclusion that I am not going away and treating me like an idiot at this point is not going to do themselves any favors when it comes to court. They can quite happily withhold information from my SAR and lie to the FOS up until the point when someone calls their bluff.

From the reaction I received at Burgess Hill, nobody at this point is willing to talk or discuss the situation because I have now threatened legal action. This includes Metropolitan.

That's about the strength of it. The FOS have to take into account the legal situation but they can still set compensation at any level they choose. I went into the Brighton branch of HSBC yesterday to make an official complaint about HSBC passing on a contested debt to Metropolitan and then having Metropolitan register the wrong account and debt against me. The manager of the bank refused to let me register the complaint in the branch and asked me to leave after giving me a HSBC leaflet on how to make a complaint. So off I popped to the Burgess Hill branch and made my formal complaint there. The staff there were very accommodating up until the point when they contacted customer services to discuss the case and then came back to me and announced that they could not discuss the situation or make any further comments. Sounds like my letter before action may have arrived.

The FOS have been pretty useless if I am honest. The thing is you have to be able to show any court that you have gone down that route before taking any action. HSBC are now sending me letters refusing to investigate my complaint any further and have taken no notice of the evidence from my SAR results. At least at a first hearing with a judge, they have to actually put up some sort of defense, until now they have just continually denied everything. As soon as I receive anything from the ICO I will update my Crocodile Keyboards website and post a comment here.

Have a quick update for you. Last week I sent HSBC a "letter before action" (Many thanks to everyone on this forum for the invaluable information on how to do this/what to say) and informed them that I will be seeking £10,000,000 compensation via the courts. If any of you have been to the Crocodile Keyboard website and read the documents there, then you will be pleased to know that I have requested the names of all of the HSBC employees that have written the internal emails as I am including them on my witness list so that they can explain their actions in court. The FOS Ombudsman has also now made a final decision based on their investigation which it turns out is exactly the same as the original one made in 2011. They are not making any comment about the legality of anything that HSBC have done or commenting on any of the new evidence from my SAR, just re-stating that HSBC have made a few bank errors and should pay £300 in personal compensation. The FOS were never going to actually investigate HSBC, and they do not actually have to take any notice of any relevant laws in their decision so you do wonder how they are ever going to come to any relevant conclusion. So there you have it, I have no legal help with this as no litigator in his right mind would take on a no win no fee case against a bank. I will be presenting my case to court as a litigant in person who at the moment has no real income to speak of due to the effects of what HSBC have done over the past two years. Oh yes, I forgot to mention one thing. I contested a final demand I received from HSBC last month for the new loan that the FOS made them set up in September to repay Metropolitan. At the time there had been no formal loan application filled in, I failed the credit check in the branch and I still had a £9,000 default in my name. I had been out of work for a year and the casual part time work I was due to start was only going to bring in around £150 a week. Anyway, HSBC decided to ignore my legal right to contest the debt in court and passed the second loan account over to Metropolitan who registered the debt against me. Now for the icing on the cake. Metropolitan went ahead and registered the wrong account number and debt amount against my name. So cue emails to the FOS and ICO and another formal complaint to the HSBC Chairman. Honestly, you couldn't make it up could you.

Ok, I have cut pasted and edited directly from my website. Summary written 20/07/2012 xxxxx xxxxx had taken a break from his normal job of replacement stone carving in 2010 to concentrate on developing the first-colour changing prototype of the xxxxxxx xxxxxxxx. During this period, he also put in a claim for two miss-sold PPI policies with HSBC in April 2010. After the prototype was completed in November 2010, Mr xxxxx was having problems finding any full time employment as the stone industry had been hit by the recession. Mr xxxxx contacted HSBC to talk about his existing personal loan as he was going to struggle keeping up with the full repayments until Feb 2011 at the earliest. Instead of HSBC offering to refund the miss-sold PPI, they insisted that he make part payments to the account, which he did. By May 03 rd 2011, HSBC were still denying that the PPI had been miss-sold but were now insisting that they would be issuing court proceedings if he failed to contact them by 13 th May 2011 to arrange repayment terms. On May 5th and 6th, Mr xxxxx contacted HSBC and spoke to a manager who agreed that the loan should never have been passed to arrears collection and he would arrange a one-month hold on any further action and fast track a PPI repayment with the offer being posted the following week . This came as quite a relief for Mr xxxxx who had been struggling financially and had very little of his project funds left. HSBC posted the first offer to Mr xxxxx on the 21 st June 2011, which he duly accepted, signed and posted back. Unfortunately this offer had been cancelled and the loan account shut down and passed to Metropolitan collections and the debt registered in his name on 29 th June 2011. This was two weeks prior to Mr xxxxx being filmed for the BBC’s Dragons Den in July 2011. HSBC then posted a second increased offer that was now payable directly to Metropolitan and would still leave Mr xxxxx owing £2,000 and still with a registered default against his name. Mr xxxxx made a formal complaint about the registered default but HSBC were denying that any arrangements had been made in May 2011 and insisted that no evidence could be found to corroborate this. Mr xxxxx then involved the Financial Ombudsman Service in August 2011 and they agreed to fast track an investigation. The registered default by HSBC had a disastrous impact on Mr xxxxx and xxxxxxx xxxxx Ltd as any means of raising finance was effectively taken away. Mr xxxxx was trying to raise his second round of funding to build the finished version of the keyboard and take the patent applications through to the next stage. With the Ombudsman now asking awkward questions, HSBC finally made a PPI repayment to Mr xxxxx and set up a new loan account to repay the debt with Metropolitan. Unfortunately, the new loan funds were put into a holding account for five months and not handed over until March 2012 to clear the debt. Mr xxxxx had contacted the HSBC Chairman's office and the FOS several times to try and get things resolved, unfortunately even the Chairman's own investigation failed to notice that the new loan funds were supposed to repay Metropolitan and still also failed to find any evidence of the May 2011 agreements. In March 2012 Mr xxxxx received the results of his SAR (subject action request). Buried in the information where internal emails from the 13th may 2011, showing that an arrangement had been put in place for a one-month hold and a fast tracked repayment of the PPI. Unfortunately, this agreement written on the 13th of May 2011 was withheld from being posted for five and a half weeks and than re-dated and posted the 21st June 2011, one week after the hold ran out. Mr xxxxx’s solicitor, who has spent quite some time looking at these documents had pointed out numerous irregularities and has concluded that HSBC could be liable for a possible breach of contract, collusion to defraud and illegally registering a debt. This is quite separate to them ignoring their own terms and conditions of their final demand letter dated the 3rd of May 2011 that Mr xxxxx had fully complied with. The FOS originally found that HSBC had treated Mr xxxxx unfairly, should have made the PPI repayment much earlier as HSBC were aware that Mr xxxxx was suffering financial hardship, should never have registered the debt and had failed to clear the debt as agreed. The FOS have since decided to re-open the investigation in light of the new evidence from the SAR and also the Information Commissioners Office have become involved because of the wrongly registered debt. The overall effect for Mr xxxxx is that he was put into a debt spiral by HSBC during the past year and lost his patent applications through not being able to raise any funding to protect them. Mr xxxxx is currently seeking compensation from HSBC to cover his own personal losses with xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx Ltd pursuing a claim for losses separately which is currently estimated at around £10 million.

Ok, this is a long one so I will keep it as concise as possible. To try and avoid paying out an agreed £5,400 in miss-sold PPI, HSBC decided to illegally register a £9,000 debt in my name so that they could pay the money directly to Metropolitan. This was done in July 2011, two weeks before I was due to be filmed for Dragons Den. The result of the registered debt was that I am still unable to raise any finance for myself or my soon to be closed company and I have lost patent applications worth an awful lot of money. I am in the middle of investigations by both the FOS and the ICO and am soon to be taking legal action against HSBC for compensation of around £10,000,000. For a detailed timeline of events and copies of HSBC documents and internal emails go to the Crocodile Keyboards website. I would appreciate anyone who could spend around ten minutes taking a look and giving their opinion on the legality of what HSBC have been doing. I have been told that I am eligible for legal aid but I am waiting to find out to what extent this help will be. Many thanks.