Hi, Sorry for taking so long to get back. I'll post the full particulars of claim after this. In the meantime:

HELP!

Despite filing a case against them for the full credit card bill amount, they've now started sending me postcards saying: "Our representative will be calling your home on: 20th Novemeber"

What are they doing? I'm getting a bit scared by this.

Thanks,

Halidebt

Hi jonni2bad,

I have PM-ed them to you.

Halidebt

OK. Things have been a little busy since I was last on here.

Halifax tried to get me to sign a 'full and final settlement' for a paltry amount(£200). They have responded to the Information Commissioner's letter saying they have sent the DPA documents to me - they haven't - so I think they're lying to the IC.

Got fed up with Halifax's nonsense so I issued an N1 claim form through the county court earlier this month. Served on 11th October. This may be of interest to people as it was to get current account charges back, credit card charges wiped and for Halifax's breach of the DPA.

The monetary bit £835 (including section 69)

Three days later...intention to defend. So far everything as normal. Then on Friday (20th Oct) letter from Halifax: "Thank you for confirming your acceptance of our offer of £855.02. I am pleased to enclosea cheque for this amount in full & final settlement of your complaint" WHAT? There's a cheque, but I haven't agreed anything. They hadn't even offered this amount before. I don't even know where they've got this figure from.

So I'm not sure what to do, or what happens next. They've got 28 days from 11/10 to file defence - that's 8th Novemeber. Then I presume we get a court date. Since they haven;t wiped the CC 'bill' or complied with the DPA I'm intending to let it trundle on till we go to court. Any thoughts?

Cheers,

Halidebt

OK. Sent a letter stating I formally dispute the 'debt.' Also included an LBA asking for the money they owe me back. That runs out on Friday. Now going to get my court stuff ready!

Halidebt

If I formally dispute a debt, can they sell it to a debt collection agency?

This is the £1600 I 'owe' Halifax Card Services. I've worked out that when you take off charges they actually owe me a little bit. But now I'm threatening them with court, what's to stop they selling it to an aggressive agency?

I've heard there might be a law that prevents this if the debt is disputed. Is this true?

Thanks for the help,

Halidebt.

So the 7 days expired with nothing from the Halifax. Has anyone else had this problem - what did they do, what were their excuses?

I now have to take them to County Court when I find the time - even though I threatened to do this as soon as the deadline ran out I have too many other things to do for the next couple of weeks. Will this be a problem?

Thanks,

Halidebt

Hi all,

Having a few probs with my Halifax Credit Card.

Data Protection Act request for statements sent 27th June (incl £10 cheque)

Acknowledgement received 13th July

Cheque cashed 17th July

40 day limit expired with no sign of statements 6th August.

I sent a complaint form to the Information Commissioner's office on the 8th and the standard LBA to Halifax on the 9th by recorded delivery. It was received on the 10th of August. Since I gave them 7 days, that expires tomorrow - but I haven't heard anything.

Can anyone give me any advice?

Should I ring them or proceed with court action?

Also, is the £30 for court action recoverable from Halifax?

Thanks for all your help,

Halidebt.

No, I mean I've written a spreadsheet for other people to use to calculate their credit card balances with charges removed.

Done it!!! Now I just need to know what to do with it...

...doesn't seem to be an attach button here.

Can anyone help? How do I post/upload spreadsheets?

Hi Halidebt and everyone else out there!

Is there any news on the spreadsheet for calculating Credit card debts?

Sorry I have been offline for ages with all sorts of problems.

I will get back on tonight and let everyone know what is happening when I finally get some peace!

Thanks for everything so far.

Have issued my claim today online for my current account. Will post all the details later when I find my thread!

Substation.

yep, same thing with me. sent the dpa non-compliance lba by recorded delivery today

I'm not entirely sure but I think you can - I'm hoping to do the same thing.

I've sent DPA requests for info on somebody else's account, including a letter of authorisation from that person with the request so I think there is a mechanism

Hi all,

I've made a spreadsheet to recalculate credit card statements as they would be without charges - this has an important impact on the interest charged.

How do I post a file?

Halidebt.

DPA request sent 27th June

Request acknowledged 13th July

£10 cheque cashed by Halifax 17th July

The 40 days ran out on Sunday - no statements have arrived!

I have complained to the information commissioner.

I have also sent the following letter before action to Halifax:

------------------------------------------------------

Dear Sir/Madam

ACCOUNT NUMBER: 4556 4730 0153 6902

You have failed to comply with my Data Protection Act Subject Access Request dated 27th June 2006.

If you do not comply within the next 7 days I shall seek a Court order obliging you to do so together with damages at the discretion of the Court and without any further notice.

For your information, I received acknowledgement of my request from [name of employee] of the Business Risk – Retail department in a letter dated 13th July. However, the requested statements have not been delivered. The 40 day period for compliance with my Request expired on 6th August.

I have also lodged a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Yours faithfully,

[Halidebt]

------------------------------------------------------

Should get their attention!

Hi there,

Nearly done! On a beta version now, needs testing and instructions writing.

How do I post spreadsheets?

Hi Halidebt and everyone else out there!

Is there any news on the spreadsheet for calculating Credit card debts?

Sorry I have been offline for ages with all sorts of problems.

I will get back on tonight and let everyone know what is happening when I finally get some peace!

Thanks for everything so far.

Have issued my claim today online for my current account. Will post all the details later when I find my thread!

Substation.

Hi there,

I have a problem with my credit rating as I've been defaulted by HSBC. I'm hoping to be able to remove the default notice but I'm not sure they've done anything wrong.

I'll start by saying that they haven't levied any illegal charges, and (relatively speaking!) they have been pretty decent about it.

I had a student account with an interest-free overdraft (how they suck you in...) which I maxed out - my balance was £1247D and the limit £1250. Then I stopped being a student and it became very much interest inclusive. In June 2005 they tried to take an interest payment of £14 which would have taken me over my limit. I hadn't been paying anything in for quite some time.

My account was immediately passed to their debt collectors (Metropolitan) before heading over to CDEA with whom I eventually settled. The amount that I paid was the £1247 which I'd run up on the overdraft - they didn't include the £14 interest and they didn't levy any charges.

According to my Experian credit rating I was defaulted on the 21st of June 05 - immediately after they tried to deduct the £14, which I think is very quick. However, I don't think I received a default notice. I certainly can't find one now and don't remember getting one.

So the question is: do I have a case for having the default notice removed? I've recently been turned down for a credit card, which I'm not particularly bothered about, but I'll be looking for a mortgage soon so it could be quite serious.

Thanks,

Halidebt.

This could be very significant.

 

What we need is for one of our more technically minded members to design an Excell spreadsheet that shows a layout similar to a bank statement and will calculate correct ongoing balances. This would make the job of rewriting statements much easier and the process of reclaimng fees much more profitable.

 

Anyone fancy a try?

Work is progressing on the spreadsheet!

(This is for Credit Card probs where the payments have offset fees not debt and so interest has accrued on that debt which wouldn't have done had the illegal fees not been levied)

Will post it when it's done.

Received this from HBOS, dated 13th July:

------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Sir/Madam

Completion of Request for a list of transactions and charges

I acknowledege your letter requesting specific information on your account with us and confirm that copies of duplicate statements have been ordered and will be sent under separate cover.

With regard to your request for information relating to manual intervention on your account, HBOS plc is under no statutory obligation to record this information and therefore, I am unable to assist further with your request.

Should oyu have any general aacount queries please contact 24 hour banking on 08457 20 30 40.

Details of how you use your data can be foudn on the internet under the Security and Privacy section at www.halifax.co.uk and Bank Of Scotland - Home -. If you would like a copy of registered Data Protection Notification details, this can be found at www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk. Alternatively, please let me know if you would like me to forward a copy of either to you.

Yours faithfully,

[Printed Signature]

Data Protection Consultant

Business Risk - Retail.

--------------------------------------------------------

Spelling mistakes mine. Clearly a standard letter but better than I was expecting. Cheque for tenner cashed on Monday.

Haven't had the statments yet though! Have heard these are often 'lost in the post.'

Just thought I'd keep everyone up to date. Any thoughts?

PS Work is progressing on my credit card spreadsheet, will post it when it's done.

Well done mate!!!

thinking of persuing this now, i just won my claim with them, never gave it a second thought that i was accumulating extra interest due to payments made only paying charges

 

my question is

 

halifax has just refunded my charges

 

if rewrite my statements based on the intrest rates stated in my original agreement and DO NOT include the charges i will eventually arrive at the true figure i would have had if the charges were not added

 

i assume it will mean pulling apart the terms and conditions on the credit agreement to arrive at a true interest figure, but ultimatly it will be worth the work

 

i would say to do it AFTER you have been refunded for charges, becuase once refunded they are admitting these charges shouldnt have appeared on your statements ?

 

views ?

I see your point. Might involve going through the process twice?

I haven't paid Halifax CC anything yet - I just have a massive bill. I'm hoping to work out what the balance on thie should be legally and argue from there, charges and interest together.

I should point out that I'm figuring this out as I go along so I may have got some things wrong; or, even if I've got them right, we might not be able to get the money back.

Thanks Halidebt

 

I assumed that my late payment fees simply got added to my balance and so accrued interest on an on-going basis. I also assumed that debts were paid off cronologically. So let me get this right...

 

I have some higher rate debt (cash advances). These will NEVER get paid off unless I clear all other debts first. Is that right?

Yes, that's right. Same thing's happened to me. Because more charges are added each month I've never even got close to paying off the cash advances. All the while, these have been attracting interest of 24.4%APR

Also, another thought has occured to me. It doesn't matter that the charges carry no interest, since they are paid off immediately (because lower rate debts are paid first). They could attract ANY rate of interest - it doesnt matter because they are covered by the monthly minimum payment. What DOES matter is that the higher rate debts are not getting paid off so more interest is added on to the debt. Surely the end result is exactly the same as if they HAD charged interest on the fees. Either way they get to add interest on to the balance. It's a clever con.

 

I think we should try to claw back interest on the fees at the credit card rate since the balance will have gone up by this amount. And this should form part of the claim amount before we add the stautory 8%. What do you think?

The balance has gone up because of the fees but no interest has been charged on the fees. I think what you should be able to claw back are (i) the fees and (ii) the difference between the balance-less-fees and the balance had the fees never been applied, which will be less as your payments would have paid off some (genuine) debt rather than just their fees

...27th of June. So they have till the 6th of August to comply. Seems like a long time!

Hiya,

I've replied to Mech's thread about this one. Seems I'm in the same position.

Good luck!

This is a complicated issue.

When you make a payment to a CC, this goes towards paying off the debt with the lowest interest rate first. Of course this is exactly the opposite of what you'd rather do.

For arguments sake, say you have a CC with balances of:

£100 cash at 25% APR

£200 purchases at 20% APR

£250 (illegal) charges at 0% APR - no interest is charged on fees

You go ahead paying (say) £10 a month. All this does is pay off some of the charges-debt, meanwhile the interest on the other two is racking up. Only when you've covered the £250 on charges can you start to pay off the purchases-debt.

So the argument goes: IF the charges weren't there then that £10 per month would be going towards paying off the purchases, THEREFORE the interest accrued on the purchases other the whole period would be lower (since you'd have paid some of it off). Eventually you'd move on to the cash-debt. The problem is working out exactly how much lower the interest would be.

In my case this is quite a lot, since even when I've been paying the debt off the charges have been piling up (ie overlimit fee) so I've never got on to the purchases. It sounds like your case is quite similar.

What I've done is essentially re-write my statements as the y would look without the fees, calculating the interest accrued each month using the rates provided on the statements. This can be a bit arduous but it's reduced my 'debt' by over a thousand.

Good luck.

Hi there,

I want to make a DPA Subject Access Request on someone else's behalf. (I have their permission for this!!).

Can I just send the standard letter in the library, with an accompanying letter from this person authorising me to the the recipient of the information?

If so, is there anything in particular this letter should contain?

Thanks.

This is where it gets difficult. The arguement will be along the lines of - if you had not received charges on your account, you would have been £525 better off, but you would still have had a shortfall of £438 on your loan repayments.

 

Whilst not a definitive statement, I think you are going to be hard pushed to say that the charges were fully responsible for your debt.

Yes that's what I thought.

However, what might help is to see a timeline of events and sums involved.

 

April 2004 - when you first went over the limit.....

Actual amount owed v total of charges imposed on account

 

Date of default

Actual amount owed v total of charges imposed on account

 

Most recent position

Actual amount owed v total of charges imposed on account

I'm going to send off a Data Protection Act request to get a complete picture, now that I know I have a case.

Also, you were not sure initially if a default had been issued. Are you now sure because you have seen your credit records, or for another reason?

 

Did you ever receive notification of the default (a default notice, giving you 28 days to pay)?

Yes, I've found the notification of default. That's why I now think it's been issued. My records aren't in particularly good order, so I only found this the other day when setting about putting everything together.

Thanks again for your help