Hello everyone, Well I can look forward to a happy Christmas and New Year because my friendly neighbourhood bank recently paid out in full. The court date was set and looming large. I was busy preparing my defense, then earlier this week (Mon 18th Dec) I received a lovely surprise through the post. It was a letter from Cahoot which I have written below verbatim. NOLAN -v- ABBEY NATIONAL PLC CLAIM NO. 123456 In view of the amount that you are claiming and the legal costs that Abbey would incur in arranging defense and representation at the court, the decision has been made that on this occasion, and in this case, your claim will be settled in full. Abbey National Plc will make payment to you in the sum of £684.85 as claimed, together with the court fee of £80.00. This gives a total payment of £764.85. Abbey is raising a cheque for the sum of £764.85 that will be paid into your account (if open) or posted to you. This payment of £764.85 represents full and final settlement of your claim, but without any admission of legal liability by Abbey. Upon receipt of your cheque please write to the Court withdrawing your claim. Please acknowledge the terms of settlement reached by signing and returning a copy of this letter. Yours faithfully Abbey National Plc And there you have it folks. From start to the bitter end it has taken six months to get my money back. Good luck to you all. Now I can turn my big guns on Nat West for the few hundred bucks they owe me. I wish all of you all the best will in the world in reclaiming your unfair bank charges. It's been an adventure (I will stop now). Bye Paul

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From start of claim to finish a little over two months. I roughly started my Money Claim around 6 weeks ago. Not long to go now it seems.

There has been a little movement with my dispute with Cahoot. Essentially the solicitors working on behalf of Cahoot sent me a nice letter recently saying that the bank are willing to offer me half of the fees back plus costs to avoid going to court. It took me all of five minutes to decide not to take up their offer and to fire off a letter saying as much. It looks like this is headign to it's final denouement. Let's see what they serve up next? Paul

By a strange quirk of fate I received a letter this very morning (Wed 23rd Aug) from Cahoot's legal representatives asking me to provide a list of the charges. This is despite me sending the list of charges twice to the Cahoot contact. As Cahoot's legal advisers should know the online Moneyclaim website only allows you a certain amount of characters in which to lodge the details of a claim (24 lines of text with no special characters). There was not enough space for all of my claims details. Needless to say I will be writing a letter asap to Cahoot's legal eagles including all of my previous correspondence + the charges & interest. What happens next is up to the bank. They still insist that charges are fair but will not justify the excessive costs levied. Over to them Paul

Hello all, Cheers for the replies. It appears from Cahoot's reply that they do not think that the charges are disproportionate & that they are reasonable & proportionate to the admin costs. Well I will most certainly be keeping beady on your threads. I wish you both luck and........ Down with Cahoot.

Hello to you all, After reading about how I could reclaim bank charges on both The Motley Fool & Marvelous Martin's Money Saving Expert (I work in the same building as him and we chatted in the queue for coffee) I decided to reclaim my charges from Cahoot c£700!. I did the obligatory letter asking them to provide me with statements since year dot which they promptly did. So far so good. After scouring through my statements I worked out I had been charged (inc interest) roughly £700. I then sent the standard letter to Cahoot demanding that they refund the charges. This is what my friendly neighbourhood bank said. Dear Mr Nolan, I refer to your letter dated 4th July 2006 regarding your cahoot current account. I've taken ownership of your particular case in order to provide a response to the issues you've raised. We don't accept that cahoot's charges are unfair under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999. The object of these Regulations was not price control nor were they intended to interfere with people's freedom to agree the terms of their contracts. It's well known that banks make charges and cahoot's charges are in line with those of other banks. The terms and conditions of the account and the charges that apply are clear and fair and were provided to you at the time you opened it. You freely agreed to the terms and conditions and the charges when you opened the account. You weren't under any obligation to do so and could have gone to another bank if you didn't agree to the charges. Equally, you're free to move your account to another bank at any time if you don't agree with the charges. In any event, we don't agree that the charges are disproportionate. The charges are reasonable and proportionate to the administrative costs incurred by cahoot. In light of the above, I'm unable to refund the charges you've incurred fully appreciating the disappointment this may cause. If you need anything further please don't hesitate to contact me. Yours sincerely Lee Loftus Service Relationship Manager, cahoot ********************* Internet communications are not necessarily secure and may be intercepted or changed after they are sent. cahoot does not accept liability for any such changes. If you wish to confirm the origin or content of this communication, please contact the sender using an alternative means of communication. This communication does not create or modify any contract. This email may contain confidential information intended solely for use by the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication you should destroy it without copying, disclosing or otherwise using its contents. Please notify the sender immediately of the error. cahoot is a division of Abbey National plc. Abbey National plc is registered in England, registered number 2294747. Registered Office: Abbey National House, 2 Triton Square, Regent's Place, London, NW1 3AN. Right, let's get jiggy on their ass!

I logged on to te Cahoot portal and within a week they had posted me out a humungous set of statements going back to year dot. I am currently in the process of listing all of my charges (c£700). I feel like a kid in a sweetshop. Che...ching