Hey Matt I'm also not looking forward to doc exchange because of the work involved. What keeps me going is thinking of it as a job . . . for the amount of hours I'm putting in I'm going to be on a great hourly rate when I get the money!!! Speak soon Mart

Hi Philip Just caught up with your thread today - some amazing letters you've sent!! Good Luck Martin

Hmmmnnn! A bit more reading and preparing then. Thanks again for all your help Gary

Hi Gary Thanks for your help - much appreciated. Will send SC&M a copy of our AQ this week. Is it worth putting anything in the covering letter? Or should I just sit back patiently and wait for the money to come in? Martin

Hi Unlawful charges (in my humble opinion) and unprofessional Solicitors!! Keep fighting!

Hi Matt Just caught up with your thread. Lloyds AQ to you seems exactly the same as mine apart from they have a non-expert witness?? Keep in touch. Mart

Hi everyone just to keep up to speed and see if anyone else has had the same . . . we received today a letter from S C & M. It was a copy of there AQ and a request for a copy of ours. there AQ does NOT request any further postponement to arrive at a settlement but DOES state that December is not a convenient time for a hearing. what does concern me is that they have said they intend to call a witness (although NOT an expert). also in 'other information' they have said 'The Defendant intends to rely on its defence and the terms and conditions that govern the account.' any comments/thoughts???

stoke on trent

hey matt i've also not heard from lloyds yet. aq deadline is 07.12.06. i spoke to the court who said that if lloyds miss the deadline (which apparently they do a lot) they will probably be given a further 5 days to respond before the judge will consider striking them out. not long to go for us now i hope

Excellent!! Well Done! Inspiring.

Thanks Matt & Gary Also Matt, I know what you mean about the amount of time spent on this site!! Between this and ebay . . .!! Mart

Thanks. Having read many threads now it does seem a standard letter - I'm surprised they haven't charged £30 for it!! Good luck - I will watch how you get on. Martin.

Hi Matt Just read your thread - why did you send a copy of your AQ to S C & M? I haven't at this stage do you think this will cause delay? Thanks Mart

Good to hear from you Matt. Will let you know how I get on. Good Luck to you. Martin

Hi Thanks. Handed my AQ in today. LTSB have up to 07.12.06 to do the same. Looking forward to the next stage!!

Thanks Barty Had a sudden rush of doubt there for a second!! Any thoughts on the section in the AQ regarding 'Other information'. Have read some suggestions. Thanks again

This is a bit long winded but I want you to have as much detail as possible so please read on . . . Story so far: 1. Data Pro Act SAR sent 24.07.2006 2. Request for Repayment of Charges sent 14.09.2006 3. LBA sent 02.10.2006 4. County Court Claim issue date 24.10.2006 5. Defendant filed Acknowledgement of Service 07.11.2006 At this point things started going wrong due to an incorrect address for us being entered at the court!! 6. Queried none receipt of Allocation Questionnaire 23.11.2006 (Duplicate sent out by Court: received 25.11.2006) 7. Filling in Allocation Questionnaire today but realised I should have a copy of Lloyds Defence: Defence served 13.11.2006 by S C & M received faxed copy from Court today. My query is their defence. Does this sound standard? 1. Bank don't dispute my account with them 2. By opening an account I entered into a commercial arrangement with the Bank. The Bank is entitled to charge for services. I was made aware of charges when I opened account. 3. If I'd operated my account within it's limits I could have avoided most if not all charges. Because I didn't, I used the Bank's own funds and for providing this service they made a charge as specified in their leaflets . . . 4. 'There is no breach of contract; the charge cannot therefore be a penalty, consequently there is no requirement that the charge be a pre-estimate of the Bank's loss.' 5. I was given advance warning of the charges on statements and letters. 6. 'The charges are fair and reasonable, and it is denied that they are unlawful.' 7. I was notified in 'plain intelligible language' about the charges. ' The charges are terms which relate to the price payable by the customer for a service provided by the Bank, and pursuant to Regulation 6 of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulation 1999, are not subject to the assessment of fairness.' 8. 'In the premises:' 8.1 'the charges are for banking services, and are not damages nor a penalty;' 8.2 'the Bank is entitled by contract to impose the charges, which are fair and reasonable;' 8.3 'it is denied that the charges are unlawful or contravene any statute or regulation.' 9. 'The Claimant's claim is denied in its entirety. It is further denied that the Claimant is entitled to the sum claimed or to any sum from the Bank' Should I be concerned or carry on?? Thanks for reading.

Hi We could never find out what mistakes they had made because they would never admit to having made them!! In April 01 we were offered our first agreement and 6 month 'probation' period. In June 01, because of an error (we don't know what error!!) the agreement had to be re-set and another 'probation' period started. In August 01, Lloyds re-set the agreement and 'probation' period again because they hadn't included all our accounts in the agreement. In November 01, Lloyds re-set the agreement again because we had not made payments on time and would need to complete another 6 month 'probation' period. When we contested this Lloyds found it was their error so we would only need to do 3 months 'probation' now! In June 2002, the re-finance offer was withdrawn completely because too much time had elapsed between Lloyds offer to us and our return of the documents. The delay was caused because we were waiting for some additional documentation from Lloyds before we could proceed. After much argueing the re-finance was eventually put through in September 02. We were in constant touch with Lloyds throughout this entire period by letter and phone (we have kept copies of everything) but if it didn't suit them Lloyds just didn't reply!! Surely Lloyds have set guidlines they must adhere to when handling situations like ours? Thanks again for your interest.

Hi We are currently claiming back all charges and interest for unpaid items, returned DDs etc. N1 goes in next week. We wondered if there was anything else we could do about the repeated re-setting of the 'probation' period because of mistakes Lloyds made and indeed the massive loans themselves? Thanks for your interest.

Hi everyone. We have been watching this site and following peoples stories for some time now with great interest. It is truly inspiring!! We are currently attempting to get OUR money back off Lloyds also - following all the proceedures - and our N1 should go in next week. We do have a question though . . . Unfortunately, to get a full answer we think we need to give you a bit of background info so please read on. About six years ago we were banking with Lloyds and we hit a few financial problems - Lloyds did all they could to help: increasing our overdrafts, then selling us consolidation loans, then increasing our overdrafts again, then another loan and on and on it went. Because we reached the point where we just couldn't afford to eat we were advised to open a new bank account somewhere else for our wages and pay only what we could afford to our creditors. Amazingly, this worked quite well and all our creditors froze interest and accepted reduced payments until our debts were cleared - all except one: Lloyds!! Because there was not enough money going into our accounts to cover our personal loan repayments they punished us every month with £55 charges + interest. They also reduced our overdraft limits each month just to make things interesting! After some time they came up with an idea: they would provide us with 2 seperate loans, consolidating all our debts at an interest rate of 1.6% APR over approx 15 years. But to get this we had to satisfy certain conditions for a six month period: namely making payments into the account at the correct amount and at the correct time each month (incidentally - we always paid some money into the accounts each month to show our commitment to paying our debts). We jumped at the chance - must have been our ages!! Things went smoothly at first but guess what - each time we came near to the end of our six months 'probation' there was an unexplained problem which meant the agreement had to be re-set and we had to do another six months! Creating more charges, more interest and thus a bigger loan amount. After 3 or 4 attempts, the loans went through and since then we've paid our money every month. As we mentioned at the beginning of this epic (thanks for reading this far!) we do have a question. We think the banks handling of our situation was seriously dodgy. Can we do anything about it? Hope you can help and good luck to everyone!

Hi Everyone I'm new to this site. A number of years ago I hit some financial turbulence. LTSB levied lots of charges against my account re unpaid DD's etc. Eventually offered me a lifeline of a low rate loan over many years to re-pay the money I owed. However before they would finalise the loan I had to complete a 6 month period paying in set amounts. On at least 4 occassions, due to their mistakes, the 6 month period had to be re-set which meant even more charges being made against my accounts. If I go for a refund of unreasonable charges am I going to rock the boat concerning the low rate loans?