*Sooooo feels the burning need to rush into my bank tomorrow at lunchtime, when it's busy, and 'gush' in a very loud voice; "Am I in time to request my special pencil sharpener? It's all over the internet - you're handing out limited edition commemorative sharpeners to all those customers who call in first to beg for it".* *Wonders how quickly we can get this going nation-wide - and that is not just in the Nation Wide, but in every bank, everywhere, nationally and beyond*

I've just seen this thing floating by on the little window that shows Twittering going on!!! Delete, delete, delete!!! It's not a momentous, informational, world-interest topic!!!! 'twas just a 'mention' about this particular forum!!!

Sadly I didn't have either aplanned greeting for them or a residential 'rottie' as I wasn't expecting anyone! Well, if they come back, maybe I'll just have to have a convenient bottle of Chianti in me hand!!

Sorry if I got it wrong, but I thought this section was for Questions and Suggestions for this website. So if you're asking for links, then I'm obviously way off with this one because the first 14 threads under this one aren't Q&S on the website - a lot of them with the same last poster????

Seems that there's quite a few threads that would be better in the relevent sections, so it keeps the forums for their intended purpose, and may help the OPs of the threads get more help from other posters reading specific forums.

That's it - they're picking on me 'cos I'm an ol dearie wot can be easily intimidated ............................ or so they thought!!! I wasn't that bothered before - didn't like the stupid thing and it was a ridiculous waste of money and utterly pointless questions, but still filled it all in even tho I was tempted to add some very pithy comments (and yes, that is PITHY without a lithp) because it was such an appallingly thought out census. Well now me caged is rattled and I feel like a big bite on some roast leg of consenus man!! I hope wads and wads of the forms go missing and the whole thing is shown up for the waste of money and shambles it is!! 8-) I feel a bit better for that now, thankyou.

Here are some links which may help http://www.aspergerhelp.co.uk http://www.asd-forum.org.uk http://www.aspergerfoundation.org.uk http://www.autism.org.uk You may also find there are support groups in your area.

I'm sorry I've only just seen this and hope you get the email to let you know you have a reply. My answer would be a resounding 'yes' because even if you chose not to use the diagnosis in any way and prefer to keep it to yourself, it may open up a whole new set of doors in terms of understanding and support at a later date if you need it. Aspergers does come under the Disability Discrimation at Work Act, so it may (or may not) help in that respect. There are other forums and websites where you can get more advice and help on this - not in the least, the National Autistic Society. As for whether it changes anything, obviously getting a formal diagnosis or assessment cannot alter the condition, but it can help you in understanding yourself, maybe even help others to understand you better, and within not that long a time, could help with the depression. In fact, I'd say that suspecting you have some form of ASD but not knowing for sure, could even add to the depression instead of finding out for sure and then asking for what help is available to you. If it is impairing your ability to live independently, hold down jobs etc, you could also ask about whether you would qualify for help with benefits such as DLA. Hope that helps.

Has anyone had a knock yet? I've just had a really unpleasant experience from a large goon who was not only threatening, he demanded to know iif there was a reason I had not completed my census form .................... I have!!!! And why haven't they got it!!! How would I know???? He then left! Didn't get asked to fill in another one or anything, so have no idea what happens now!! So I'll phone them to complain tomorrow because it was so bad, and I live on my own and had taken some strong pain killers earlier so wasn't too with it either! Really shouldn't have answered the door, but 'someone' kept knocking and knocking........................ I feel mightily aggrieved!!!

Presumably it was the Banking Code that applied when all of this was taking place - so I don't know if or how the Lending Code would be applied Could anyone supply a brief outline of whichever Code applies to hardship cases as my pc won't open the webpages or the pdfs so I can't read the relevant info and need it quite urgently.

Hi Craig - on my renewal papers it clearly states that I have made a claim within the last three years and then gives the dates on another page with £0 for the amount claimed for building insurance, which I do not have - I only have contents. So my premium is being worked out on the basis that a claim (or attempted claim) has been made on the property and it's been added to my account from the underwriters. The dates match when the landlord had to have work done on the house which he was liable for and which may well have been covered by his insurance. But it should not be associated with my insurance or on my policy as a claim from me as they are entirely separate in terms of who has what policy.

If a tenant has their own insurance for contents but the building is insured by the landlord there's a potential for a lot of problems. If the landlord makes, or attempts to make a claim on damage to the property, it is then marked on the insurance particulars of the tenant as being a claim within xxx years on the tenant's own home insurance policy, even if the amount is shown as £0 and the tenant doesn't have buildings insurance!! Any suggestions as to how to handle this or what my rights as a tenant with their own home insurance would be?

Looks like they are clickable links anyway. Not sure where one goes to find out if a DM company they have been dealing with is on that list, and if they would have any claims for mishandling as a result of the company being kicked into touch.

Not sure if this has been posted elsewhere or if this is the right forum: Sorry that I can only post the URLs as I have very limited page view on this forum so don't have the ability to post it as a clickable link as I cannot see any icons to use. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12310290 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/fifty-debt-firms-to-go-as-oft-launches-crackdown-2197815.html http://www.bankingtimes.co.uk/2011/01/29/thirty-five-debt-management-firms-surrender-licences/

Thanks LR - I'll be at work so won't be able to take part and would dearly love to on behalf of my son and all those who are already stuffed by the system and about to be buried by it. I'll be getting my question up on the forum and hope it gets addressed. BTW - seeing your sig, I wish you all the best on your plans and hope you can achieve what you want before too long.

Annie - this may be not just one for ACAS but also one for a solicitor who specialises in these matters. It's not just the dismissal as you say, it's the way they've blackened your character in order to achieve the dismissal. If you can, also try and find people who will give you moral support as it's not just about being dismissed. I hope you can get the right help and a satisfactory resolution.

Even if there was something written in your contract, they cannot stop you from talking to your potential clients on the basis that you 'may' have come across when you worked for them when you did not. Taking your clients with you is another matter which may be dealt with in your contract. The issue is whether they could prove that you knowingly took their clients (ie your clients when you worked for them) away from their business. If they have clients on their books who wish to find another supplier (ie you or someone else) then that is a matter for the client and your old employer. If they could apply a ban on you picking up new clients who MAY have been 'leads' at your previous employment with them, then at that rate, they could force every old employee out of business by claiming every client you picked up was one of their leads you had taken from them. If in doubt, get your own legal advice.

This is really dreadful treatment and I find it truly awful that you've been put through this. Something doesn't sound right and I would not take the union reps response as final at all. You have nothing to lose by going to ACAS and even seeing if there is a solicitor who can help you with this.

That's an appalling amount of time to wait for it just to be passed to an adjudicator. Have you had the letter from the adjudicator as that should give you an idea of the first timescale for them to read the complaint and start the ball rolling. Expect it to drag on - and on - and on! Whilst the financial institutions seem to be able to get away with penalising their customers within a nano second, they are allowed to be given months and months to respond to complaints!!! I don't think the FOS can enforce any decision in your favour. However, my understanding is that if you then took it to Court, the fact that the FOS had found in your favour would not go down well for the bank or whoever issued the PPI.

Well, surprise surprise, we have a letter from the FOS essentially saying we can go coco!!! Now, I have to write back, going over every single point again because I cannot believe the amount of factually verifiable mistakes that have been claimed by the FOS. eg - a refund of £25 was given after the Supreme Court hearing - it was not! In fact the letter from Santander clearly states they are not giving a refund. He also says that Santander were under no obligation to accept the offer of payment from my son as a hardship case. He's gone all through the rights of the bank and effectively stating that my son had no rights. He himself last year had said the bank had accepted the offer of £1 - now he says they didn't and didn't have to. As Abbey, they wrote to say the Collections and Recovery team would contact to arrange repayments - back in Jan 09. They did not. Next we heard was over a year later hassling him for the full payment after I wrote to them in November 09, despite my son paying his £1 per month. He says that the bank have responded to correspondence - when there is clear evidence that we were trying to sort out his repayments and they were simply ignoring the correspondence. It goes from bad to worse - as Abbey had already passed the account to their collections department and it's just gone from mess to mess. So - I've got to respond and point out all the errors and the fact that he has based his 'adjudication' on his inabilty to read the facts, check the facts, apply the banking code etc etc etc etc. If it was my account I'd seriously consider letting this one go to court and fight it out there because it is full of so many lies and mis-handling by the bank it is truly appalling. Is there any other info that I may need to read up on before I get my teeth into this. Enough to say, I'm fit to wringing their scraggy necks for their deceipt, their arrogance and their twisting of the facts - and them ****ing on our lives. I hope their bonuses choke them!

If it's a 'few weeks' later, then what has happened is that you've been charged the first whack, but it leaves your account a month later. So, although you paid in the money to cover the charge and presumably the Experian charge too, you may well find that you were overdrawn in the next charging period, which means that another charge is then applied to the month after that. You'll need to go back and check when you were first charge v when you put the money in and if you were still then overdrawn in the next charging period. A very firm phone call may get something sorted, but don't count on it. Santander are &"$%**"£$!!!!!

Hi Martin I did lay out every argument (after reading all the info on what might consitute a claim after the Supreme Court ruling on this forum), backed up with photocopies of all the evidence to the FOS, which is why I was so peed off when the eejit decided to first roll over and fail to check the facts given by Santander, then to go back to Santander in October and then again to say he was still in regular contact at the beginning of Decemember. It's just so blatant - Santander have no proof that they either treated him as a hardship case or accepted his offer to pay the amount he could. They only accepted it AFTER we had raised the complaint with the FOS so our case would be turned down and they could get away with malpractice. On the other hand, I have sent the FOS the clear proof that they defaulted him despite our best efforts to sort things out - ie they ignored the correspondence and just went ahead with the default - even though he had kept up his regular payments of the amount he had offered, to show good faith - and continues to do so because otherwise he would panic and then get very aggitated. What I did not have was the the magic phrase "Lending Code of Practice" so I'll think of what I want to write again and this time tell the eejit he has run out of time and out of luck. I really wish it was possible to have the adjudicators hauled before an investigation too!!

For info, this is addressed on the Direct Gov website as it is a very difficult issue all round. Sadly, those employers who do try to not penalise their employees for circumstances beyond their control seem to be few and far between.

When it was Abbey, to help my son (learning difficulties) I took up the complaint and we jumped through the hoops to get them to accept his letter of authorisation for me to deal with his case. This was sent to 3 different departments in Abbey. After months of writing to them and them saying they didn't have the LOA (which they did because I had proof of delivery) one dept wrote to my son with the usual 'tough nuggets' letter - the only letter I finally got was the 'we won' letter after the Supreme Court ruling - all ignoring his hardship claims. Then it went to Santander who 'lost' correspondence and it went back again to 'we don't have your LOA'. They ignored offers of payment, refused to accept his claim for harship (he was homeless for quite some time on and off as well as being on JSA or living rough trying to find work). Despite my repeatedly writing and sending them proof of the LOA, they just went ahead and defaulted his account. After the FOS contacted Santander, they claimed they had accepted his payment offer and the FOS said that the bank had done everything they could do - which is utter tosh because Santander had not accepted any payment offer apart from back in 2009 when they bullied my son into paying £25 per month when he was homeless/ dossing and trying to find work at the Ed Fringe!! There were also other points I raised as demonstrating how they'd mishandled his account, kept the charges hidden (although they displayed other totally irrelevant charges on his bank statements) and even when he had put his account on hold and stopped using it, they sent him another debit card which he would have been allowed to use, despite his being (for him) hugely overdrawn with no overdraft facilities. They had the opportunity to put a stop on his using his card, but they had not done so as it was netting them a huge amount in charges.

It's a bit late and hope you've managed to resolve this but if you haven't, I think the first thing you need is a complete and up to date record of all transactions and where you are to date. So, it may be better to put this on the footing of first making a formal complaint about the way they've handled your case and then sending a SAR for all information held on your account. You may have a good case against Santander for the way they handled your account. For the record, Abbey lost loads of information, correspondence etc when it moved over to Santander, who then acted as if they didn't need to follow any rules. Essentially, they seem to have defaulted you and passed your account on to the DCAs and of course, as one passes it back, it goes to another and bounces around ad nauseam. If you have anything in writing from Abbey, that may help to show that it is Abbey/Santander who have mismanaged your account. However, going into branches is not going to help at all because a) you'll have nothing in writing from the visit about any agreements or comments, and b) the branch isn't the place who will be dealing with this. I'm afraid it's going to be down to hard slog correspondence. It may be worth a trip to the CAB to see if they have any helpful advice on the matter of Santander not continuing with your agreement with Abbey without first contacting you.