I issued a court summons against Lloyds TSB for £386.50 + interest and got a hearing date of June 12th. Today I checked my statement online and they have paid in £386.50 under the heading of "CSRC Goodwill Gesture" (good will from a bank? - don't make me laugh!). I'm not happy to accept the money minus the interest but as I've had no letter from them formally offering me this amount, should I still proceed with the court case or are they likely to pay the interest if I just write to them and explain that I will continue with the action unless they do? Anyone else had a refund like this without an accompanying letter? Ô¿Ô

This is a long post but I think you may find it helpful if you're living in Scotland but claiming from an account that was held in England. Yesterday I went to Edinburgh Sheriff court to hand in my Form 1b (small claims summons) which I had filled in according to a scanned copy of the form found elsewhere on this site. However, the Sheriff Clerk was unhappy about the wording and sent me home to re-word it as per his instructions. The guy was really helpful so I followed his advice and thought I would post the wording of the form here. The two main problems he spotted were with the dates and the subject of jurisdiction. Although I live in Edinburgh, I used Lloyd TSB London head office address and then stated Edinburgh Sheriff Court had jurisdiction on the basis that Lloyds TSB have a branch in Edinburgh. The Sheriff Clerk said it's better to say that because the money has to be paid to me in Edinburgh, the court has jurisdiction. Otherwise I would have to use the address of a Lloyds TSB branch in Edinburgh, even though my account was not held there. As for the dates, rather than just using the whole six year period, he said it was best to take the period in question as being from the date of the first charge till the date of the last charge claimed. What I'm going to do now is to paste here the wording I used, preceeded by the relevant section number from the form, rather than scanning my form. That way you can copy and paste if you like into your own forms. Best to copy the whole lot and save it in a Word or notepad file anyway, as you can't save the completed form that you downloaded unless you have the full 'writer' version of Adobe Acrobat. Another point worth mentioning is that if you're paying the £39.00 fee in cash, they don't give change so make sure you have the exact amount. OK, here goes - the bits in red are where you should insert your own details. Part 4 - Claim (form of decree or other order sought): The Pursuer claims from the Defendant the sum of TOTAL OF ALL CHARGES with interest on that sum of TOTAL INTEREST FROM YOUR SPREADSHEET from DATE OF FIRST CHARGE to DATE YOU HAND IN THE FORM TO THE COURT at 8% annually (together with the expenses of bringing the action). Part 7 - Details of claim: The Claimant,YOUR NAME HERE, has held a bank account with the Defender since on or before DATE YOUR ACCOUNT WAS OPENED, the account number being XXXXXXXX. The Defendant deducted from the account various sums of money in penalty charges during the period DATE OF 1st CHARGE to DATE OF LAST CHARGE. These were in respect of ‘Charges as notified’ (levied if a cheque or direct debit payment was returned unpaid because the specific overdraft limit had been exceeded).The Claimant contends that these charges were legally unenforceable and the Claimant is demanding the repayment of the money. The Defender has refused full payment of these monies due. (Copies of correspondence can be provided). No admissions are made by the Claimant as to the incorporation of any term into the contract between the Claimant and the Defendant purporting to entitle the Defendant to levy these charges. If the Defendant is able to establish that the contract did contain such terms, the Claimant will contend that these charges are unenforceable at law, being penalty charges designed to penalise the Claimant for a breach of contract and generate profit for the Defendant, rather than liquidated damages designed to compensate the Defendant for the actual loss occurring to the Defendant as a result of the breach. The Claimant claims from the Defendant a sum equivalent to the amount unlawfully debited to the Claimant’s account in the period from DATE OF 1st CHARGE to DATE OF LAST CHARGE. The sums are detailed in the attached schedule. The contractual provision that permits the Defendant to levy such charges is unenforceable by virtue of the Unfair Contract Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations (1999), the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 and the common law. The total amount of the claim is TOTAL CHARGES + TOTAL INTEREST plus the expenses of bringing the action. The monies ought to be paid to the Pursuer in YOUR TOWN, therefore this court has jurisdiction. The other parts of the form are just names, addresses and telephone numbers etc. so this is the 'meat' (or 'Quorn' if you're vegetarian) of the claim form. Another thing to watch out for in the downloaded form is the drop-down menu at the top of the page headed 'Action for / of' - make sure you select 'payment' in both places where this drop-down menu appears on the form. I hope this is of some use to anyone else claiming from Scotland against a bank in England. I'll be more than happy to answer any questions anyone might have. Shed Man out. Ô¿Ô

Hi MasterM, welcome to the site. I sent my approach for repayment to the branch where my account was held. They then passed it on to their customer service centre in Birmingham and all subsequent correspondence has been with that department. So I would suggest your branch address as the first point of contact, unless anyone else knows of a better option. Shed Ô¿Ô

Oh, by the way, I have just thought of a question! Can I add the £39 fee for the summons onto my claim? I'm unemployed and living on Incapacity Benefit so £39 is a lot of money to me - would be nice to know I could claim it back along with the charges. Anybody know? Ô¿Ô

Hi everybody. I was going to post a question here but reading through this thread has answered my question because although I now live in Edinburgh, my account with LTSB was in High Wycombe and there's no way I could afford to travel down there in the event that I actually had to appear in court. With this in mind, I'll be pursuing this action through Edinburgh Sherriff Court. Can anyone lend me £39?!! Thanks to all who have asked and answered questions in this thread, it's been a great help. I'll be back to let you know how get on. The Shed Man Ô¿Ô

Thanks for your reply 121, you've definitely made up my mind for me, I'll send the LBA when I get back. It's a good point about sending it before I go away, it would be nice to know that the wheels were in motion before I go, but if there's even the remotest chance that the case could get struck out, that's not a risk I'm prepared to take. Thanks again, your reply was very helpful.

Hi everybody. As this is my first post, I'll briefly introduce myself. My real name is Graeme (the Shed Man name is a long and boring story!), I live in Edinburgh and I'm claiming back charges from Lloyds TSB in High Wycombe, though of course I'm dealing with the CSRC in Birmingham now. My problem is timing. I started this whole process in the middle of August and as you all know, it takes some time. I got my Data Protection Act information very quickly, I have to say they were very helpful. Then I put in my request for repayment on August 28th, after which I got their bog standard "the charge is for a service, not a penalty and this is our final response" letter. I responded, quoting examples found in these threads, stating that the charge is a penalty and therefore illegal. Today (October 23rd) I received a brief response saying "As we've already given our final response, we will not be entering into any further correspondence on this matter". OK, I was expecting something like that and my next response should of course be a Letter Before Action. However, I'm going to South Africa on November 28th and will be there for seven weeks, returning to the UK on January 18th 2007, which means I won't be here to deal with any responses they may give. Is there a deadline for sending in the LBA? The best option for me would be to send the LBA when I return to the UK but I'm worried that if I don't respond straight away I may fall foul of some legal requirement for response times. If I send the LBA now and they respond within the 14 day deadline, that would only leave me two weeks to sort everything out and I know it's likely to take far longer than that. Any advice and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks

Hi everybody, this is my first post so please be gentle with me! I'm in the process of getting all my data together to claim back my bank charges from Lloyds TSB but as I live in Scotland and the branch where the account was held is in England, does anyone know whether I should use the English or Scottish procedure? Also, I'm unsure about whether or not I can reclaim the overdraft interest charges. I have all my returned DD charges entered into the spreadsheet but can I include o/d interest charges as well. Finally, has anyone taken on Lloyds TSB over this issue and if so, how did you get on? Thanks in advance. Graeme a.k.a. The Shed Man