I thank yo.

I suspect they'll make you wait a little longer. I actually got a second offer from them (jumped from £700 to £2100 approx, which they said was equivalent of 6 months charges!) Funniest part about the 2nd offer was that it was written the SAME DAY as the letter saying they were backing down and paying me everything (charges, interest and court cost!) - purely as a business decision, of course! This came the day after they told the courts they intended to defend all of my claim. Just waiting for the money (All £3,596 of it!) to appear in the bank now. Not long left for you Missy! You're nearly there.....

Survey's done now too - having looked at the results, I never realised Halifax were so unpopular!!! Who says that advertising doesn't work!

Cheers Karnevil. Just remembered that the litigation section will need updating too. The original's here if it helps! Would you be so kind, please???

Thanks all! Mods, any chance of a ***WON*** being added to this thread title please?

How nice to come back from holiday and check on what's going on... First letter I opened was the MCOL official letter, stating that Halifax intended to defend all of the claim, and this was dated 13th Sept. Next letter, dated 14th, was from Halifax themselves - business decision, blah, blah, etc, etc, have all the money back! Will apparently be in my account within the next 5 days! Hurrah!!! As soon as I see the cash, I'll update survey and donate. All other loose ends will be tied up later, once I've had some sleep and recovered from the 6 hour drive from Cornwall. Goodnight all!

Dolly - Thank you! (But, spookily enough, I wasn't fortunate enough to have an account number that was SO easy to remember! Look at it closely...) Tinkerbelle - Thank you too, and I tried to PM a mod last night, but t'internet connection was being a bit tempremental. I shall do it now!

MCOL filed.

Thanks! Got an e-mail yesterday with a picture of the lovely Howard holding a sign. Sadly, the contents of the sign aren't really suitable for this site, but it's very funny! If you're not too deeply offended by the use of a four-lettered word beginning with "C", let me know and I'll forward it directly to you. I'm currently using it as my screen-saver!

Due to busy time at work (the joys of Policing our nation's capital city at the current time!) I have only just sent the rejection letter, and I think I've been fair in allowing them an extra 7 days prior to comencing MCOL. New MCOL date set for 8th Sept.

From what I've worked out during the "reading-of-the-site" prior to starting action, it seems a lot more hassle than it's worth to try and calculate the interest you can claim. The 8% bit is easy enough - double-check you've copied the info across properly in to each field on the spreadsheet, and you may find it's a simple input error on your part that's giving you the 'REF!' and 'VALUE!' responses. As for claiming the interest that Halifax have debited from your account, you need to separate what are lawful overdraft interest charges (which you can't claim) and the extra interest charges that have resulted directly from previous charges being applied (which you can claim). This is where the confusion really starts - it's probably easiest to accept that you will get the 8% without a fight, and consider that as a bit of a bonus. That's what I'm doing! In my case, this will be approx £450 on top of the charges. From my (limited) experience of being half way through my one and only claim, I've found that Halifax are likely to send a goodwill gesture offer shortly after receiving the LBA. I've just replied to mine, and MCOL starts on Friday.

Received reply today from Halifax, with a "goodwill gesture" offer of £715.00, and as full and final settlement. Needless to say I shall be sending the rejection letter immediately - they're £2,420.00 short, and that's before interest is added.

Iain, excellent news for you and your wife - I hope things are on the up for you both. I like the sly mention of a newspaper story as well!

I received the standard Halifax reply on the 9th, saying how sorry they were that I was unhappy with their charges and that they promised to look in to it! They also told me it would take them 4 weeks - from what I can tell, this is their standard reply to everyone now. Later today I shall be sending the LBA. I've made a small adjustment to the opening line, as you will see below. As Halifax are sending replies to the Prelim letters, I thought it best to at least acknowledge their "efforts" whilst letting them know it isn't enough. Feel free to use it if you like. I shall let you all know what response it gets. If anyone disagrees with the wording, please say so. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [Address] Halifax Plc Trinity Road HX1 2RG [Date] LETTER BEFORE ACTION Dear Sir/Madam, ROLL NUMBER: D/12345678-9 ACCOUNT NUMBER: 12345678 I am very disappointed that you have failed to respond positively to my letter of the 4th August 2006. I now understand that the regime of 'fees' which you have been applying to my account in relation to direct debit refusals, exceeding overdraft limits and so forth are unlawful at Common Law, Statute and recent Consumer regulations. etc.....

That's it. Done. Prelim letter posted today. Dear Howard, They're clearly paying you too much to be annoying on those ads, so I want a refund. I'd like the £3,135 back that you've taken from me, probably just to fund your latest ridiculous advert. Thanks.

Well, I've checked with PayPlan (like it says in the FAQs), and they told me they didn't need to know, and wished me the best of luck! Prelim letter has now been sent requesting £3,135 - lets see if that smuggest of smug plonkers Howard can keep up his general all-round smugginess on the ever-so-smug and hugely annoying Halifax ads. Give you extra? Extra charges, to pay for ridiculous ads.

My missus came home form work earlier and told me about Martin Lewis on GMTV this morning. I've since spent most of the afternoon trawling through his website, then on to this one. I'd heard a rumour about unlawful bank charges before but never enough to actually consider doing anything about it. The info I've seen so far is very encouraging, and I'm now working my way through the FAQs ready to do battle. I've looked through the statements, and found £2319 in charges, but there are several months missing - I'm sure there's another £1-2000 somewhere! About 2 years ago we hit the top of the slippery slope of debt, resulting in continuous charges for overdrafts, returned items, bounced cheques, and for the worst months Halifax saw fit to charge us as much as £7-800 PER MONTH!!! We're on our way back, gradually, and are 1 year in to a 5ish year plan with PayPlan (like CCCS) and things are going OK. Depending on the success of the bout with Halifax, I think I may be looking through lots of credit card statements..... Anyway, site looks amazingly helpful and I'll keep you all updated (in the Halifax section) with my progress, and (hopefully) success.