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tim2718281

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Everything posted by tim2718281

  1. I doubt very much if that is what he was told. Firstly, there was no arbitration, there was mediation. Secondly, what goes in mediation is confidential; the court is not told about it, and neither of you can bring it up at the court hearing.
  2. What makes you think the case has been closed? Call the court and ask them when the court hearing will take place. (I guess it's possible that the court is waiting for you to tell it that mediation failed to resolve the dispute.)
  3. The judge will never know. What goes on in mediation is confidential, and the court will not hear about it.
  4. DSR does not apply here, as the contract is for custom programming, and DSR does not apply to custom-made items.
  5. Both parties should be kicking themselves they never entered into a serious dialog where each tried to understand the other's point of view. They both insist they are right and the other is wrong - and the court case was started about a week after the due delivery date of the software.
  6. The defendant is a sole trader trading as DephNet Technologies. Does that make a difference? Trying to look at it impartially, I can see it is as great a hardship for the defendant to travel to the claimant's home court (Worthing), as it is for the claimant to travel to the defendant's home court (Yeovil.) Sure, if the defendant were an organisation, it could choose to send whichever of its suitable staff were closest to the defendant. But he isn't. And I would say that when the contract was formed, there was never any suggestion that "DephNet Technology" was more than one person. (That may be the problem; I wouldn't be surprised if DephNet actually subcontracted the development out.) A reasonable compromise would be to have the case heard at Southampton - about one and a half hours each to travel by train, and £20 each return fare. 3 hours train travel each, court time, time spent waiting for trains, £20 train fare, court fees, other expenses - all for a dispute over £150.
  7. However, it may be that senior management will not support the lower-level managers' decision, so it's worth going through the grievance procedure (but quit wearing jeans in the meantime.) Many years ago, my younger sister Cathy was told not to wear jeans to work. She ignored the instruction, on the grounds it was stupid - she worked in a secure VDU operator area of a credit-card company's computer unit, and felt there was no reason for her manager to object to her wearing jeans, apart from his being an idiot. (He'd once explained to her that when he was an assistant bank manager, he used to arrive at work early and sharpen his boss's pencils.) So, the manager arranged an appointment for her to see the personnel manager. On the day, she turned up, and her manager said "You're wearing jeans!" She confirmed his observation; so he called personnel and cancelled the appointment - he would not have her going to see personnel wearing jeans. So; he then referred the case to his manager; and my sister went to see him. He was a reasonable chap, and tried to find the reason for the dispute. My sister helpfully explained that the reason for the dispute was that the manager and supervisors were idiots. He said "Are they really?" My sister said yes; she explained to him that every morning, they'd be sitting about reading newspapers, but one would be at the door waiting for his arrival (to get to his office he had to walk through the secure area.) When they saw him coming, the supervisor at the door would warn the others, and they jumped up and stood at the ends of the rows of VDUs (200 VDUs in the room) to make it look as if they were doing something. The net result was next morning, when the senior manager passed through, he called out "Good morning Cathy", and my sister replied "Good Morning, Jim." And that was the end of that. She continued wearing jeans for the next couple of years, till she left. And not a single member of the public complained ...
  8. Oh, you claimed already. I was going to advise you to make the claim in person at your local court, rather than use MCOL. The reason is, if the case is defended, MCOL has to transfer it to a local court. The general principle seems to be that if the case is an individual v an organisation, the case would be transferred to the individual's local court. In your case, DephNet Technology is an individual's trading name, so the case may be individual v individual. I assume - and people here will soon correct me if I'm wrong - that MCOL will automatically transfer the case to the defendant's local court if the case is individual v individual, whereas if you file in person at your local court, it will remain there unless the defendant requests a transfer. Still, you must have Dephnet's address to have filed the claim; so you'll know whether their local court is reasonably convenient for you. (The courts do not take sides; though they may take into account individuals' difficulties in travelling. I don't know what they do in a case between two individuals, one of whom lives in Cornwall, the other in Northumbria. Maybe they'd ask you to agree a court location; or transfer the case to London.)
  9. I used to dial through 1899.com for 1p per minute, but after some months, it was hard to continue putting up with the poorer quality. I switched and now pay BT £5 a month for free international phone calls of up to one hour's duration (after tht you hang up and redial); I do not know the list of destinations, but it includes the USA, New Zealand, and Australia. I also pay £15 for free international calls on my mobile phone (I am with Three). However, the quality is nowhere near as good as on the BT line.
  10. No. When you use your personal account debit card to buy something from a shop, your bank is paid a fee. The fee is greater than the cost to your bank. And so your bank makes money out of your use of your personal account. So free transactions on personal accounts are not "loss leaders", but revenue earners. Tim
  11. I don't believe that's correct; I think it ignores the fact that banks charge businesses for each transaction, and also cross charge each other. So, if you use your debit card to make a purchase from a shop, the shop's bank will charge the shop a transaction fee. And I believe the shop's bank will pay your bank part of that transaction fee. The fees are much higher than the costs ... as much as 20p per transaction. And so, far from being a cost to banks, transactions on current accounts are a source of revenue. Tim
  12. The grounds on which CI can be claimed - the *only* grounds I should think - are that the contract means you are entitled to it. In the Mindzai and Lucid case, they quoted the wording from the Ts&Cs of their bank account, which stated that interest woud be payable on unauthorised drawings. They said in their claim that this applied to unauthorised drawings by the bank as well as unauthorised drawings by themselves. That argument is at least reasonable. If the bank wished to argue that the term does not apply to the bank's drawings, then of course it could have turned up in court and do so. Tim
  13. IANAL Pay your bills by electronic transfer before they are due and keep records; keep a note of any charges. In a few years time, when the total of the charges is a couple of hundred pounds, send them a letter requesting a refund of the charges on the grounds that because they are penalties for your breaking the contract, they are unlawful. If they decline your request, sue them and have a judge decide whether they are lawful or not. Tim
  14. I wonder if you have a valid claim against them for the damage. on the grounds it was caused by their negligence? Tim
  15. IIRC, fingerpints are destroyed, but not DNA Tim
  16. If they require you to pay in cash, then the cash rate seems right; if they let you pay in goods, then the purchase rate would be relevant. Tim
  17. By the way, a colleague recently remarked that he paid fees for his current account; I asked why, and he said he thouht everyone did ... he'd paid for many years. He was surprised to learn that banks offered free bank accounts ... Tim
  18. Bank deposits ae not part of the banks' equity; nor are transfers in and out of the accounts part of the banks' turnover. I think were you to argue for contractual interest on the unlawful charges, and argue that the rate should be related to the banks profit as a percentage of equity or turnover, your agument would fail spectacularly. Actually, I'd have thought that any argument for interest that is not based on the contract would weaken the argument that contractual interest should be charged at all. Surely if the contract results in the consumer being entitled to interest, the contract would define the interest rate. Tim
  19. Note that not every UK address has a postcode. (Amazing, isn't it? I worked with a chap who told me his address has no postcode. He asked the Post Office why not, and they told him they only assign postcodes to addresses if it would help them deliver mail. He asked what he should do when asked for a postcode, and they said if they were him, they would put the postcode of the post office.) Tim
  20. Dunno, but I have read that you are supposed to put the entire claim in one action. Tim
  21. "Vexatious litigants" are people whose names are listed as such; they cannot initiate court proceedings without the approval of a High Court judge. This restriction followed actions by a small number of people in the 18th/19th centuries, who each initiated dozens of meritless cases, often against the same individual. The essential element of vexatious litigation is that the cases have no merit at all. See Speeches in 2006 - Conference on vexatious litigants 2006 "The Future – Access to Justice Vexatious litigation poses a number of threats to the efficient operation of any civil justice system. Those threats stem from the manner in which the vexatious litigant conducts litigation before the courts. Lord Bingham CJ (as he then was), in Attorney-General v Barker, offers perhaps the best description of vexatious litigants, and in doing so lays bare the problems to which they give rise. He said: “The hallmark [of a vexatious litigant] usually is that the plaintiff sues the same party repeatedly in reliance on essentially the same cause of action, perhaps with minor variations, after it has been ruled upon, thereby imposing on defendants the burden of resisting claim after claim; that the claimant relies on essentially the same cause of action, perhaps with minor variations, after it has been ruled upon, in actions against successive parties who if they were to be sued at all should have been joined in the same action; that the claimant automatically challenges every adverse decision on appeal; and that the claimant refuses to take any notice of or give any effect to orders of the court. The essential vice of habitual and persistent litigation is keeping on and on litigating when earlier litigation has been unsuccessful and when on any rational and objective assessment the time has come to stop.” I do not believe that the cases being brought aainst banks could possible be regarded as vexatious litigation; actually, I'd say it's the banks who are guilty of vexatious defence ... Tim
  22. Yes ... however, it's only a question of familiarity and practice. Tim
  23. I've not looked at the forum spreadsheets ... I had assumed that as the compound interest versions were produced after Mindzai's, they would simply copy the correct interest calculations. However, from the numbers posted, it seems the forum spreadsheets are calculating the monthly interest rate as one-twelfth of the annual interest rate. If that is so, then to get the correct figure with the forum spreadsheet, you should enter the annual interest rate as 12 times the monthly rate ... 26.4% rather than 29.8%. By the way, you don't need to use a calculator; you can use a blank spreadsheet and enter in a cell =55*1.298^(140/12) where 140/12 is the number of years Or you can do it monthly: =55*1.022^140 This works out slightly more, because 2.2% per month is actually 29.84% per year ... the banks round the APR to one decimal place. Tim
  24. Sorry, I was wrong. I simply did a quick calculation of 55 times 1.296 to the power of (months/12)... but miscalculated the time period as five months short of 10 years rather than five months short of 12 years. That gave me £659, and I took off the original £55 to get about £600 in interest. Your figure is correct. Tim
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