so...do you think it might be wise to maybe ask them if they do have said document before i pay this penalty charge? of course this is something of a moot point, as i know beyond doubt that they do not have any such thing. i seem to have misunderstood, i thought you were advocating that i should just pay up and then reclaim? i rather thought i would challenge their legitimacy and tactics as i think their practice is despicable.

wow! seriously? maybe you are right, don't know what i was getting so worked up about. they have every right to badger me until i pay. i should just pay up and be grateful if they leave my credit record alone. do you think i should apologise for all the tedium i have caused them?

hi Consumer dude, i probably should have said that that is where i started. i did try the 'reasonable' route first..littlewoods themselves have so far failed to respond, except to refer me to shop direct, the finance company. shop direct have no other options, i am a dirty defaulter and must pay..

hi MilkTrayMan, thank you for your reply, although i'm not quite sure that i understand you. i have no need to recover this penalty charge, as i shall not be paying it. my gripe is that after many years with this company, with no problems, a clerical error (my fault entirely i'm sure) meant that a payment was late. if i'm honest, i was just about to pay their £12 penalty charge because it was easier to do so, then i started to get telephone calls... ...in fact, as i was typing this, i had another call. i have asked them to limit their contact to written communication, i have refused to talk to them unless they properly identify themselves, but still they call me every day. to clarify, i have no debt with this company. i am being harrassed for a £12 penalty charge. is a CCA request the wrong way to go? i merely wish them to prove that i owe them a penalty charge. i fail to understand why anybody should be subject to daily telephone calls of a, frankly, bullying and rude nature. is this how people should be treated??!! i'm afraid that this sort of business really ticks me off. i can fight back, but how many peoples lives are these thugs making a misery of? i merely wish to follow the path of complaint in the hope that this type of business practice be ended. if i am wrong in starting with a CCA request, please tell me what i should do instead?

i'm not sure that this deserves a thread of its own, but there is a sense of 'spiralling out of all reason', that i would like to keep track of. to precis: i have had an account with littlewoods catalogue for many, many years without issue. my standard account with littlewoods catalogue offers me credit of several thousands. i don't take advantage of their offers of even 12 months interst free credit very often, as i can find most of what i want elsewhere on the internet very much cheaper; but still, sometimes, littlewoods has just been the answer. recently, however, i missed a payment. odd, i thought, that they had not courtesy to talk to me about missing a payment of £6, but they had the wherewithal to barrage me with demands for payments of £12 for the missing of the payment. i shall have to admit that i do not take politely to telephony of an extortionary nature, but then i wasn't expecting it to start with. so i politely explained that i would pay off the balance forthwith, but that the £12 charge could expect a reply that might offend. the balance of £54 was paid 3 days after the missed payment of £6, but the £12 charge (for missing the payment) is incurring a daily call. i realise that this is all very small beer, but the level of bullying will be a familiar tale. requests for written communication only seems to have little effect, requests for the name, surname, DOB etc of the person calling has so far met with them putting phone down on me. shall submit CCA request in next few days.

just found this thread and am absolutely gobsmacked by all this! i have a managed loan which has been 're-negotiated' three times now, each time after about 2 yrs had elapsed. i recently made enquiries about paying the whole thing off, just to get it off my back, and was told that i would have to pay off the remainder in its entirety-some 73 more payments! so essentially, because it has been taken out 3 times, i have paid 6 years worth of interest without making a dent in the original sum!!? i shall certainly be sending a S.A.R - (Subject Access Request) off and having a very close look at this; cant quite believe i have let this drift so far! another helping hand from hsbc via first direct..helping themselves more like!

this morning i sat with an un-opened envelope from the court for at least 20 mins before i got the nerve up to open it! but all it says is 'judgment reserved'. gonna have to hold on to the hope that no news is good news for a while longer.

hi Brownie, good luck with sorting this out. previous posts on this thread, particularly Ozzywizard is pretty much the state of play. possibly your best bet is to contact energywatch: energywatch: Home Page as they are kinda the regulators for the industry. they were certainly helpful when we got in touch. thanks to all for the great advice btw, we are all sorted out now and have a reasonable repayment schedule with powergen direct.

thanks Caro, that was actually very helpful; certainly gave us questions to ask when the mind was otherwise about to go blank! we think it went fairly well. very intimidating-london barrister, an actual courtroom etc. we wont get a decision for 5 days or so as the judge wasn't really expecting them to show, the first case of 'charges' he has actually seen despite the many hundreds that have passed before him. he was very friendly (the judge), quite scrummy in fact (seriously!) and very interested. mr ian brighton was asked to stand in the witness box, tho not sworn in. he was clearly expecting us to be turnip pickers and his shock was fairly evident when i started to ask him hard questions about his justification methods on the charges...passing on the cost of depreciation of buildings, computer/telecoms equipment, staff & diresctors bonuses etc. tho no mention of the cost of his companies external indemnity policies, tax allowances & tax deferrals for bad debts etc. my heads really too stuffed full of, well stuff to properly report what happened. towards the end (after the london barrister bored us all rigid with examples of every other mortgage providers charges, the judges eyebrows couldnt have raised much higher), the judge said he would hand down his verdict in 5-10 days. the barrister mentioned costs and expenses (SCARED!) the judge gave a sympathetic smile to him and said that he didnt think there would be any question of costs. we thanked the court very politely and made a bee-line for our local pub!!! will post verdict when we have it.

in just 25hrs, it will all be over one way or another! and we have recieved another 'note on behalf of the defendant', dated 8th june! im reasonably sure that this is just to spook us, but could be that the first witness statement is full of personal scathing remarks about us rather than anything legal. the new stuff basically says that as we redeemed both mortgages, we have accepted the charges and may not challenge them...hah! that we dont understand the complex legal issues and 1)shouldnt be allowed to use the courts time in this way 2) were goaded into it by CAG!!!! that their charges are lower than other lenders in the field (so??) that these are not sums due upon breach of contract, but fees for financial services....except that mr ian brighton has already on numerous occaisions called them charges for breach of contract. im a tad nervous and apprehensive, mostly because i havent had as much time to prepare as i would have liked (my mother died recently), but this 11th hr submission has my blood up again, so we shall spend the rest of today preparing and let you all know how it goes tomorrow. fingers crossed for us please?

a quick update! we recently received a letter from hsbc, dated 31st may, but yet again sent to the wrong address!! felt quite like deja-vu! happily the wrong/old address is that of my OHs parents, terms including a*ses and elbows spring to mind. the letter further compounded the sense of unreality by stating that they were unable to verify the signature, so we had to go into a branch with passport id to confirm the signature as the one they held on their records! did the last 6 months not happen?? however the letter goes on to say that once they have received confirmation, they will arrange for the copy statements to be forwarded....will this be what we have requested i wonder, or just the last 6 years. we wait with bated breath.

well hello (again) everybody Lattie! you are truly one of my fave people. im just girding my loins to have another pop at hsbc, totally beyond 6 yrs this time. for anybody interested, the following was our initial skirmish: http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/hsbc-bank/60335-dg-dirty-tricks.html fairly satisfying, and a steep learning curve...but as they hounded us for 2 yrs, sending 4 different baillifs for £40 that wasnt owed, we feel that we owe them a little bit more attention. we are in the happy position of having a few years (tho not complete) worth of statements, mostly from '98 and some of '99. the charges add to £460, and this time i am going for compound contractual interest (which i believe is 15.9% but any other info gladly received) which alone amounts to over £1300! i further intend to estimate any years for which they fail to supply data. i get ahead of myself however. i sent the following letter on april 18th and have so far heard not a dickie; time up on 28th may, so clock ticking and paths to chose and research, heres the SAR: HSBC Bank Plc Service Quality Team Arlington Business Centre Millshaw Park Lane Leeds LS11 0PP 18th April 2007 Dear Sir or Madam, Ref account no. xxxxxx Please supply me with a complete history of all correspondence, transactions and charges relating to myself and/or the above account prior to September 2000 and from the inception of the account, whether this be in the form of statements, fiche or other recording method. Also any data that has been archived into any archival system used by your company, including outside companies. Should you advise that you do not have this information, then I require you to provide a certificate of destruction signed by your Data Controller, confirming when and how my data was destroyed and confirmation of your policy on data retention. Should a claim be made in Court I will seek an order from the Court requiring disclosure of your policy document should you fail to disclose it now. I enclose the statutory maximum fee of £10 for Data Protection Act subject access request. You will be aware that you have 40 days in which to comply with my request made under s.7 Data Protection Act 1998. Yours sincerely, im really looking forward to their response! the account was closed beginning 2004, but they spent the next 2 yrs sending bailiffs, which (surely) means that data could not have been destroyed as action was pending? we shall soon see, hehehe. and so it starts again

thanks for the input guys. think i shall just write them a letter then, thanking them for agreeing to our repaymeny schedule and advising them tht we shall pay by standing order on such and such a date, thanks again

hi all, i wonder if someone knows anything about the 2 year rule (From July 2006 they should no longer seek payment from consumers where they have not billed a customer for two years. From July 2007 this period should reduce to one year). briefly, in december last year we had a call from a DCA (1st credit) to tell my OH he owed money to powergen on a property he moved out of in jan 2004. we queried the amount, sent a S.A.R - (Subject Access Request), and discovered that (through a series of admin mistakes on both sides) he did indeed owe around £400...though why they sent the final account to the address he had vacated instead of his forwarding address still remains a mystery. fair play we thought, the money is owed, so i wrote to powergen making an offer of payment. i cribbed an idea from reduks marvelous thread, and sent a cheque with the letter as a first payment stating that should they cash it then i would take it as their agreement to my repayment schedule. now we have received a letter saying they have cashed the cheque and credited the account, but that we must deal with DCA as they are no longer able to agree payment arrangements with us. they really have been quite unpleasant to deal with and, frankly, im fed up! dont really want to deal with DCA so we were planning on just paying powergen by standing order regardless. but what about this 2 year rule? does anybody know any more than is on the energywatch website? any help/thoughts/ideas very gratefully received, liz

having won against hsbc, even the 3 months worth of charges they claimed statute barred, im ready to start again. im sending a SAR asking for everything prior to sept 2000, or if not, a certificate of destruction signed by their data controller. we do have some statements but missing about 3 yrs worth (ironically the time of the most charges!). i just wondered if anyone had received a certificate of destruction or similar? heres the SAR im going to use, cobbled together from the great minds on this forum...to you my thanks. Dear Sir or Madam, Ref account no. xx-xx-xx xxxxxxxx Please supply me with a complete history of all correspondence, transactions and charges relating to myself and/or the above account prior to September 2000 and from the inception of the account, whether this be in the form of statements, fiche or other recording method. Also any data that has been archived into any archival system used by your company, including outside companies. Should you advise that you do not have this information, then I require you to provide a certificate of destruction signed by your Data Controller, confirming when and how my data was destroyed and confirmation of your policy on data retention. Should a claim be made in Court I will seek an order from the Court requiring disclosure of your policy document should you fail to disclose it now. I enclose the statutory maximum fee of £10 for Data Protection Act subject access request. You will be aware that you have 40 days in which to comply with my request made under s.7 Data Protection Act 1998. Yours sincerely, have i missed anything?