As the title reads, my friends. I sent a PAR for £103.45 and they have replied stating my account will be credited with the £100 charges incurred. The letter had the usual contents "...sorry you feel the charges you have incurred are unfair." "I must inform you however, that we disagree with your legal analysis." "However, as a measure of goodwill and without any admission of liability Barclaycard is prepared to credit your account... This adjustment will be confirmed on your August 2006 statement." However, my BCard is maxed out and BC are likely to earn loads in return in the time it takes me to pay it off ! Does anyone think I should press for the £3.45 interest? "I owe, I owe, it's off to work I go..."

Barclays have sent a letter offering a partial sum (40%) as a gesture of goodwill and enclosed a from for me to sign for full and final settlement. The letter has been signed per procurationem for Laurence White and has the address Freepost RLTA-CSUE-TCHC Head Office Customer Relations London E14 5HP This is how the settlement form is laid out… (n=number, c=character) _______________________________________________________ Customer Acknowledgement Our reference nnnncnnc Thank you for your letter detailing your response to my complaint. I accept the sum of £nnn in full and final settlement of my complaint with Barclays Bank PLC. Full Name:……………………….. Date:……………………………… Signature:………………………… Sort code: 20 Account number: _______________________________________________________ Since have I headed my letters to BB with my account number, sort code and my name, I find it odd that this office sends the form with those details left for me to complete. LBA next.

You could accept it as an unconditional, partial payment where you state that you will pursue for the the full amount using a court claim if necessary.

Hi, There isn’t a forum for Bailiffs so I have posted this thread here to blog my progress. In short, I owe Council Tax and the bailiffs have been visiting. However, the bailiffs would visit again because my payments weren’t arriving on time, or at all. I had been making the payments by bank transfer, so at least there is proof of payment. I approached the bailiffs by fax asking them to clarify the matter and got an unhelpful reply. So, here’s the long of it… I then wrote a letter of complaint to the council about the performance of this debt collection agency they are using. I received an unhelpful list from the council that didn’t refer to the debt account numbers, but the council had acknowledged that some charges placed by the bailiffs were through an error within the council’s office and as such were waived. My next letter to the council indicated that there were payments missing from the list and to establish accurately any further missing payments would be an unnecessarily long task not being able to refer to each debt account number. The council replied with a more detailed list that referenced the debt account numbers. In this list one of my missing payments now appears and alterations are apparent throughout the body of the list of transactions. However, here’s the crunch; the sum of money demanded for one account appears as three different values firstly for the original demand plus costs from the bailiffs and then two more versions in the council’s two recounts of transactions for that debt account. Further, the council removed another charge from this same debt account because they couldn’t find a reason why it was there! Lastly… I informed the council that; where the reported demand sum for this particular account is in such a state of flux, it is necessary for me to request account information for all debt accounts from the bailiffs under the Data Protection Act. I posted a DPA letter + £10 cheque to the bailiffs yesterday. PS WELL DONE to the C.A.G. admin/mods and volunteers! (plus a doffed cap to Elsinore)

Thanks Elsinore, I had been right through all of that before now (with enthusiasm). There must be a few hundred bailiff company’s throughout the UK, not all of them behaving as they should! To list those companies under the forum name of “bailiffs” (like the CAG has bank names listed) would be an immense task. However, would it be possible to have a general ‘bailiff’ forum? Rob

Hopefully there will be a forum dedicated to Bailiff issues. I sent a DPA letter today because my council reported two different outstanding Council Tax demands+bailiff costs, both disagreeing with the initial demand+costs by the bailiffs. Rob

Hi McVey, I have requested statements from the Student Loans Company (without use of the DPA letter) in order to establish what fees they have applied to my account. I discovered £80 has been charged for late payment and none payment fees. I intend to claim this money back. However, they have not employed a collection agency to recover this money. If any of the monitors are watching/reading… PLEASE, WE NEED A STUDENT LOANS FORUM TOO! Rob

Hi Carol, I too have a student loan from nearly as many years ago, which is with the Student Loans Company. Who is your loans company and what name is the bailiff company? Rob

Hi Plutos, In your preliminary approach for repayment letter (PAR) you add the interest that the charges accrued when the charges were applied to your credit/overdraft account, i.e. if your credit card interest rate is 2%, then the charges will accumulate at the same interest rate as your spending/overdraft - and since these charges are unlawful you can claim this interest back. The other interest rate that you apply (8%) is ONLY when you make your claim to the court. See all that here http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/faqs-please-read-these/243-step-step-instructions.html Hope this helps! Rob

Thank you, Michael, I’ll do that. I have worked out the interest. I read about your dealings with Goldfish, smooth operator huh?

Thank you for that confirmation, David. I’ll be sealing the letter in its envelope tonight for registered post tomorrow. Yes Vampiress’ spreadsheet calculates the 8% on sheet3. On sheet2 my interest totalled £43. “Worth it”, I thought, since the learning of how to use the spreadsheet (and how it works) will stand in good stead for the other accounts I have to process in this way. I read about your success with American Express, well done! Rob

Have you been gagged?

I have all my statements from the day I began using the Capital One Mstr card. Is it absolutely necessary to request statements using the DPA approach? However, Preliminary Approach for Repayment sits here on my desk ready for despatch along with a schedule of charges and interest compiled by the library Excel spreadsheet (a neat tool, thanks vampiress).

I got the standard fob-off from Andrew Walton of Retail Banking Customer Relations in Leicester. “We are sorry you have had to contact us about the level of service… We are looking into your concerns and will let you have an answer or update as quickly as possible, but no later than 27 July 2006.” Plus a nice Crystal Mark clarity approved blue complaints leaflet. Nice. However, I neglected to include the interest on the Preliminary Approach for Repayment letter. Would it matter if my LBA then includes interest? Not the 8%, I might add, but the overdraft interest. Or should I restart with a new Preliminary Approach for Repayment letter?

I have all my statements from the time the account was opened so I don't think I need to ask for account information under the DPA. I was wondering what you used for the prelim letter?

Hi Saddler10, Your PAR letter, what template did you use? I can only find one Credit/Store card template in the library and that is the LBA.

Hi, I have two Cr@p it all 1 accounts and I have also received calls where you hear silence, then deeeeeeeeeeeee! Dialling 1471 reports “We do not have the caller’s number” or “The caller withheld their number…deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” This, as I understand it, is because a computer is given a list of numbers to dial automatically. When that computer detects the receiver has picked up, it then assigns the call to the next available operative in the call centre. Hence the silent period. However, at busy times there isn’t an available/free/sleeping call centre operative and so the computer terminates the call. This is, reportedly, true for sales-cold-call centres too. This is THE best response I have heard to the cold-sales-call. Phone rings Receiver: "Hello?" Caller: Silence. Receiver: "Hello?" Caller: "This is XXX company calling..." Receiver: "I’m sorry, your caller ID has not been recognised. You call is being redirected. Please wait". Receiver: Presses silence button for effect. Receiver: "Hello, you are through to Battersea Dogs Home. Duty Labrador speaking, WOOF, WOOF, WOOF-WOOF-GRRR" I fell about laughing when I did it at work…

Thank you! But... So the right hand side only needs to have one entry (row) of interest charged and balance per month? Rob

Hello Vampiress, I have been through all of this thread and solved my problem with what I should enter in the column INTEREST ON PENALTIES (I was incorrectly entering the interest RATE rather than the interest £value for that month). However, I have read in this thread that for multiple charges in the same month I should leave the right hand side blank until the last charge in that month - is this true? Rob

Thanks Caro, I had been there before but wrongly assumed that the spreadsheet applied to ‘claims only’ interest. I’ll be applying that to my student loans account and others I have yet to disclose. I have briefly been through my statements again and I see that I have *digressed* in the forth week of most months meaning that, on the scale of what I am claiming, it is not worth my time pursuing the interest. So unfortunately that is going to have to be the banks gain. I have now sealed the preliminary request letter to my bank (following a cool-off period from having written it) and it goes tonight. I am inspired by the camaraderie of this forum. I first linked here from Martin Lewis’s site, http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/

Hi everyone. After lots of reading around (especially the FAQ) and being punished with yet more charges, I have finally decided to start action. I got my statements by sending a fax to my branch that asked for statements or copy statements. Received them within a week. I have perused them and come up with a final sum, and here's my first question to the forum... I have had varying degrees of overdraft and occasionally gone into the black, so where I am to reclaim the interest accrued by the charges presents a problem area. Has anyone successfully calculated the interest that charges alone have accrued where the interest for facilitating the overdraft have ceased when going into the black?