The Claim went in on the 27th and was deemed served on the 29th. Still no response from the Halifax - they must be very busy! On Sunday the 14 days they have to acknowledge is up. What happens then?

This is called 'set-off' and is legal i'm afraid. See here for a full explanation. http://www.tltsolicitors.com/legal-update/Financial-Services-Complaints-Update/P5111.asp It does say however that both accounts must be held in the same capacity. Not sure if this would be the case if one is a personal a/c and the other a business a/c. Maybe a mod will know.

The law states only that you must take 'reasonable care' of the goods. Anybody would expect a 10 year old car to have a few dents & scrapes so I would suggest writing them a final letter refusing to pay anything else quoting the 'reasonable care' bit out of the CCA and tell them you'll see them in court.

Debt would have been sold to DCA for 10-12% of face value. Write to them with a CCA request enclosing £1 asking for a copy of the original credit agreement and the deed of assignment. They have to provide these within 12 days or they commit a criminal offence. If they have not provided these within 30 days the debt becomes unenforceable by law. I would also send a Data Protection Act request to both Citicard & Capquest enclosing £10 each. Once the debt becomes "in dispute" you may well find it reverts back to Citicard. I would claim all charges back from both of them.

It is 50% of the TOTAL amount payable under the agreement and also includes any deposit. You can find the exact figure in the termination clause on your h.p. contract. Add up what you have paid plus any deposit. If you are a little bit short of the amount required put a cheque in with your termination letter. One thing to watch out for - add-on products such as GAP or CPI are usually done on a separate CREDIT agreement i.e. not HP and will still have to be paid for.

Hi Bankfodder - interesting post. I'm just at MCOL stage with the Halifax, 14 days up but just waiting for a new £39 charge to show up on my online statements before i press the button. The account in question does not offer an overdraft but charges a whopping 29.8% on unauthorised borrowing. Does this mean I should be charging at that rate for all the charges I've had (£1659 going back to 2001)? How would I go about changing the formula in the spreadsheet to reflect this rate?

Had an account with Lloyds opened in 1987 and eventually defaulted for about £1300 in 2001. Current balance about £1100 but have been paying BLS Colletions about £15 a month on and off for years. Have sent a DPA to Lloyds re this account and a copy of the DPA to BLS to advise the account is disputed. As I remember I only had an overdraft limit of about £200 so most of the default is going to be charges. What other steps should I take at the moment? Not sure if the debt has been sold to BLS or they are acting for Lloyds.

Welcome operate on a no debit back arrangement with garages in respect to finance so the commission wouldn't have been clawed back. They pay the worst commission in the industry and are a total shambles to deal with - I have to deal with them every day. Because they are often the lender of last resort for a lot of people Welcome know that garages don't have the option of arranging the finance elsewhere so they can pretty much do as they like. Also they very rarely county court customers because all of their repos go to their own branches where they sell them on to another customer on finance and as far as I know there is something in the law where they can't chase a previous customer for a debt when they have a new deal secured on the same asset - perhaps one of the mods could look into this and confirm whether it's true.

The FSA took over regulation of General Insurance products in Jan 2005. All finance companies are very scared of complaints to the FSA as they can levy unlimited fines. I would threaten an FSA complaint on the basis that you did not require PPI and were mis-sold it at the time of taking out the loan. Send a letter similar letter to an LBA threatening an FSA complaint - wouldn't hurt to also threaten a letter to the OFT (Not fit & proper to hold a CCL) as well. Should do the trick.

PPI only came under the remit of the FSA in Jan 2005 and any policy sold before this date would have been unregulated. Things have changed dramatically since then. Now have to do a proper "Demands & Needs" document with customers and supply a Pre-Contract document to customers breaking down the sepatate charges for PPI etc before completing the finance docs.

Hi - I work as a finance manager in a big car supermarket & look at finance docs all day. The wording in the termination clause says "You have a right to end this agreement. To do so you should write to the person you make your payments to. They will then be entitled to the return of the goods and half the total amount payable under this agreement, that is £XXXX. If you have already paid this amount plus any overdue instalments and have taken REASONABLE care of the goods you will not have to pay any more." It seems to me that "reasonable" is quite a subjective term. Anybody could reasonably expect a 4/5 year old car to have a few dents & scratches. Heres something important to look out for - at the time of taking out the agreement most people also buy one or more insurance products (PPI,Gap etc). There is normally a separate CREDIT agreement for these (NOT HP). Sometimes this is not made clear when signing and the signatures are normally on the same page - these amounts would still be owed to the finance company even if the car is handed back so if you have taken out a £2000 PPI policy chances are you will still owe £1000. PPI is the most profitable part of a finance deal for both the finance company and the dealership and the cover offered is available for about a fifth of the price charged through standalone products - try googling PPI or CPI. If anyone has any other queries about car finance PM me.

Don't know if this has been asked before but is it possible to do an online Moneyclaim for a joint account? Already 6 days over my 14 day LBA limit but waiting for a letter from the Halifax detailing 2 new charges I know they're going to apply - would rather do it all at once. Have asked this in my own thread but had no reply and can't find the answer anywhere.

My fob off letter came from: T Dangerfield Halifax PLC Customer Relations PO Box 548 Leeds LS1 1WU

Did you send it registered/signed for? If not they could easily argue they never received it. If not I would send another immediately and pay the £4 or so at the post office so you can track it right to them. If on the other hand you know for certain they got your letter I would go to the next step as outlined in the FAQ.

Just a quick point - when banks sell these debts on to DCA's they are then legally allowed to write off their paper "losses" against their corporation tax bill - thus they do not really lose the money but get a reduction in tax payable for the year. This reduction obviously reduces the amount going to the treasury so the public are actually subsidising these write offs.

Have had a good read of the forum in the last few days. I have responded to the Halifax's letter with this reply. Please could somebody have a read and offer any sugestions. Further to your letter of 4/7/06 offering a token goodwill payment of £112.00 in respect of the unlawful charges applied to our account. We feel that you have not taken our intention to pursue this matter through the County Court sufficiently seriously and although we are happy to accept this offer as a partial settlement we will if necessary press on with the court action to recover the full amount. Please note that any subsequent offer will not be welcome with the same condition attached to it – i.e.” Confirm that we accept the offer of £xxx from Halifax in full and final settlement of our complaint regarding bank charges made on any of our Halifax accounts”. The right to sue against an unlawful penalty is enshrined in law and cannot be taken away by you. We accept that you incur costs when a breach of contract occurs but we feel that these actual costs bear no relation to the level of penalty charges you subsequently apply. If you are in fact implying that these charges represent the actual loss suffered by you in relation to these breaches please enclose a breakdown of these costs with your reply. Our Letter Before Action was sent to you on the 28/6/06 giving you fourteen days to comply. We will if necessary submit our Moneyclaim on the 12/7/06 to our local County Court. Please note that should we be forced to file this claim we will also be claiming interest pursuant to S69 of the County Courts Act 1984 plus the cost of the Moneyclaim and daily interest until settlement or enforcement. This would add a further £469.70 (today’s figure) to the total claim. Please note that we do not wish to contact the Financial Ombudsman regarding this matter as you suggest. The penalty charges you apply for breaches of contract are unlawful and could not be tested in that forum. Only a court has the power to decide upon a point of law such as this. We have neither the desire nor the time to go down the Moneyclaim route but we feel that you are leaving us with no other option.

Just another thought - how come the Halifax are on one hand settling everybody once it gets to moneyclaim stage and on the other responding to LBA's with "We believe it is fair to pass these costs onto the accounts affected, rather than absorbthem(sic) into other areas of our operations, penalising all our other customers as a result". Surely if they really believed this they would be actually defending these actions. Also in the letter we got was a thinly veiled threat to close the account but in UTCCR it clearly states - Effect of unfair term 8. - (1) An unfair term in a contract concluded with a consumer by a seller or supplier shall not be binding on the consumer. (2) The contract shall continue to bind the parties if it is capable of continuing in existence without the unfair term. If they closed the account would we be able to file against them using this? Anyone got a suitable letter kindly telling them to stuff their offer where the sun don't shine? Thanks in advance.

Had a letter from T Dangerfield at the Halifax - Sorry you are unhappy - yada yada - we incur costs - yada yada - clearly outline charging policy - future charges will stand - yada yada - online banking to help you manage your account etc. They have made an offer of £112 in full and final settlement. Considering the amount they have had from us over the years is £1659 it took about 1 millisecond to consider this. We can now add £349.70 to our claim for interest plus the cost of the court fee bringing it to over 2k. One thing we picked up on - on the form to sign should you choose to accept their pathetic offer of settlement it says "Confirm that we accept the offer of £112.00 from Halifax in full and final settlement of our complaint regarding bank charges made on ANY of our Halifax accounts". If anyone is considering settling with Halifax on one account but has further claims to submit regarding other accounts as we do it would be wise not to agree to this as this would seem to pre-empt future claims. Not sure if they are able to request that you sign away your rights under law - maybe somebody who knows a bit more about the legalities can confirm this.

Just want to know if anyone has followed through on the threat to compain to the OFT about any of these venerable institutions not being a fit and proper person to hold a CCL.

Halifax sent me full set of statements after a phone call to customer services. Came fully complete in 3 days and only £5 charge.

Just a quick one. My boss,as well as owning the business I work at also owns a large number of properties on which he has mortgages. His personal banking is done by Lloyds and he gets a personal banker and the rest of the perks that go with being 'high net worth' etc. One day I happened to see his personal bank statement as he left it on his desk and left his office to take a call - £750,000 overdrawn and 5 or 6 mortgages coming out every day. The point of this post is that I've just dropped him off at a large horse racing venue where he will spend the afternoon getting wined & dined by - you guessed it - Lloyds TSB. He probably hasn't paid a bank charge in his life and gets a hugely discounted rate on his overdraft. It seems to me that the more you owe them the better they treat you. I'm currently/perpetually £300 overdrawn with the Halifax and they've never invited me anywhere.

Sent my 14 day request by email and snail mail today. Got an instant reply from [email protected] to say they had received it and it would be dealt with but think that's just an automated reply. Can I start the 14 days from today. Have printed off their reply so have proof they got the request today.

Been lurking and reading this forum for a few days. Phoned Halifax the other day to request my statements. Statements were waiting for me when I got in from work today - 22 envelopes! Couldn't wait to add up the charges. Total comes to £1659.00 since a/c was opened June 2001. I am now at defcon 3!!! 14 day request in the morning. Is it better to send this recorded or signed for or just email it direct to customer services. Seems a bit of a drag to have to go through this stage as we all know what's going to happen in about 8 weeks time. Have checked my wife's statements for the last 6 months (normally chuck older ones). I thought she was much better behaved than me but still managed to find £195.00 charges. This will probably equate to about £1200.00 charges over 6 years so she will be requesting her statements tomorrow.

Have written this letter to the Council. Can somebody look it over before I post it. Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx Blyth Valley Borough Council Revenue Services Renwick Road Blyth Northumberland NE24 2BX 24 June 2006 Re: Account Number – xxxxxxxx - Summons Numbers xxxxxxxxxxx/xxxxxxxxxxxx Dear Sir or Madam With regard to the summonses sent to us on the 19th June 2006. We were extremely shocked to receive these as we signed and sent to you a Direct Debit form in April and assumed you were collecting the amounts due according to the schedule of payments you sent us. We enclose two screenshots taken from our joint bank account today to show you that the Direct Debit is indeed live on our account. Since it is not possible for us to initiate the setting up of a Direct Debit on the account (highlighted) it must have been set up by one of your staff. As per our agreement with you there have been funds available to pay these Direct Debits had you requested them. We believe it is only right and proper for you to immediately halt the legal proceedings against us and remove the Council Costs of £25.00 (twice) and the Court Costs of £3.00 (twice) from our account. We would be quite willing to defend this matter in the County Court and feel that the Court would agree with us that this situation has been brought about by either a fault in your billing system or general incompetence on your part. We further propose that you write off the payments that have not been taken from our bank account by you as we fully believed that these had been paid and collect future instalments as per our agreement. As there is only a short time between now and the proposed County Court hearing could you please respond by return of post and indicate whether you will be pursuing the Court proceedings as we will have to assemble the documents required to defend our case e.g. we will need to have the bank confirm the exact date the Direct Debit was set up and by whom. We will also need to obtain copies of our bank statements to show that funds were indeed available to pay you. We look forward to hearing from you. xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx

Cheers for that cillitbang - 1 question - will I still have to pay the extra £28 court costs they have added on? Doesn't seem fair if I do as its down to their incompetence in the 1st place.