This topic was closed on 09 March 2019. If you have a problem which is similar to the issues raised in this topic, then please start a new thread and you will get help and support there. If you would like to post up some information which is relevant to this particular topic then please flag the issue up to the site team and the thread will be reopened. - Consumer Action Group

This topic was closed on 09 March 2019. If you have a problem which is similar to the issues raised in this topic, then please start a new thread and you will get help and support there. If you would like to post up some information which is relevant to this particular topic then please flag the issue up to the site team and the thread will be reopened. - Consumer Action Group

This topic was closed on 09 March 2019. If you have a problem which is similar to the issues raised in this topic, then please start a new thread and you will get help and support there. If you would like to post up some information which is relevant to this particular topic then please flag the issue up to the site team and the thread will be reopened. - Consumer Action Group

Just as I was thinking about money claim online.... Today Smile sent me a cheque "as a goodwill gesture" for my charges. So yes I am SMILING now! Thanks to all for your support.

Letter from Customer SAervices A&L 21 June 2006 "Thank you for your further enquiry regarding charges that have been debited to your account, which I understand remain the cause of dissatisfaction. I have reveiwed the circumstances in which the charges were raised and have carefully considered the points you have made. Whilst I appreciate that you are unhappy with the situation, I can confirm that the charges were applied correctly in accordance with out chraging policy and unfortunatley, I am unable to alter our original decision on this occasion. I accept that you may be disappointed with this response but regret that I can offer no further assistance regarding this matter." This is basically the "you don't have the balls to sue us" letter...isn't it? Or should I quit now whilst I am ahead? I still have about 46.50 outstanding from an original 84.00 worth of charges. Is it worth taking them to court for such a small amount? I do not believe that A&L would close my current account since I have an ISA and a savings account with them and they must be raking it in with them.

Sorry, I didn't make it clear in the previous post. I sent them the LBA on 20 May. and received no repsonse or anything after 14 days. I'm gonna err on the side of caution and send them another LBA recorded delivery and then start the court procedings when they don't reply.

Well 14 days are up and no response... Maybe I'll send them a recorded letter, just to be certain they got it. Wouldn't wanna let them get off on a technicality would I? OR should I just procede to court and assume the letter arrived?

NOW they are definately gonna get it! I wrote to them "can i please have my charges refunded" letter. Chris Hopkins (Smile Complaint Team, Customer Services, PO Box 600, Delf House, Skelmersdale, WN8 6GF) wrote an undated letter back "there are no account details XXXXXXXX. As such I've not been able to proceede with your request for a refund" 's a bit suss as not 30 days previously they sent me all the bank statements I asked for with that exact same account number. Nice try Smile, but you can't stall the wheels of law... So, I just sent them the LBA letter by return! since my "can i please have my charges refunded" letter said "if you do not respond or you do not respond pisitively within the 14 day period I will send you the letter before action". At the font of the LBA it says that"I find it difficult to believe that you hold no record of my account since you were kind enough to supply me with statements from thisvery account at the beginning of May 2006... I respectfully request that you check your records again. Given that you have failed to respond positively to my request forrefund of charges you give me no choice to proceed with the following: Letter Before Action." Bring it on...

OMG, they totally caved! whilst completely disagreeing that the charges were unfair they agreed to refund the whole lot coz "having reveiewd the history of your account I can see that in general your account was well managed and the charges detailed in your letter represented uncharacteristic breaches of our T&C". he continues "a protracted discussion regardign these charges is in neither parties interest so I have enclosed a cheque for £XX.XX as a gesture of goodwill" Off to the bank to pay it in tomorrow. I'm RICH, rich beyond my wildest dreams (and I have some prety wild dreams I can tell you)! Thank you all for your support... FA

I am sending all my correspondance to the Manchester Balloon street address as this is the one on the cheques. I think the Skelmersdale address is for CoOp bank (who OWN Smile) good luck...

I found in the FAQ bit, Vampiress made one in excel that I used. I have posted off the LBA letter to A&L and the please give me my money back letters to Smile and Cahoot. Thanks for the reassurance.

OK I found the letter from Marie Williams, Customer Services, Alliance and Leicester - here it is slightly abridged "Firstly there has been no consultation between the banking industry and the Office of Fair Trading about current accounts. If there is any industry wide consultation on this matter, Alliance and Leicester will participate as appropriate. I have checked our records and can see that you had three charges raised on your account" they continue "Although these charges have all been raised correctly in line with our charging policy, I am willing to make a further refund of £25.00 in lieu of your last overdraft charge. I must inform you that this is a gesture of goodwill and any charges raised correctly to your account in future will have to stand. I hopw we will now be able to draw this matter to a close andif I do not hear from you within the next 8 weeks, will assume this is the case. Howver in accordance with regulatory requirements, I am enclosing our leaflet which explains the steps you would need to take if you should wish to persue this matter further, including the ultimate availability of the FOS." Well stripe me sideways - I thought the WHOLE reason WHY all this claiming back had arisen was because the OFT and banks had had a 'little chat' in light of some digging that WHICH? had done... I am determined to get the rest of it back good will getsture or no they are thieving scumbags and it's my money... Onwards and upwards.

I got the "we are sorry here's £25" letter yesterday, with the this is a good will gesture and you will have to pay in the future threat. I'll find the real thing and post it here when I've waded thru the piles on my desk... I have 8 weeks to accept this - although the money is already in my account & I have spent it! I will write them a VERY NICE letter thanking them for the partial refund then ask for the rest of it back(£46.50)

£46.50 in charges of which £38 put me further inot debt. how do you calculate the interest on the debt? NOT the court interest just the how much MORE debt in interest did they make me pay?

Thank Lueeze They have itemeised my charges and because I have all my statements in Excel I just wanted to make sure they were singing from the same song sheet as I am. it's £70 of which £45 made me more overdrawn. How do you calculate the interest? This is the extra OD interest not hte counrt interest. I wanna be sure I claim it all.

sorry been busy wiv other stuff. got standard "sorry you've got problems" letter of acknowledgement from Liz Larkin, Customer Services. Enclosed Complaints Leaflet says "by day 7 we'll try to give you a full reply. if this is not possible, an acknowledgment will be sent to let you know who is dealing with your complaint. by day 28 - we will have investigated your complaint and sent a written response. in some cases we may need more time to respond. If so we will write with an update of the situation. by day 56 - it is highlyunlikely that your complaint won't have been resolved. But, if it hasn't, a senior manager will reveiw the situation and wrtie to you with our final response." The clock is ticking... 28 days from 24 April is 22 May - then I get 'nasty' bring it on!

I sent them a 'snotty' email about how they said they'd be in touch and how they haven't been in touch by letter. and got a bland "the letter is in the post, you should get it within the next 48 hours" reply. The letter from David Cafferty, service relationship manager, cahoot reads: "I have taken ownership of your case to provide a response to your recent letter. I note that you have requested a subject access rrequest in accordance with the DPA. from your letter it is clear that the main reason for this is to obtain information pertaining to the charges applied to your former account. To avoid charging a fee for a SAR I am happy to provide the information relating to charges on your account. I have checked your former account and found 3 charges applied over the life of the account ." OK so on to the next stage. I'll double check my accounts package with the details in it to see if I was OD when they were applied and then I'll ask for them to pay them back. Woo, Hoo!

Snap I got the exact same message when I WROTE to them! IMHO They're stalling. bon chance mon ami

got this EMAIL reply on 28 April 2006, in response to the LETTER I worte to their offices: "Thank you for contacting cahoot. I am sorry that you felt you had to contact us concerning the level of service that you have received from cahoot. Please accept this e-mail as acknowledgement that your issues have now been brought to the attention of cahoot's Service Relationship Managers. At cahoot, we aim to satisfy our customers at all times. We have a complaints handling procedure in place to ensure that you receive a quick and fair response to any complaints you may have about our service. At each stage of the complaints procedure, the details of your case will be reviewed and fully investigated. You will be kept informed of what is happening and we will do everything we can to help you. For a full description of our complaints procedure, please log into your personal homepage on the cahoot website via http://www.cahoot.com. Please scroll down to the bottom of the home page and click into our 'Important Information' section. Details of our complaints procedure can be found under the heading "Complaints Policy". This is the seventh legal notice and can be found immediately after the section which relates to "Third party websites and products". It is our policy to acknowledge all complaints within 24 hours (or the next available working day) and wherever possible to resolve. In the event that detailed investigation is necessary, we will endeavour to give you a full reply within 5 working days. In the circumstances where this is not possible, we will keep you informed of progress regularly. Yours sincerely, Service Relationship Team" ----------------------- I emailed this back on 28 April 2006: "Hi My bank account has been inactive for at least 3 years and therefore I am sorry but I am unable to recall my log in information. This is why I wrote to you. Would you please be so kind to write to my home address, as I am unwilling to correspond via the insecure medium of email. I look forward to hearing from you soon With best regards " --------------- I have absolutely NO IDEA what the log in would be for my ex-account. AFAIC as soon as I've ditched the bank, I've moved on and changed passwords/contacts etc. I KNOW I couldn't even BEGIN to HAZARD a GUESS as to how to log in to the website - so them saying 'just log in and go here' beggars belief and shows me that they are stalling for time. As of today I have had no response, to my email. Maybe I should email them again, or Maybe it's recoreded delivery letter time...

OMG Smile have sent me my requested bank statements WITHOUT me sending them ANY money! Can I just check what I can claim for... I think it's all the FEEs but not the interest on my overdraft - is that right? IMHO if I'm in credit then THEY pay ME interest on my money, so it's only fair if i'm using their money I should pay them interest... Still - from the statements they've sent me, I calculate it's £50 so far. I'll have to check the statements to the closing of my account and make sure that I've claimed all of the charges. I'M deffo on for going to court if poss. Nothing ventured, nothing gained... FA

I have now - thanks Dave

in for a pound. Ok I have just written the Preliminary Letter of Approach to A&L whom I have been with since july last year. I think they owe me about £72.00 Not much, but when I add it to the other banks charges it makes a tidy sum £230! I'm hoping as it's such a small amount they'll just refund it and I won't need to go to court. I am scared that they will shut my account, and coz I'm a 'rate tart' I won't get another account. Should I go for a parachute now? or wait and see. Although My 1 year fees free OD is coming up in July anyway A&L are the best for OD charges...so maybe I'll wait a bit longer. Thanks for looking. Hi to all MSErs! FA

Ok I have just written the DPA letter to Smile regarding a bank account i had with them about 5 years ago and have since closed. I think they owe me about £77.00 Not much, but when I add it to the other banks charges it makes a tidy sum £230! I'm hoping as it's such a small amount they'll just refund it and I won't need to go to court, and reading the threads on here I think that might be what happens. I'm just curious about on thing. If you submit the court thing and pay hte money but they pay up before the court issue the 'writ' can you claim the price of the court back from the bank? or do you have to chalk it up to experience? I don't have a lot of money to chuck at court cases so... Thanks for looking. FA

Ok I have just written the DPA letter to Cahoot regarding a bank account i had with them about 3 years ago and have since closed. I think they owe me about £79.00. Not much, but when I add it to the other banks charges it makes a tidy sum £230! I read a lot of the correspondence on here and it looks like Cahoot like to be intimidating. I'm hoping as it's sucha small amount htey'll just refund it and I won't need to go to court. Thanks for looking. FA