Sorry I should have said! The letter from the court was regarding my claim against Barclays (see this thread) for bank charges and contractual interest). It was/is stayed pending the high court test case, but the £2,000/mo payment is interesting considering I've yet to have my case properly heard by a Judge - last time I saw a Judge it was to be told my case was being stayed!

Hi Everyone, I've just received news about my Stay, and wanted to see what people made of it. It appears that the Judge has ordered the case to be stayed (as I expected), but he also appears to have ordered the bank to pay £2,000/mo until the case is resolved or the full ammount being claimed is paid back. Have a read of this letter to see what I mean. Is my interpretation correct? Anything I should/shouldn't do? Thanks, John

Just had an intresting letter from the court regarding the stay. It appears that the Judge has ordered the case to be stayed BUT also ordered Barclays to pay £2,000 a month to us until the claim is repaid?!? Have a read of this and see if you reach the same conclusion

Hi Everyone, Just got back from my hearing in Hastings County Court with Judge Pollard. Barclays sent their barrister who informed me that they were going to be applying for a stay. We get called in and before we've even taken our seats the Judge is already telling us that he's going to be staying the case pending the high court test case. I tried to argue against the stay but he refused every thing I tried and stated that he was being ordered to stay all cases (unless there are serious grounds to not award a stay) by the senior judge in Sussex. He also stated that the only real reason he wouldn't apply a stay is if you weren't going to be alive next March and had serious medical evidence to back it up. Even then it wouldn't be guaranteed to be awarded a stay. Since there was no talking him out of it (he hadn't even bothered to read my objections to a stay) I asked him to prevent the defendant from apply further charges, or to set the charges at a level deemed reasonable by the court etc. He told me that he had no legal grounds or basis to do such a thing. He also seemed to think that since you were incurring overdraft fees and direct debit charges you obviously had enough money to live on so the grounds of financial hardship didn't apply. My final tactic was to try and force Barclays to comply with the directions that had been previously sent out (they hadn't disclosed the information that they Judge had requested). The Judge didn't seem to like that idea and stated that since this was a fast track case, and costs would be incurred he couldn't order Barclays to comply with the previous orders due to the fact that it would cause us to incur additional costs should the high court case be lost. All in all it was a pretty poor hearing. The Judge had made up his mind before we'd even entered the room, and wasn't going to change it. The Barclays barrister didn't even need to speak - the Judge did everything for him. The case was stayed pending the outcome of the high court test case, with the stay to be reviewed on 7th March 2008. Ohh well.

I'd also be very interested in the financial hardship route, as well as if anyone knew anything about adding grounds to refuse the stay due to ill health. The case is on my mums behalf and her health is rapidly deteriorating.

Given that the Judge followed my request for directions, and given that I suspect Barclays won't be complying with it I'm fairly hopeful that I'll be able to get them to settle, or their defence thrown out!

I'm hoping that I get a settlement offer in my case - or at least still get it heard in court. The Judge ordered the directions from this site (with the disclosure bits etc) and the case is allocated to the fast track with Barclays having to submit their statement of evidence a week before the 15th August. I'm just hoping they still won't want to reveal their costs.

I forgot to mention why I wanted peoples opinions. From looking at the data it seems to imply that the vast vast majority of the letters and charges are handeled by an automated system that calculates the severity of the problem and issues letters etc approriately - these seem to be actions that don't have an operator name (first 3 pages are examples of this) The rest do have operator names, and show when operators have approved withdrawal, cheques, placed phone calls etc together with their comments. Thanks, John

OK - I've found some stuff that Barclays sent through that I'd forgotten about and hadn't opened. Just looked today and want some peoples second opinions on it. Have a look here for more details. Thanks, John

I've just found a parcel that I had delivered from Barclays back in April that we'd forgotten all about. In it are the contents of my 2nd DPA request (I'd already received a copy of all charges as a list but also wanted a copy of the original agreement) which includes every action that has been logged by the Barclays Account Management System for my Account. I've uploaded some examples to here as a PDF file. The majority of the pages are like the first 3 in the PDF, with the odd page being like the final page. Could people have a look and tell me if they think I should include it in my Court Bundle/if its of any use at all. Thanks, John

Thanks for that saintly_1 . Just putting together my court bundle at the moment. Aiming to get it sent off quickly to force Barclays to settle sooner since the Judge has given them 3 weeks from the date they recieve my court bundle. One quick question does anyone have any good threads for what extra to include in the court bundle when claiming for contractual interest? Haven't had time to have a good look just yet Thanks, John

Spoken to both Krysta and Kate on the litigation team and apparently my case has been allocated to Paul Quinn. Trying to get hold of him at the moment but it seems like an impossible task!

Hey everyone. I've just been allocated to the fast track (£15k claim!) got a court date of 15th August for a Directions Hearing, but the Judge has also issued an order that Barclays are to disclose their costs before the directions hearing. See here. Just wondering who people think is the best contact at the moment in the litigation team? John

I actually filled at the court since the claim is for around £14,000. Had about 50 pages including the PoC and 9 different appendices(!) I've uploaded the order from the judge to here. From reading it appears that the Judge has ordered that Barclays have to disclose their costs before the hearing - am I reading it correctly? John

Right - just got a letter from the Court this morning. The claim has been allocated to the Fast Track and I have a directions hearing on 15th August 2007 Just uploading what the Judge has ordered so you can all have a read

Filed the court claim on the 23rd April, and have just received Barclays/Woolwich defense. Its a 15 point defense, and I've uploaded it to some webspace and linked to it below. Not too sure if its there standard defense for contractual interest - it certainly makes reference to things that aren't in my claim (I didn't use the terms mutuality and reciprocity for instance). Getting very close now! Court Doc 1 Court Doc 2 Court Doc 3

Forgot to add that I'm going to be sending off a DPA non-compliance LBA. Woolwich have only released the last 6 years worth of bank statements, and haven't responded to my request for the rest of the statements (and a copy of the signed contract) made more than 40 days ago.

Unfortunately I've been very busy recently with family members going into hospital so didn't have time to prepare and send the LBA on the 14th February. However just got an offer of £1,000 from Barclay's, so will be sending the rejection letter and the LBA out early next week . Total claim with compound interest now stands at £13,860.50.

Hey Gezmc1606, You asked for some help so here I am . All of the charges in that list are penalities that were applied to your account. QC is where you use your Cheque guarantee card to guarantee the payment even though you don't have the cash, and DC is similar but with Debit Cards. I used mindzai's contractual interest spreadsheet from here to calculate the interest using Woolwich's unauthorised overdraft interest rate of 2.05% / mo. Let me know fi you need to know any more John

Having finally managed to get some time free to calculate the charges properly turns out that the total for the last 6 years with contractual interest is actually £13,549.66. Less then I'd originally estimated as the charges weren't as spread out as I was expecting. Sending the prelim letter tomorrow with the schedule of charges

Hi Minzai, Thanks for the great spreadsheet for working out contractual interest . I'm just using it to enter my charges in, but I've reached a problem. I've entered 193 charges (and there's another two pages to go!) and the spreadsheet won't let me enter any more. It just keeps returning to the "estimate of previous charges box". Any ideas what could be wrong? Thanks, John

After spending the last 6 months reading up on the unlawful bank charges, I'm going after the Woolwich on behalf of my mum for any and all bank charges they've claimed against her. I'm also severely tempted to go after contractual interest at their unauthorised overdraft rate of 27.5%. Sent the Data Protection Act request on 5th Jan 2007 and have just received a statement of charges in the post this morning (Sat 27th Jan 2007). The statement only shows charges from Apr 2001 - Dec 2006, so I'm going to send a letter later asking for any other information that they may be holding (and like others have done, if they say they don't have it ask them when and how it was destroyed) as I'd also like to reclaim anything prior to 2001 (I've read a lot about the statute of limitations and as many others feel that it doesn't apply in this case). Woolwich handily totaled the amount and from April 2001 - Dec 2006 the charges come to £8,337.33! Adding on contractual interest pushes this claim up to around £16k-£17k, which pushes it into the multitrack, and of course more risk. Then there's the pre-2001 bank charges that we're going to reclaim, which if they're at a similar level to the post-2001 charges would equate to approx. £14000, and once again adding contractual interest onto that would put it at over £100k! I need to decide how I want to proceed with reclaiming the charges. I'm almost certainly going to split it into pre and post 2001 charges, but I'm unsure if I should keep each of those claims as one big lump, split them into smaller claims or possibly just limit each claim. Anyone have any suggestions, comments or advice? If anyone out there has anything that could possibly help (regarding the statue of limitations, contractual interest etc) then it would also be greatly appreciated . John

A section that covered just claims with contractual interest would be a great idea. Currently I'm looking at putting in a very very large claim (when contractual interest is added on), and having to search every forum time and time again to find new information and peoples views on the subject is both confusing and time consuming. Having a central repository would be a great idea as it enables everyone to come together in a single place to argue the pros and cons, and have it for everyone to see . John

It certainly does appear that we have quite a bit in common with regards to large & old claims with contractual interest. I'll contact dj59 and see if he has any other info Anyone else have some extra info with regards to the costs/process of submitting a claim over £15k? Anyone know what the largest claims to date both with and without contractual interest are? Thanks, John

Hi everyone, Firstly I’d just like to say how great this site is . It’s been a great help while I’ve been doing my research over the past 3 months over what I can do/what I can claim back and why etc. I like to be fully in the know before I do anything! Anyway, I’m helping my mum reclaim her bank charges and we’ve just sent off the Data Protection Act S.A.R - (Subject Access Request) to Woolwich, but I suspect that the charges applied to the account since opened in 1990 would be in the region of 14-20k, with about 4-7k in the last six years. After reading a lot about contractual interest I’m very interested in going for this as well, but as you may be able to tell contractual interest on this claim would make it huge! I’m currently looking at splitting the case into two – pre & post 2001. Just doing some basic calculations on the pre 2001 charges with contractual interest puts the total amount over £100k. Obviously this seems quite a large amount to ask for, and from what I’ve been reading it seems quite complicated to go after more then 15k with a lot more risk involved. Does anyone know what the largest amount someone has claimed back and won was? And anyone have any suggestions on how I should proceed with this? I’m going to be doing a lot of research while I wait for the statements to arrive, but I just wanted to get everyones take on the situation and what people feel would be the best course of action. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, John