Lloyds TSB finally capitulated! A question though...

[smd100]

Woo-hoo! After months of pain, the Bank finally agreed to pay up, though not without a nasty letter with no admission of wrongdoing on their part!

 

I received two letters, one of which is 'open' and tells me how my claim is invalid and I would lose in court (although I have followed the advice of this website to the letter, so I doubt it). The other is marked 'Without Prejudice - Confidential and Priveleged' - the one that gives up. They claim that it would never be produced in court and that the Bank does not accept any merit in my claim. However, they will pay up because of their potential costs.

 

However, they stipulate 4 conditions - which do you think are reasonable, and which should I say 'no' to? Would they refuse to pay if I said no?

 

Conditions:

 

1. Cooperate with the bank's request to review my account by calling some regional manager within 14 days.

2. Maintain my account within my current limit and any new limit agreed with Lloyds.

3. Payment will be the full/final settlement of the claim.

4. Terms and correspondence in reaching this settlement will remain confidential to me and the bank.

 

Thanks all. And thank you to the admininstrators of this fab website!

 

All the best,

 

smd.

[DJ Tazzz]

SM100,

 

Firstly, great they decided to pay up as that is the stage I am at.. I did file a counter defence already and I guess that what prompted them.

Tell them, you will accept the settlement as full and final of this claim however no other clauses will be entertained unless they are prepared to enter into a second commercial agreement with you making additional payments in respect of such.

I picked up this letter from one of the postings on this site and would say it is most suitable in Lloyds case.

Dear Sirs,

I would like to inform you that I have received your letter and note your points. However like you I am also quite confident that I can prove my case in court and prove that these are in fact penalties that you are trying to cloak as a service charge. I am also very confident that a judge will also see it this way.

I will accept this in full and final settlement of this claim. I reject all other conditions you have attached unless your client would like to negotiate a payment for this extra service you are asking of me, as a separate agreement.

I will continue my claim against your client until such time that your client accepts my terms and has paid the amount I have asked for into my account.

 

May I also point out that there is no unilateral imposition of confidentiality in these circumstances as you must fully realise and for you to suggest otherwise is an abusive deception .I will pass any more dis-informative correspondence from you to the Law Society who no doubt will decide whether this is a matter of discipline or merely requires more Continuing Education points.

Yours faithfully

 

I hope this helps.

[GaryH]

Just a couple of points;

 

A) You should probably seek permission of the author of that letter (Mjanet I believe) before sending it as your own, and more importantly;

 

B) Never make threat's which you are not willing to carry through. Mjanet sent that letter with every intention of seeing it through to the bitter end (see her thread for details), and if you refuse all of the conditions as in her letter above, the chances of your case ending up in court will increase. Make your own judgement - if the principle of the matter is the most important factor to you and you are fully willing to fight to the end, then tell them to stick their conditions and that you'll see them in court. Remember the law is on OUR side and they have no actual right to impose conditions. However, if simply winning back the money is the most important thing then congratulate yourself and take it - you have won after all!

 

Even if you do decide to accept the conditions though, I personally would cross out the confidentiallity one. Almost everyone else has done this, with no delay to re-payments as far as I know.

 

Gary

[reload]

GaryH makes some valid points. In terms of the conditions, personally I did pretty much exactly what he has suggested - crossed out the confidentiality condition. You may wish to call the solicitor first to discuss this before you do so, but it shouldn't present a problem - it hasn't in any of the other cases that I'm aware of.

 

The account review also appears to be somewhat optional, but in terms of hurrying things along it's not that great a deal.

[Bookworm]

Mjanet is not around, but I can assure you that she will have no objection to you using her letter.

 

Well, it is up to you, of course. It's YOUR money, YOU are suing them. Would they let you impose conditions if they were suing you? You know, imagine this: "Yes, Mr Banker, I will pay you the money I owe, but could we keep this quiet? I also owe money to my credit card, and they might decide to sue me too... " You can just see it, can't you?

 

The way I see it, they should be bl**dy grateful that you're willing to let it drop on repayment.

 

But of course, it IS your money, therefore it is YOUR decision.

[DJ Tazzz]

Gary,

Thanks for the info, without trying to sound like being on the offensive; I might point out that although I did not know the name of the person who wrote the letter, I did acknowledge it was drawn from the Consumer Action Group site off a posting. It is also has in some respects been edited. But thank you for letting me know the author’s name, I will in due course make an amendment to my post and ask the permission of Mjanet. At the moment her private message inbox is full so I am unable to contact her but will do so.

It would seem strange but, your reply seems to be attacking me for offering a comment to another person in response to their question. It also seems that you are trying to give me advice based on assistance given by my self to another user on this site. If you would care to actually read my postings on this site which incidentally are very few, I have not at any time asked for assistance or have been in any doubt about my resolve.

[GaryH]

DJ Tazzz,

 

I honestly can't see for one minute how you could interpret my post as 'attacking' you, but if you did then I apologise, it was absolutely not my intention. We're all on the same side for christs sake!

 

My post was intended for the benefit (hopefully) of the origional poster, and to suggest I was in some way questioning YOUR resolve or refurring to you in any way is, to be honest, quite bizarre

 

(apologies to smd100 if this has crashed your thread a little)

[Bean]

DJ Tazzz and GaryH - For what it's worth - here's my view of your original dialogue:

It reads as constructive assistance to smd100. You both provided useful information to smd100 and this will also be of use to many others (including me). It reads like a good example of how people co-operate on this site for the good of us all. I sensed no negative attitude in your posts. Sincere thanks to you both for your contributions.

 

smd100 - you have some good advice here, good luck with your claim.