Bean's Timeline (Monument)

[innocent]

Sounds encouraging

 

Innocent

[innocent]

Any news?

 

Innocent

[Bean]

Hello!

 

Awaiting payment!

 

Received a phone call Wednesday from Barclays Legal & Compliance, Litigation & Disputes - offering settlement. RC said they could post or email the settlement offer to me, so I chose email.

 

Received a standard Barclays settlement offer yesterday (e.g. same as "bong v Barclays"). I emailed back to say no confidentiality, which they dropped straight away so I accepted today by fax providing they credit my account by Tuesday 23 January 2007. This gives me time to compile the Court Bundle by next Friday if they don't pay, or more likely to send a 'payment made, discontinue the claim' letter to the court if they do pay.

 

Hope this helps - Your settlement can't be far away now.

[tunecookie]

Well Done Bean!

I beat Monument earlier this week, I think we are the first with them.

 

I too told the (on the phone) that I do not agree with confidentiality clause. So will be scrubbing it out!

[innocent]

BIG CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!

 

 

Bean WELL DONE!!!!!

 

I phoned up Barclaycard other day (same company same principle) and I think I got a polite sod off..... lol... .... court date mid february :o

 

Perhaps Ill try your number....

 

Also, in my news, rewritten and sent my LBA to monument with "contractual interest".... ("hehehehe") serves them right..... will commence court proceedings promptly Jan 30th...

 

 

Congratulations again Bean.... and let us know when your counting those many many pennies....

 

Innocent

[chorlton1]

Superb News Bean!

[Innocenti]

Very good news Bean. I sent in my allocation questionaire and I am due in court on the 26th Feb. Hopefully they will pay up before court, I hope so as I am pooping myself about going to court! It is only for £500 as well. You thought they would have paid it quickly as it is not a huge amount.

[Bean]

Thank you all.

 

I had a phone call from Barclays Legal & Compliance, Litigation & Disputes, this morning to say payment of £889 to my account has been authorised, so it is expected to be in the account tomorrow. The payment equates to charges, contractual interest, and 8% interest.

 

For information and reference, I will shortly post the text of the offer and my response to it.

 

I expect that you will all receive a similar phone call at around this point in your claim.

[Bean]

Hello all!

 

Here is the text of the settlement offer I received, and my response to it.

 

"Dear

 

Claim against Barclays Bank PLC, * County Court

Claim Number: ********

 

I refer to the above proceedings.

 

As you will have seen from our defence, we consider that your claim lacks merit and that it will fail. In particular, we disagree with your legal analysis that the charges levied to your account with Barclays amount to penalty clauses and are unfair. We do, however, recognise that the sum at issue between us is relatively modest and as such, it is not cost effective for either party to take this matter to trial. Therefore, in order to avoid the inevitable time and cost associated with pursuing the claim to trial, we are prepared to settle your claim upon payment of the charges applied to your account, together with statutory interest and costs totalling £889, subject to the terms set out in this letter.

 

This offer to pay £889 is in full and final settlement of your claim and is strictly without any admission of liability on our part. By accepting this offer, you also agree that the existence and the terms of this offer are confidential between us.

 

If you agree to the terms of this letter, please sign and return a copy of this letter to me at the above address within the next 7 days. You will also need to notify the County Court, in writing, that you have discontinued your claim against us. Please forward a copy of your letter to the court when you return a signed copy of this letter to us.

 

A payment to be made to your Monument account.

 

Should you decide to reject this offer, then we reserve the right to disclose this letter to the court.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely

**

Legal Clerk

I agree to the above terms of settlement

Signed:__________

Dated: 2007"

 

My response:

 

"For the attention of Ms. **, Legal Clerk

Barclays Legal & Compliance

Litigation & Disputes

Level 29

One Churchill Place

London

E14 5HP

 

18 January 2006

 

Dear Ms. *,

 

I refer to your telephone call of yesterday , and to your letter of the same date which, as agreed with you, arrived as an email attachment today.

 

Your letter offers to settle this case, strictly without any admission of liability on your part, with a payment of £889 subject to the terms set out within it.

 

I have the following comments:

1. Re "As you will have seen from our Defence, we consider that your claim lacks merit and that it will fail. In particular, we disagree with your legal analysis that the charges levied to your account with Barclays amount to penalty clauses and are unfair", clearly I disagree as stated in my response to your Defence, filed at court on 15 January 2007 and served on the Defendant by email to you that same day. I would also add that Walter Merricks, Chief Ombudsman, issued this statement in the November 2006 issue of Ombudsman News; "the law on contract variations and penalties demands a reasonable relation between cost and price, and requires those who seek to justify the price to produce evidence of their actual costs." I simply wish to state that you have provided no such evidence to me. However, I do appreciate that as Claimant I have a duty to mitigate my losses and to seek settlement where possible.
   
2. Re "Therefore, in order to avoid the inevitable time and cost associated with pursuing the claim to trial, we are prepared to settle your claim upon payment of the charges applied to your account, together with statutory interest and costs totalling £889, subject to the terms set out in this letter." I do not agree to terms being imposed on settlement of my claim. I believe that anything other than an unconditional offer of the full claim sum can reasonably be rejected by me.
   
3. Re "By accepting this offer, you also agree that the existence and the terms of this offer are confidential between us", I do not agree to such confidentiality. This is a term that you have readily dropped from so many other (Barclays) cases.
   
4. Upon confirming receipt of the full claim sum and interest to 17 January 2007 totalling £888.81 (or more should you choose) I shall notify the Court in writing that I am discontinuing this claim. Until then, my claim continues. Though I have not heard of Barclays being involved in such a practice, I am aware of a number of occasions where Claimant’s in similar circumstances have made agreements with financial institutions that have required them to discontinue their claim prior to receipt of payment only to find that the payment does not arrive. I therefore feel it is important for you to make the payment first and for me then to notify the court in writing, as I am required by the court to do in such an eventuality.
   
5. Re "Should you decide to reject this offer, then we reserve the right to disclose this letter to the court." This point is acknowledged and understood. I believe that anything other than an unconditional offer of the full claim sum can reasonably be rejected by me and for example do not see why I should forfeit the right to free speech just to reach a settlement. Should it become necessary, I shall copy this letter, and your letter, to the court to keep the court informed of progress and to demonstrate that I am not phased by your threat.

I would hope that you maintain dialogue, and request that you respond to me by return email, and in any event no later than Tuesday 23 January 2007. I am aware that in many other cases Barclays has not been providing the courts with the documents upon which it wishes to rely in hearings, but has pressed Claimant’s beyond the point at which they themselves must provide such documents, prior to (Barclays) finally agreeing an out of court settlement just before the scheduled court hearing. You may or may not already know that within the last month Lloyds TSB has had two defences struck out by Lincoln County Court, of its own motion, on the basis that they are an abuse of process because the defendant has settled all previous cases of this nature. The Judge gave Lloyds two weeks to submit a list of all cases that have been settled and a list of all cases that have been pursued to trial, if they wish to object to the order.

 

In summary, and to put it in the plainest terms: If without liability you pay £888.81 into my Monument account, I will take that as a sum equivalent to the charges and interest and will notify the court in writing to discontinue this claim.

 

Earnestly,

 

 

 

 

"

 

They agreed to scrap confidentiality and to make a payment by Tuesday 23 January 2007, and on that basis I agreed to full and final settlement.

 

You may also find it handy to refer to bong’s thread:

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/barclays-bcard-woolwich-successes/30300-bong-barclaycard-post465111.html?highlight=modest#post465111

[Bean]

Well, there were a few hours of messing about this week on the phone with Monument and Barclays Litigation & Disputes.

 

In short, they have paid but not able to use the account till tomorrow due to lack of joined up action from them.

 

To explain:

I had to send this email yesterday to Barclays Litigation & Disputes, because they were saying my account was in arrears by a week because their £889 payment did not count as a payment to the account: "The settlement states 'A payment to be made into your Monument account by 23 January 2007'. Timing aside, the Customer Service staff at Monument tell me that the sum of £889 has been credited but it is 'an adjustment to the balance of the account' and therefore does not qualify as meeting minimum payment requirements.

 

We agreed a 'payment', not 'an adjustment to the balance of the account'. I am not in the business of semantics, and feel that trickery or ineptitude is afoot. To be fair, you yourself have been reasonable throughout, but there has been little or no demonstation of joined-up thinking in your organisation and I have wasted hours on the phone this week with Monument staff telling me differing versions:

 

For example, among others:

One said the payment had been made but it had not reduced the balance yet.

Another said the balance had changed but the sum had not cleared.

You told me that no clearing period was required.

Another said three days to clear.

And another said five days.

 

I fully expect you to communicate with your colleagues at Monument to resolve this, and look forward to hearing from you with a positive reply on Friday 26 January 2007 by telephone or email. After I receive that positive reply, I will contact the court in writing (by fax) to discontinue the claim. The letter is ready to go, I just need to see that Monument has stopped messing me around, by enabling me to use the card immediately.

 

I have digital audio recordings of all the conversations held with Monument, including about an hour today, and including ****** telling me today that I could use the account straight away, only to find after placing an online order (delayed response of failed transaction) and trying to place a telephone order, that I could not use the card today.

Sincerely

"

 

RC was helpful and professional throughout and has resolved the problem today. I think that they are just getting to grips with how the Barclays / Monument charges refund process is going to work so there are teething troubles. I hope my experience helps you, as I suspect there will be one or two more (ahem...) Monument claims going through soon.

 

I have written to the court to say claim discontinued.

[innocent]

Bean,

 

Hows things?? All settled now and happy?

 

 

As a matter of interest: just preparing my POC against monument; what was yours? Specifically what contractual rate did you claim? And in the alternative???

 

Rgds

 

Innocent

[Bean]

Hello innocent,

 

All settled and happy.

 

To recover what was taken, I claimed contractual interest at the following rates based on account statements:

 

16.9% APR (1.313% per month) from 21/6/2004, 19.7% (1.527% per month) from 23/1/2006. [Yes I know the APR is not 12 times the monthly figure and I don't know exactly how it's calculated but apparently it is correct].

 

In addition, I claimed 8% County Court interest on the whole sum that was taken, to give me back the benefit of the money that was taken (i.e. if I had had that money I could have used it for other purposes).

 

Remember that your account may not be exactly the same as mine so you should check your statements for figures to use in your claim. For example, you may have had an introductory promotional period of zero per cent interest or low rate interest, or you may even have a different type of account. It is important to be accurate in your claim. If you have difficulty finding the relevant interest rates, ask Monument for them.

 

Hope that helps,

 

Regards,

Bean

[innocent]

Thankyou Bean

 

Very useful indeed....

 

 

One final question.... did you claim the highest rate of APR and claim the second APR "in the alternative" if the judge did not want to award the first...??

 

Many thanks

 

Innocent

 

[started new thread within BARCLAYS: innocent vs LLOYDS and personally thanked you there for your info.... bit slow there at mo... thanks]

[innocent]

DUH... :rolleyes:

 

Should preview

 

Started new thread within BARCLAYS: innocent vs MONUMENT

 

(THAT TEACHES ME FOR STARTING 2 THREADS SAME TIME)

[Bean]

Pleased to help, innocent:)

 

Regards,

Bean

[Notty]

Hi Bean

 

I have just had acknowledgement back from Monument but at the bottom its say (written by a member of court staff) that I have put the wrong name on the claim form. I put Monument the same as you but they are saying it should be Barclays and I need to get legal advice before proceeding with my claim. Did they ever mention that to you? Do you think they are just being akward?

[Bean]

Hello Notty,

 

On my N1 County Court claim form under the section titled "Defendant(s)" I put:

"Monument, Barclays Bank PLC

Portland Building

25 The High Street

Crawley

West Sussex

RH10 1BG"

 

When Monument/Barclays acknowledged the claim, the "Notice that Acknowledgement of Service Has Been Filed" from the court showed the Defendant as "Barclays Bank PLC T/As Monument". It also stated "The Defendant has given a new address for service of documents:

Barclays Bank PLC Litigation

Level 29

1 Churchill Place

London

E14 5HP"

 

The first point of their Defence was by way of clarification and read:

"1. Monument is a trading division of Barclays Bank PLC and not a legal entity in its own right".

 

If I were to issue a claim now, to be strictly correct I would put "Barclays Bank PLC trading as Monument" but there was no problem with my original "Monument, Barclays Bank PLC". I would also use the Churchill Place address for simplicity (though any registered address of Barclays Bank PLC is technically acceptable).

 

The claim was handled by Barclays Legal and Compliance, Litigation and Disputes, Level 29, One Churchill Place, London, E14 5HP, who arranged a payment to be made into the Monument account.

 

Regarding the suggestion that you take legal advice, you do not say in your message what the "take legal advice" comment relates to, perhaps it is purely related to the name of the Defendant, but if it is not specific you need to check whether it relates to anything else on your form. You first need to be sure that all of the entries on your form are correct by checking them against the information on this site and checking with the moderators as necessary. Presumably you will need to amend your claim so that the Defendant is "Barclays Bank PLC trading as Monument" rather than "Monument". Beyond this, Citizens Advice can help for no charge, and if you feel you need to take legal advice on anything then do so.

 

Don't be phased by this.

[Notty]

Hi Bean

 

Thanks for clarifying that. I rang the court and apparently its just the name. I only put Monument as the defendant and not Barclays t/a Monument. I will issue the N244 form and get it amended. I must admit it did worry me a bit when I first saw the acknowledgement form but as you say that's what they want. Thanks again Bean.

[Bean]

Glad to help Notty. Keep plodding away with it and you will eventually get the result you are seeking.

 

Regards,

Bean