Charges refunded. But they now want them back.

[Surfer01]

When they refund yur money, they normally ask you to sign a piece fo paper and send it back to them stating that you will have no further claims and that the refund was in final and full settlement or words to that affect. If not, I still would not worry as a they cannot claim back a refund on unlawful or unfair charges. It may be worth you while pointing out to them that if they do no behave, you will be contacting the FOS and asking the FOS to investigate the refund plus any further charges that they may add for being alledgely overdrawn when they created the problem.

We had a joint accoiunt with A & L but because they managed the account so poorly we have dumped them. Twice they hit us with charges until I pointed out the error of their ways and twice they refunded the charges plus compensation. It must be the only bank where a withdrawal from an ATm takes up to 4 days to clear through your account. Also it was not unusual to find you have three different balances which do not tie up with payments or withdrawals only to find that you were right and they were wrong.

I am sure that if you are patient, others will be along to offer better advice than myself.

[BankFodder]

This is hilarious.

 

Can you give us more details.

 

Can we see their letter and also do you still have the letter in which they agreed to repay you the charges.

 

Ta

[LordLee]

I can find out actual figures given time. Thing is i don't have the letter that came with the cheque anymore. I never throw anything out... but this time it got wet and i thought it was all over so i threw it out. Sigh. Bit angry with myself over that now.

 

Off the top of my head i was claiming just over £350 and they sent a cheque for just under £700. The actual overdaft was about £180 at the time of claiming. But should have been frozen... so if it wasn't paid off goodness knows where they've got their new figure of £300+ from?

 

I'm guessing they refunded me my charges and did not wipe the overdraft themselves expecting me to pay the cheque into the 'suspended' account.

 

They gave the impression all was sorted and slate wiped clean.

 

But i guess although i can argue any outstanding overdraft should not have increased... i'll owe the original amount.

 

I have the most recent letter

[PGH7447]

dont ya just love em,

 

please send this to the newspapers I am sure they would love it

[LordLee]

but can i avoid paying this?

[PGH7447]

I would say yes, they refunded the charges just because the appeal court decided that the oft's case was flawed should have no bearing on your own case that they settled prior to this, I would tell them to take a hike

[mystery1]

If you still hold the account close it if you can as they may just take it.

 

M1

[enamae]

If the cheque received was a refund of charges applied to the account, part of this should have been used to clear the existing overdraft.

 

You can not expect them to refund the charges in the form of a cheque and remove the charges.

 

So I would say that the original overdraft should be repaid.

 

Whether you now try for the additional charges will be your decision.

 

 

enamae

[LordLee]

If you still hold the account close it if you can as they may just take it.

 

M1

 

the account is still suspended. has been for ages. just dormant. i'd even forgotten about it.

[LordLee]

If the cheque received was a refund of charges applied to the account, part of this should have been used to clear the existing overdraft.

 

You can not expect them to refund the charges in the form of a cheque and remove the charges.

 

So I would say that the original overdraft should be repaid.

 

Whether you now try for the additional charges will be your decision.

 

 

enamae

 

yes this is my point. i'm not expecting them to clear the charges AND give me the money for them. but... they gave the impression they had cleared everything and given me a refund for all the charges i've ever had with them (as the account was only about 18 months old).

 

therefore i'm now in a position with a debt, a default and the threat of legal action.

[BankFodder]

LordLee

 

Pleas will you send me a scan of the most recent letter. Email it to the admin@ address.

 

Also, would you include a landline number so that I can talk to you about this.

 

If it is correct that the A&L are trying to claw back charges which they refunded to you - and the charges they are seeking are not related to new charges incruured since the refund then there may be an issue of importance here.

 

I'd be grateful if you would email me as soon as you can.

Ta

[BankFodder]

Can you avoid paying this? If the situation is that they are trying to get back charges which they refunded to you and they are not realted to fresh charges, then I can scarcely imagine that they have a basis for claiming them back.

 

Contact me and we will help; you through it.

[LordLee]

OK i will scan the document for you this evening. I'm at work at the moment.

 

Have to say, upon reflection, maybe my thread title is misleading. They probably aren't trying to get charges back. They want the overdraft cleared with the money the issued.

[BankFodder]

If this is a new overdraft then yes, your title is misleading.

 

I think that we need to get clear what they are asking.

If they are trying to recoup charges then this is an important story.

 

What I sense now is that they want some other charges paid off - and that is a different matter altogether.

[LordLee]

ok well i'll gather scans and info and send it over as soon as i can.

[jaykerr]

interesting reading this as i believe "something strangely similar" is occuring to me.

 

I received a letter from A&L last week requesting monies from my old account(suspended also) to the total of £775.50.

 

The letter reads;

 

"A letter was sent to you recently regarding your complaint to bank charges, which was previously put on hold under the terms of the Financial Services Authority's Waiver. That letter outlined the outcome of the test case on bank charges and confirmed our poisition.

 

As you are aware, your bank account is currently overdrawn by £775.5. When we received your complaint about your bank charges we temporarily placed our collections activity on hold. Now that the Test case on bank charges has concluded, we are resuming our collections activity and would ask you to contact us in the next ten days to discuss... repayment arrangements bla bla"

 

My belief is that the account including overdraft was paid off when my account was suspended which was definitely on Nov2007.

 

Another point to note is that I would of been paid by cheque my bank charges claim on approx May2007.

 

I plan to call A&L on Tuesday to ask fo rstatement during this period.

 

I called last friday querying this letter, and the lady stern as she was said the charges were regarding the bank charges and that you account was overdrawn. I questioned how my suspended account could be overdrawn if the monies related to the bank charge claim which i received by cheque as a good will gesture.

She said the money would have to be paid whether is OD or related to charges, Oh and it needs to be paid in the next 6 months. Thats 130/mth until this coming august. Ok now i can see no holidays this yr!!.

 

We agreed when I said I would get back to them Monday regarding this.... And I did, and also spoke to a more patient customer service rep.

 

She has said that my account was overdrawn and that I was supposed to have paid this back two years ago, and since then A&L have notified experian to notify them of my account status being suspended(ouch).

 

When I pressed about why the reference about bank charges she started reading from a hymnsheet about the recent overturned bank charges case.

 

After this she mentioned was I disputing the "bank charges" and if so will have send a letter in writing.

 

Our conversation ended at this point as we had a very bad line and she struggled to hear me(it was a bad line). I said I will be back in touch tomorrow.

 

My queries are;

 

Why has a decision regarding bank charges triggered a request for me to pay off a disputed OD which is apparently 26 month old?

 

Why would my OD have been put on hold because of the bank charges case?

 

If I have to pay this surely it can be spread over a longer period than 6 months?

 

When i call A&L to get statements relating to this disputed period, how much will it cost?

 

I have another post started on this topic on MSE, but the above is a more definitive detail of what has occured to date enlight of todays dealings with A&L

 

Thanks for taking the time to read the above, i know its long but i felt i had to be detailed to see if others are experiencing the same..

 

Any advice is much apprec.

Edited February 15, 2010 by jaykerr

[Surfer01]

If they refund as a gesture of Goodwil then they cannoy claw it back however if the money was not used to pay off the overdraft then it is still owed to them. Strange handing over a cheque without deducting the amount outstanding. The question is whether the cheque they issued was for the amount you were claiming because if it was the full amount it means that they never cleared the overdraft.

[PGH7447]

As I belive A&L are now a part of Santander which judging by other posts on here on aquitsitions it has made they seem to be clearing all the debt it can form its books.

 

I wold be very careful how you handle this and try and get as much infoi as possible

[BankFodder]

Yes, but if they paid you your charges claim by cheque, that means that it was not used to clear an overdraft which was comprised of charges.

So I understand that they have paid you money for your charges refund and that they now want you to clear the overdraft.

 

I may have missed something but now that they have won the charges case, this seems to work out correctly.

 

If they - or you - had used the charges refund to zero the OD balance, and if they then came back to you for the charges back, we would have a very interesting story indeed.

 

In fact, I don't see why they would have refunded you a cheque instead of merely writing off the overdraft.

 

Something doesn't stack up here.

[jaykerr]

I am coming around to the unfortunate belief that this amount was indeed owed based on a letter I found last night dated 2nd of Oct 2007 which states that my account is 759.08 OD.

 

In the letter it states that "the overdrawn figure quoted above does not include any admin. or overdraft fees ot debit interest for which you are now liable. These will be notified on your next statement"

 

Additional to this I have spoken to A&L this morning and they said I had agreed in Oct 2007 to pay of the amount by paying £145.73 against this total?? I really cannot recall so far back.

 

I have however checked the current account I switched too from A&L but it only goes back two years and I can only see transactions from 03/08. I have however requested statement's which covers the period of 11/07 which should hopefully arrive in the next week.

 

If this amount was outstanding I am struggling to understand ;

(1) why have they only began chasing this again now, after the bank charges case ruling?

(2) Should I not have received monthly or quarterly statements of the condition of my account even though it was suspended. Note also my online access was blocked?

(3) They state I am now liable for any admin or OD fees against this amount, surely if they havent chased me for 26 months they cannot now say oh get it sorted or we will rack up the charges?

 

This has not been the best morning of late, but best to go head 1st and try and resolve this to the least expense I guess.

 

thanks again for your help...

[PGH7447]

I would hazard a guess that A&L issued a cheque for charges applied aover several periods that outweighed the OD at the time in the mistaken believe that the OP would pay the cheque into their current account thereby setteling the OD

 

How bloody stupid

 

Ans they now want the OD paid off, with what they paid out

[LordLee]

Bankfodder will still be scanning my letter for you to see. Just delayed with work.

 

Interestingly I had quite an intense conversation with them this afternoon. The unhelpful representative in 'collections' informed me the payout for a hardship case has to go direct to the individual concerned. Therefore cannot be used to clear outstanding overdrafts (made of charges).

 

When i inquired why the OD amount was considerably more then when the account was frozen... she informed me these are charges that are applied to all accounts when the account is frozen whether for a dispute or otherwise. She also said if i was disputing those charges she would have to stop talking to me. As she is not allowed to discuss charges.

 

I asked for a list of activity on my account since it was frozen. She told me this costs £5 per statement sheet?!!!!!!! WTF?

 

I think i read someplace on here that these can be obtained for free... and i think it was different to a Subject Access Request. Any ideas?

Edited February 16, 2010 by LordLee

[BankFodder]

Ah, now maybe we see the story.

 

They issued a hardship refund. Now they have won the case they want it back. Could that be it?

 

 

Statements - only by SAR

[jdes26]

they are having a laugh surely!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[BankFodder]

LordLee

 

This seems to be taking a rather extende amount of time to sort out.

We may be bale to give you some serious assistance here - plus there are important issues but I think that you will need to get a move on and be a bit more proactive please