Abbey and other questions ** WON **

[Robhughes]

Hi everyone,

 

I have two brief questions. I've made my Data Protection Act Request to Abbey and have received a letter detailing "the microfiche argument". The last paragraph of the letter states "It is clear from your request that you require the tyransactiona,l information that is held on microfiche records. In order to avoid any additional delays, we will therefore use the £10 that you have sent with your DPA request as payment for the microfiche records that you need. You will receive these shortly. If you do not want us to do this, please call us on the above number" . Does this mean they're complying with my request or not and would it be appropriate to send the letter elsewhere on this site as a rebuttal of the microfiche argument?

 

My second question is: Given that the OFT has stated that bank charges can be no more than £12 per offence, can I claim the total money paid in bank charges or do I have to subtract £12 x number of penalty charges and claim the difference?

 

many thanks

[thewifeandI]

Hi - take a bit of time to read up first to make sure that you have the facts before going too far ahead. Read the FAQs and template letters then have a good read around here to see how others are getting on. Keep any progress on your own claim or questions that arise in a new thread in the forum for your bank to make it easier for others to follow and advise you. There's a set of links in my sig below that will help you find where all this useful information is. Well done for getting started!

 

It sounds to me like they are complying - you won't know for certain until the data arrives though!

 

If the charge exceeds the cost to the bank it is unlawful in the whole amount. Please ignore the £12 - it is only a level above which the OFT has said it will intervene directly, and only applies to credit cards anyway. We all know that it doesn't cost the bank more than £1.50 for some of the breaches that give rise to penalty charges, and in some cases there is no cost at all. There's no way that £12 is lawful.

[Robhughes]

Thanks Jeep. I've read around most of the thread for Abbey and various other sites too (notably the motley fool). Given that most other posters on the thread have received a year's worth of statements and not the full 6 year's worth, that's what I'm expecting to happen to me too. I'll keep you posted. Can we get this moved to the Abbey thread please?

[Robhughes]

Ok, this morning 18 months' worth of duplicate bankstatements appeared on my doormat (sound familiar?). I'm assuming that the next step should be to send the Sticky letter re: DPA compliance? From reading other threads it seems that this leads to a tortuous exchange of letters. How many people (if any)have had the full info they require within the 40 day period?

 

Please change the name of this thread to Robh v Abbey

[Robhughes]

Hi,

 

As previously mentioned, on the 9th sept, Abbey sent me 18 months worth of duplicate statements, following my original DPA request and their sending me the microfiche letter.

On Monday, a microfiche printout showing all transactions for the last 6 years turned up, well within the 40 day limit, without any further prompting!

Am i just one of the "lucky ones" or is this a case of just asking and sitting tight to see what happens working? I think that if I'd sent the microfiche letter, I wouldn't have got my information anywhere near as quickly, as seems to have happened to innumerable people on this forum.

 

Any thoughts?

[Kerrie78]

I am having a nightmare with Abbey. I requested statements on July 25th, request was received on 29th and up until today it has been totally ignored. I received the same microfiche letter that you did but only got 6 months of statements sent. My husband and I have called 4 times only to be told there is no record of our request (despite them cashing the cheque within 3 days!), we have been told several times that they are in the post etc, but as yet I have got nowhere. I know the claim is in the region of £3000, but as I am missing around 10 statements I don't know for sure. Their timelimit has well and truly expired, and they know full well that I cannot file a court claim until I have the written evidence. I phoned today because another month of charges are coming out tomorrow, but will they freeze them? Will they heck.

[Robhughes]

Ouch! guess I've just ben lucky. I'm as surprised as anyone..

[Robhughes]

OK, Calculations done and I know how much to claim for, except for the interest. The thing that's confusing me is that in the prelim later there's a bit that says "I'm claiming x amount plus x amount interest" but several of the threads mention not claiming 8% interest till court or something similar.

What am i missing? Thanks in advance

[thewifeandI]

There's two distinct lots of interest applicable here and you need to get them straight in your mind first.

 

When you had a charge deducted from your account this lowered your bank balance. Over time the accumulated total of these charges may have driven your account into overdraft, and maybe past your limit. The bank usually charges you interest on the overdraft balance. Some of the interest paid could be due to genuine use of your overdraft, but over time the accumulation of charges will mean that the proportion that is due to charges will be greater, even up to the whole amount. There is a spreadsheet available (see my sig below) that will work out how much of the interest they have charged you is down to the charges. Note that it's the complex version that is required to do this calculation. This interest on charges IS reclaimable as part of your initial claim.

 

When your claim gets to the stage when you have to issue a summons for repayment of the monies owed you are entitled under Section 69 of the County Courts Act to add interest at 8% to the amounts you are claiming. The spreadsheet will also calculate this amount.

 

In your initial claim ask for the charges back, plus the calculated interest on those charges. Only when you raise your court paperwork can you claim the extra 8%.

[Robhughes]

Thanks Jeep, you're a star.

[Robhughes]

Ah. So I've just realised that the microfiche records they delivered do not include the balance on the account after every transaction. I guess this means that I can't claim back the interest if i don't know this..?

[ayzi]

My microfiche statements only gave details of transactions and not the balance.

 

Seeing as i requested a FULL breakdown of charges i see no alternative but to add 8% to the total claim and, if they contest then this will be my argument in court.

[Robhughes]

Hi,

Could anyone give me some advice on this please? If there's no way of calculating the interest without the balance at the time of deduction I'm quite happy to forgoe it and send off my prelim letter today. Thanks

[Robhughes]

Actually would it even be worth pointing out that i'm not claiming the interest as "a gesture of goodwill" or is that being glib?

[thewifeandI]

It would look good if it came to court, although I would ask the bank for a full calculation of interest charged on the charges as they haven't given you the means to calculate it yourself. The other option is contractual interest (see the threads in General 'A new way of looking at interest' and 'Why is no-one claiming contractual interest'.

[Robhughes]

I've had a look through the contractual interest thread and claiming back at 16.9 % seems reasonable to me and I understand the legal reasoning behind it, particularly as you can claim the 8% rate as a fall back option if the court deem your interest calculation unreasonable. After that I got a bit bogged down in the compound interest part of the thread. My question two-fold: 1. Have I understood correctly that I don't need to know my balance at any point when a charge was incurred to calculate the interest ? and 2. It's implied that the simple interest spreadsheet can calculate the interest at the contractual rate by replacing the 8% by 16.9 %. How do I make it do this ?

 

Thanks

[thewifeandI]

1. To calculate contractual interest you don't need to know your balance - it's based on the charges deducted.

 

2. Just by changing the rate - this is only simple interest, rather than compound though.

[Robhughes]

Thanks Jeep - i'm not sure what you mean by "just change the rate". The box that says Interest 8% Apr is only text and the formulae behind the interest calculations seems to work by multiplying the charge amount by 0.00022 and then multiplying that by the number of days since the charge. Obviously the 0.00022 is the key to 8% so do I need to alter the formulae to 0.00044 or am I missing something blindingly obvious?

Sorry, it's just one of those days

[thewifeandI]

Which version of the sheet are you using (Excel/Woks/OpenOffice), (Bank/Credit Card), (Simple/Complex), (Scotland/the rest)?

 

In the Complex Bank sheet for Excel for England, on the third sheet enter the rate into the top orange box.

[Robhughes]

I was using the simple/excel/bank one as I thought the complex one needed dates/balances etc

[thewifeandI]

You should still be able to set the rate as mentioned above in the simple sheet (I think - I've not used it). I'll see if it's still available for download and have a look.

[thewifeandI]

OK - just checked and it doesn't, so here's what to do: -

 

Enter 8% into F5

 

Copy this formula into the cell at F9 - =(C9*(F5/365))*E9

 

Copy the forumla down to to cells F10 - F116

 

Now you can change the value of F5 to be whatever you require.

[Robhughes]

Gosh that makes quite a difference doesn't it? Does interest of £600-odd on charges of approx £1300 sound about right?

[thewifeandI]

The amount it comes to depends on the spread of the charges - if they were mainly in the early years the interest is higher than if they were mainly in the later years.

[Robhughes]

They mostly split pretty evenly between '02 and '04 so I guess that makes it about right. I'm off to check the template library and see if there's a new prelim template that takes this contractual interest area into acount..