HSBC and loan not received

[katieloo]

Extremely abusive husband who left me for another woman when I was diagnosed with breast cancer..........in a nutshell my excuse for me being such a numpty and not fighting harder against HSBC.

 

This was 2001, I had a £5,000 overdraft with HSBC had been forced to leave family home awaiting divorce.

 

I moved into a rented house with a friend who was director of her own company and I agreed to help out as company secretary for no fee/salary. The account was held at the same branch as my personal account, but was of no consequence as I was not financially linked.

 

I was unable to work due to my cancer etc and at the time my 'broken heart'. My divorce was dragging on not helped by the fact it was me that moved out when not given a choice.

 

I approached HSBC for either an increase in my overdraft or a small loan to help me through. I was told a loan may be possible but heard no more. To cut a long story short, the account manager (who had shown a vested interest in the owner of the companies work had placed £10,000 into the company account with no authorisation from me, no discussion but logged against me personally, and then proceeded to move this around to pay company interest salary for Director etc at will, with absolutely no benefit to me.

 

I protested and protested and each time I was fobbed off until eventually to shut me up he raised my overdraft to 6,500 and at the very same time he placed interest payments of approximately £80 a month onto my personal account for the loan I had not personally received or benefited from, and which from what I was shown seemed to very quickly disappear from the company account in charges!

On top of this I was charged horrendous interest charges on my personal account and together with the interest on this loan, I went overlimit and was then stung with overlimit charges, unauthorised overdraft etc. So without consulting me he raised my overdraft again until it reached £10,000.

 

I complained that none of this was fair. I was spiralling into something I had no control over. When my divorce settlement came through I was afraid to put it into HSBC with an account manager who felt it within his bounds to play chess with bank accounts.

 

Afraid with what would happen to my money that had to see me through my illness and provide me with a home, I opened up an account with another bank. I refused to acknowledge the loan that I had never received or authorised but started to place small amounts of money into my personal account to slowly bring down the overdraft until it was hopefully gone. Eventually my account was kicked out of the branch to head office.

 

Then out of the blue HSBC called in the loan that I had not personally received and on the same day called in my overdraft, the later of which I was paying in regular small amounts to clear and not using it otherwise.

 

I wrote requesting why they had done this, why a loan which I had never authorised or personally received or benefited from had gone into collection and why they had closed my personal account when it was obvious I was clearing it.

 

They ignored me, I wrote by recorded delivery several times all of which were ignored. Then I was contacted by MCS, I told then what had happened and they put it on hold and requested someone come back to them. Someone did and told them they had never seen anything like this before and did not know how to deal with it. Still nobody sent me anything in the post other than demands.

 

They had of course registered with the CRA's two defaults amounting now to over £21,000 with extra added interest SINCE closing the accounts. As I was getting better from my illness but too ill to seek employment, I tried to start a little company of my own working from home, childrens books and illustration work. Unfortunately my otherwise perfect credit rating had been shot to pieces by HSBC.

 

Still awaiting a responce from HSBC or MCS, I got a letter from MCS thanking me for acknowledging the debt and my offer of payment of £31 per month!!!!!!!!! I had no idea what they

were talking about until I realized that although my current account was closed, they had retained a

small pension I was receiving which I had drawn early due to my health and truncated it to MCS as my payment on the loan, thus making it in effect go away.

 

I contacted the ombudsman, who wrote to them and ask for explanations, of course nobody replied, ombudsman wrote again, still no reply.

 

To cut this long story short I then after everything that was going on in my life had a breakdown. The small pension continued to be truncated to MCS and I repeatedly got calls night and day for more money during my illness. I did part with a total of about £750 on top of this.

 

Now I am back in mind and body, stronger and ready to fight. I stopped the pension payments going to MCS, I was told they had made an illegal move doing that. I wrote a subject access request enclosing £10 to MCS twice!! and was told to send a further £10 to HSBC which I did. 40 days later to the day, I received a single box of printouts, a letter saying they were not obliged to divulge manual activity by branch members or manager of course no paperwork whatsoever on the loan, apart from a print out calling it a bridging loan and a scribbled note from a member of staff with

their name blacked out stating I was due to pay it back out of the sale of my home!!!

 

Now if you are still with me after this lengthy tome. I have obviously been stitich up here and if I could afford a solicitor I would. However I just need the basic advice, to make this go away once and for all, its been over 10 years now.

 

1. My subject access request contained very little other than statements on my current account which obviously showed I had not in anyway personally received a loan on increased overdraft.

 

2. Taking out this 10,000 loan that left just over £6,000, but they had taken £4,300 in interest on the 'loan' out of my personal account. add the interest on that and these overlimit charges, they actually owe me! However I am not persuing that just want this to go away with the least hastle possible.

 

3. And finally just as an aside how can this so called loan have interest repayments of around £80 per month, yet they were taking over £500 a month in interest and charges on an overdraft of the same

amount and when I could not quite manage to get that amount in to get back under the overdraft limit they wacked over limit charges on which dug the whole even deeper.

 

Mess isnt it? But what a prime example of irresponsible lending to the extreme.

 

If anyone is still awake after reading this, I would love to hear your thoughts.