EGG Share Trading - Any Thoughts ?

[gemster]

Never one for easy questions (- see my thread on RBS !)

 

Egg Share Trading - my mum is taking them to court over a dispute on buying and selling shares and consolidations. They owe her £2600, and they have frozen her share trading account and it has remained frozen for 3 years, leading to some spectacular loss of gaining some real golden profits, as the shares in have gone up so much, and unfortunately back down in that time frame.

 

We believe that Egg have closed their share trading venture and it's transferred to someone else which makes us think they can't unfreeze it?.

 

Egg have acknowledged our claim and have 28 days from 11/09/06.

 

What does everyone think? can we go on and claim loss of profit from the shares in the frozen account?, can they freeze an account indefinately?

 

I know they are a tough cookie looking at the bank charges nightmare people are facing with them.

 

Any suggestions appreciated.

[Tobes]

Why did they freeze the account in the first place?

[gemster]

It is rather long winded - but it had to do with a consolidation of shares. Egg forgot to update their system upon a share consolidation, which meant that everyone who had those shares ended up with 10 times their money.

 

As a bank error, we took the half the money out of the account, Egg still did not update the account.

 

They then discovered their error and tried to get the money back from us. Including reversing some trades we had made with the other half, two days after making them and emptying the cash in the account. We queried that as it was not our fault that they made a mistake we wouldn't be prepared to give them the half we got out.

 

They said that the company who issued the consolidation never informed the market of the consolidation until one day after it occured. This was a lie and we obtained written proof that Egg were informed correctly, they didn't act. They then froze the accounts with some existing trades intact (we know we still have these shares as we receive annual accounts, reports, etc.

 

They then tried to pursue through solicitors quoting 'the law of mistake', Shoosmiths Solicitors (if anyone has had dealings with these people before in other contexts will know these people do not ever ever ever ever give up until they have their money). We challenged them with what I explained above, over the course of the three years we have various people from Shoosmiths try and make something of this, but when challenged fall silent. We went through solicitors ourselves, who came up with a counter for 'the law of mistake'.

 

We wrote three solicitors letters to Shoosmiths and heard nothing.

 

We asked again and again and again for a conclusion of this matter or at least for our account to be unfrozen but have heard nothing. So to end the matter we are attempting to take Egg to court for the other half of the money and to try and get our account unfrozen.

 

Help

[Tobes]

My memory fails me but there was somethng in the papers the other week about this...I think the conclusion was that they couldn't just take the mistaken money out of your account without your permission, but also that you couldn't take it either, though I'm not sure if that was a moral or legal consideration!

 

What was your solicitor's counter argument, out of interest?

 

If you took out half of the mistaken money, how does that compare to what you could have made in profits if you'd been about to effect the trades etc, is it a big difference?

 

If the total amount is less than £5000 then it would go to Small Claims where you would not have to pay costs so you'd have little to lose...You would then I suppose describe how you have een prevented from taking your money and also if you're claiming the other half of the mistake, that argument against the law of mistake. If you're trying to claim for losses, money that you might have made in profit, then you'd have to be very careful and have proof that you could have made that money...Not sure how you'd show that it likely that you would have done that...Can you not get advice from your solicitor over this?

[gemster]

Our solicitor is very unsure of what to do - they have said basically it will cots you more for us to represent you than you would win. I don't think we've got the best solicitor !.

 

Their argument for 'law of mistake' is bascially that Egg's mistakes have meant that we are out of pocket and therefore, we can claim back compensation accordingly.

 

The profit from the shares, I know would be speculative, but we can prove the prices went up and even if we sold out half way up the rise it would equal well over £5000.

 

To be honest, we really want the matter settled and I know it is not a clear cut case, but we want the account unfrozen, I don't know if this affects the credit score or not?, but that money has also missed out on interest for the last three years.

 

Egg are just ignoring us, which I don't think they can do. So we'll try small claims and see how we get on.

[Tobes]

Well they shouldn't be ignoring you - I know Egg signs up to the Banking Code, which means they have to respond, but I'm not sure if sharedealing is covered...I think maybe you should try and elevate the matter, write to the CEO or something!

[robin08]

index - There is no other trader out there that matches this profit performance.