JP Morgan/Rooftop Arrears fees- The saga continues.

[jotty]

Yes thought as much, who do I complain to, bearing in mind Rooftops problems in admitting they are wrong on anything, CRA's, FCA, or ICO ?

[BankFodder]

You should certainly complain to the ICO. You won't be able to complain to the FCA – they have no route for direct access to individual complainant/consumers. You could also complaint of the CRA but it will be much better if you can get a provisional opinion from the ICO that they are in breach.

If you are sure of your ground then could bring a another action for breach of DPA. Once you have the judgement then you could send that to the ICO and also send a copy to the FCA as well as to the Credit Reference Agencies

[jotty]

They are going to be totally fed up of me by now, but as always nothing to lose really apart from £25 of course.

[jotty]

Having refused their modified offer, they would refund the charges but not interest and still wanted a slightly watered down agreement that this would be my last claim for any charges, they have now written back with a very pointed one liner to say that their original offer and the second would be their final ones.

 

So its time to start the court route, do I need to follow the full pre protocol rules having given them all the info and made it clear my intention previously.

 

Just a reminder, the fees are still climbing by £50pm and stand at over £4000. I was intending to break down the claim into its various parts i.e. Home Visit charges, Admin charges, Arrears management charges etc. The first one was for refund of the home visit charges which they have offered to repay but not the interest and with a seriously binding NDA to prevent me from claiming the others.

 

I have read the excellent thread from DOC8207 re his Amber loans claim and intend to use similar wording if applicable.

[BankFodder]

If you haven't actually send them a proper letter of claim then I think that you should do so.

[jotty]

25 minutes ago, BankFodder said:

If you haven't actually send them a proper letter of claim then I think that you should do so.

Just checked and I have already sent them Letter of Claim and a spreadsheet of the actual amounts prior to them offering to resolve with an NDA, so I think I have done enough now and they cant say that they are not fully aware of my intentions.

[jotty]

Another update, and an apologise for the length of time this is taking

 

Rooftop have now agreed to stop charging me £50 pm and have offered to refund all the ones they have added to my account over last year or so. They wont agree interest but didn’t add any so I am happy to let them take the charges off.

 

I can now go for other bits, and am yet to hear from the mob who had my mortgage previously JP Morgan, but feel my case is now much stronger based on this new result.

 

No court yet but I feel its getting closer now with JP as they have put up the barriers and refuse to refund until i sign the ridiculous NDA, which is never going to happen.

 

What is staggering is the total ineptness of the staff at these companies, the ones i have dealt with have very little knowledge about the products they administer - mine didn’t know that i had an interest only account for example. It beggars belief at times.

 

So upwards and onwards, charges down from £4000 to under £3000 .

[jotty]

OK so I have started court proceedings separately for the charges against both JP & Rooftop.

 

JP have sent in a defence which is basically a cut n paste of their previous letters denying liability and saying its a condition of my mortgage contract with them that if I fail to contact them then they can send people to my house and charge me even though they never spoke to me. They have offered to refund the charges in question, but wanted me to sign a NDA which in my opinion would have prevented me claiming anything else such as admin fees etc so I refused and they stopped writing so I am now asking the court to decide who is right. The actual amount claimed is £277 plus the 8% so it comes to over £500. I am about to complete the allocation notice the court have sent but before I do as anyone any advice.

 

With regard to Rooftop, they acknowledged the claim on the last day and I am awaiting their response.

[BankFodder]

Please will you post the defence here in scanned PDF format.

[jotty]

This the defence they have put in, my argument has always been that we never agreed to them or to paying the fees but they claim it was in our t&c’s.

They have already agreed to refund but wanted me to sign a NDA which would have prevented any future claims for other charges.

 

They have had a SPO in place since 2009 and have tried to enforce twice but we have always been able to clear the majority of the arrears. For info the arrears are now cleared.

[BankFodder]

This is been going on a long time so frankly I have lost the plot again.

Clearly you're not disputing the fact that the terms and conditions allow them to instruct home visits. I seem to remember that you are objecting to the home visits on the basis either they want arranged in advance or that you didn't agree to them or for some reason rather no appointment was made.

Is that correct?

On the basis of the decision in Kensington I would have thought that your position would be that although they are entitled by the terms and conditions to instruct home visits, it is an implied term that those home visits must be carried out by prior arrangement/agreement with the customer.

Is that the position?

[jotty]

Yes its fine, I have thought about throwing in the towel ages ago.

 

Its correct that I cant dispute the T&C’S, we didn’t agree with them because in our opinion they served no purpose as JP where more than aware of the situation and a home visit was merely a means to try and “discover” other issues that weren’t really there to help with any subsequent possession proceedings.

 

If we had been offered the service we would have refused it so to then charge us for not wanting the visits seems a bit of a nerve. Just to presume that we would have agreed is yes the basis of the case.

 

I will complete the forms sent, and agree to mediation on the basis that they refund the charges and my court costs, but will not agree to the NDA they want us to sign.

 

Am I correct so far?

[BankFodder]

Yes - that sounds reasonable enough

[dx100uk]

IMHO you can dispute the T&C's else they'd be no CAG nor PPI reclaiming.

CAG came out of bank charges reclaiming that were in the T&C's as did PPI reclaiming

you need to use those two points.

 

as for the Statute barred rubbish

its when you became aware you could challenge them, clearly that's not 6 yrs ago.

 

Kenny's have been lambasted and fined by various authorities numerous time for not treating borrowers fairly

you need to include these cases/refs in your later submissions.

 

as they say, they full well knew of and clearly state arrears over the whole time of the mortgage existed

the fact that you didn't [ or more truthfully they didn't listen!] to you thus they repeatedly sent doorsteppers is immaterial IMHO.

 

it was done to extort more money thus upping the fictitious arrears, making the situation look worse when infact it was lender penalty charges [of whatever nature] that caused their 'extra concern'.

 

this could be an important win here...

 

dx

 

[jotty]

I may need help with a further submission, I have until the 23rd of Sept to submit the allocation/mediation forms.

 

Should I submit my argument before then or wait for court direction etc ?

[jotty]

So with regard to the other part of my claim for fees, I also issued proceedings against Rooftop for the Account Management fees.

 

I had asked them to refund 17  Account Management fees relating to my arrears of £50 a time (£850) and they had offered to refund 11, not sure why they wouldn’t refund the other 6 so I issued a claim via MCOL. This morning was the 29th day so I requested judgement online as I had heard nothing and it is now pending on the system. However in the lunchtime post I got a nice bundle from their solicitors saying that they are now intending to defend which wasn’t unexpected.

They claim it should be struck out due to breach or CPR rules, that the costs where within t&c’s and that their offer of 11 was fair.

 

My argument is that why offer 11 and not all 18 as they are all the same.

 

I will await the response from the court, as I suspect the Judgement application will be refused.

 

Is there anything else I need to be doing ?

[jotty]

Been to court this morning case v Rooftop. they had applied for the claim to be struck out based on my complaint being frivolous especially in light of the decision by the Ombudsman last year that the Arrears Management Fees where lawful and in line with my contract.

 

Briefly I was claiming back £850 in AMF's, Rooftop had offered to repay £500 which they did back in July but for reason only known to them they wouldn't repay the other £350 ( the total amount was made up of 17 x £50 pm charges).

 

Hearing was brief Judge said I had a well presented case but he eventually agreed to strike out, mainly citing the Ombudsman's decision as his reasons., which was a blow. Not sure if they will now reinstate the £500 they repaid, just have to wait and see.

 

Not sure if this affects further claims, Rooftop did get criticised by the Judge when I asked about their costs for the Solicitor which I am liable for under t&c's which they had applied back in October well before the case came to court and he ordered them to be refunded so its cost them £1200 rather than refund £350 so a minor win I guess although I am already paying £000's in interest anyway.

 

I will await the full write up and now await the reaction of Rooftop as they will no doubt feel its "happy days" as regards charges.

 

Next one is JP Morgan for Home Visit Fees.....................

[dx100uk]

pers I think that's a win

and the visit fees to cone I bet...!! good work.

 

dx

 

[jotty]

Thanks DX, yes seems like a lot of hard work to get to roughly where I wanted to be 12 months ago. 

 

Did learn a hell of a lot though from the way the Judge directed his questions and need to up my game when it comes to the type and amount of evidence in my application. He didn't criticise but did make suggestions which I found very helpful.

[BankFodder]

Thank you very much indeed for this update. I'm terribly sorry that you didn't have an outright win. I can't imagine they will come back for the £500 – but if they do then let us know and in principle don't pay it. At the very least I think we could plead that there is an estoppel.

Well done on the costs. I'm sure that these contractual terms by which they seek to have a potential claimant or defendant indemnify them for legal costs is unenforceable because what they are effectively doing is getting you to contract out of the court procedure rules in respect of costs.

[BankFodder]

By the way, if they referred to their contractual term in respect of costs in any future hearing, I think that your proper response is to point out to the judge that this contractual term seeks to undermine or usurp the authority or discretion of the court to award or not award costs and in that respect it is completely unenforceable. Tell the judge that effectively they are trying to force the judge to make an award of costs

[jotty]

Thanks BF, that was basically what the Judge said to the Solicitor who was caught unawares that I would be on to it, so yes its very good advice.

 

Its not unlike the bank charges fiasco, we know we are all right but the Judges will always fall back on the law rather than try and change it in my opinion.

[BankFodder]

Also it's a shame about the judge's reliance upon the ombudsman's decision.

The ombudsman's remit is apparently to arrive at a solution which is "fair to both sides". However if you look at all the FCA regulations, they talk about – treating the customers fairly – communicating with the customers fairly – having the customers interests in mind when making a decision. In other words, in my view, the ombudsman remit is at odds with the statutory duties of banks and financial firms generally.

If we had thought about this, we could have briefed you on it and you could have raised this is an objection to the judge. The judge really had no business following the ombudsman's decision. The judge was bound by the regulations set up by the FCA under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 – but who knew?

[jotty]

Thinking back, the judge did concede that the ombudsman’s decision was not binding on the court but he certainly used it as the basis for his decision. I doubt if he would have ignored the ombudsman.He did make comment that any issue of this kind should be resolved by a court which I took to mean in other words dont bother with the Ombudsman.

 

He made no mention as the level of charges and if they are justifiable, but again this was because the Ombudsman had already said they where.

[BankFodder]

I think that it is most unlikely that he knew about the FCA fairness regulations. If his attention had been brought to them then he would have been obliged to read them and then to take them into consideration. Unfortunately we didn't anticipate this and didn't brief you in.

I'm sorry