Advice for friend

[shazmooney]

I am looking for advice on behalf of my friend, who is a single mum and can ill afford these charges. She has contacted The Abbey and requested £840 that has been taken from her in the past few years. They have offered her £180 as a gesture of goodwill. She wants to accept and I have said not to as she has to fight this. She is scared she wont get anything if she writes back and says no. What should she say in the next letter??

[joanne.hunt]

I think she should say she will accept it as a partial refund however she will proceed with court action for the rest!!!

[Lyn A]

Hi,

I say YES accept what the Abbey offers as "Goodwill" payments but write immediatly stating clearly that you are accepting this amount as PART SETTLEMENT of full amount claimed only. This must be in the letter.

We received an offer of £575 yesterday (ashamed to say this is no where near our amount over the 6years claim!!). The letter was dated 20th October and we received it 27th.

We sent a letter back accepting it but stated in capital letters that it was only part payment and we were still claming the full amount. Obviously less the payment made.

However, last night we discovered they had already paid the goodwill money into our account. All dated 25th October £30, 25th October £20 etc. However, despite their offer of £575 we only received £535!!! A bank and they can't even count!!!! We hadnt even received their letter offering this before they paid it into our account!!!

So yet again I wrote to them today making it perfectly clear we were accepting the 535 and pointed out it wasnt even the amount offered as goodwill.

I ensured they would fully understand that it was only accepted as part payment. (as read that others have been stung by not stating this.)

We then made out a list stating it would ensure there would be no misunderstandings on either of our parts.

I also pointed out that they had their last 14 day deadline as from the 26th October then we fully intend taking further action. I stated that no letter saying they were passing it onto another member of their team would be accepted. They did this before.

We copied and pasted their payments into our account from our online statement and sent that too.

With every other letter we have enclosed a statement of charges levied against us.

So my advice is take the goodwill payments but make it perfectly clear to them that it is only part payment and you are still going for full refund. If you decide to accept a further % payment ensure the % is of the full amount not the full amount less the part payment.

That's my advice anyway and what we are doing. What do you have to lose?