itsamomentintime v Abbey ** WON **

[Kerrie78]

My claim is for a total of £4751.67 inclusive of charges, interest, S69 interest and £120 court fee. And while they're phaffing around it is rising by 86p a day

[itsamomentintime]

wow thats a lot of charges

[Kerrie78]

I know. The majority of them came from 2004 when my husband was made redudant for 3 months. Abbey charged us, then during the week that they had taken them we accrued the following set of charges due to them leaving us with nothing to live on, so each month the charges just kept mounting up. Since then we have never got back out of the overdraft, they just kept increasing it to cover the charges, so it has got so big now that it's time to take action. Even if they do pay me back what I am claiming I will be able to pay the whole od off completely, plus have the extra £1700 to credit our new a/c with. It's just a matter of waiting until they decide to play ball (and hoping I don't mess up along the way).

If you do get anywhere with your letter can you keep the thread updated so that i can check progress.

[itsamomentintime]

i will let u know

 

what do u mean, mess things up? how?

[Kerrie78]

Well - I received a letter off Abbey yesterday - I posted on my own thread KerrievsAbbey but nobody has replied.

It just says

"We are in the process of reviewing this claim and preparing our response. A defence will be filed in due course.

In the meantime, we note that you have claimed the sum of xxx in respect of charges that you say have been made on your Abbey account. However, you have not provided details as to how this sum was calculated. Similarly, you have failed to provide a breakdown of the xx claimed by way of interest, showing how that amount is made up with reference to each charge.

As you will appreciate you will need to produce clear evidence to the Court regarding these amounts, and this information should have been supplied by you when you filed your claim. We should be grateful if you would provide such details to us as soon as possible"

 

I already sent at least 3 copies of my schedule of charges, with a clear breakdown. On Nov 17th I posted to Abbey and the court manager, and abbey signed for it on Nov 21st so I don't know what more they want??

 

Whether it is just a scare tactic i don't know.

[itsamomentintime]

scare tactic - its a waiting game, you will win

[Kerrie78]

Thanks. I hope so. I actually just checked MCOL and they acknowledged on 24th not 25th - so same as you.

[itsamomentintime]

i think that both of our claims were issued on the 8th.....? its my understanding that shAbbey has until 6/12/06 to file a defence or we win by default

[Kerrie78]

Yes mine too was issued on the 8th. The way I read it was that it was deemed served on the 13th, so they had 14 days to acknowledge or file a defence, this had to be done before 27th Nov, but as they have acknowledged it extends their timeframe until 11th December, but their defence must be in before that date.

Knowing Abbey they will issue it round about the 14th though and still manage to get away with it.

[itsamomentintime]

got a letter today asking me to explain the charges i am claiming back - i will do this when the court asks me to

[lookinforinfo]

Because you are taking your bank to Court to reclaim the unlawful charges,

the bank cannot pursue you for any of those charges that you are claiming.

However, as you are continuing to go overdrawn, you are in breach of their

T&C's, and they are within their rights to charge you.

[if you know that the bank is going to refuse payment on d/ds, cancel

them before they hit your bank, thus avoiding bank charges. Then reinstate

them when you have the funds.]

[itsamomentintime]

the only reason the dds are not being paid is becaue the bank has unlawfully taken so much money from my account in the first place

[itsamomentintime]

DEFENCE FILED

 

will keep you posted

[Glenn UK]

FWIW

 

You should be careful when ignoring request for info from the other party.

 

As much as you may think they're a pain in the arse, and i don't think you'll find many on here disagreeing with you, the court will expect you to provide all the information necessary to prove your claim.

 

Rather than ignore you should either write back confirming the info they want or else send them a letter telling them they have the information give them the date of the letter and when they signed for it and invite them to confirm they want more information.

 

When you respond send a copy to the court manager too.

 

The point of all this is that you don't want to give them the chance to apply to strike your defence out on the basis of insufficient information.

 

You want the court to see you as the goody and them as the baddy.

 

JMHO

 

Glenn

[Mindzai]

... as you are continuing to go overdrawn, you are in breach of their T&C's, and they are within their rights to charge you.

 

They absolutely are not within their rights to charge you. They will charge you, but they have no right to do so. This is why we are all suing them after all.

 

To clarify, in response to the original question, they can and will charge you while action is underway, but as there is no legal basis for this you can reclaim the money back as normal.

[itsamomentintime]

GLENN thats good advice - i will send a list of charges to them, in the meantime here is their defence:

 

save as is specifically admitted in thi defence, the defendant denies each and every allegation set out in the particulars of claim

 

it is admitted that the claimant has a bank account with the defendant

 

at all times the account has been subject to the applicable terms and conditions which form part of the contract between the claimant and the defendant and to which the claimant agreed when he opened the account. the defendant will refer at trial to the full conditions but for the purposes of this defence will refer to the following extracts:

 

you can apply for an overdraft on your account. if we give you an overdraft we will tell you your limit and the interest rate applicable

 

an unauthorised overdraft occurs if without our agreement you overdraw your ccount or exceed the limit of an overdraft which we have agreed

 

if you have an unauthorised overdraft you will be charged fees as set out in our tarrif of charges or specified to you and these may include fees for transactions we are unable to process due to lack of avilable funds in your account

 

throughout the period that he has had the account, the climant recieved a number of copies of the conditions and of the said tariff of charges as they were amended and updated (though there has been no material amendment to the conditions)

 

any overdraft facility on the account was (and is) subjet to conditions

 

the claimant has overdrawn or exceeded authorised overdraft limits on the account on a number of eperate ocasions, full details of which will be provided on disclosure. therefore by virtue of the conditions already referred to, such overdrawing as unauthorised and in breach of contract and the claimant became liable to pay fees to the defendant in accordance with its tariff of charges applicable at the relevant time. in accordance with the conditions, such fees were debitted to the account.

 

in view of the facts and matters referred to in paragraphs 3, 4, 5 and 6 above, the defendant denies that the amount of £894 or any other amount was unlawfully debitted to the account and the claimants claim for the repayment of tht amount is therefore denied

 

the claimants contention that the said fees are unenforceable and/or are 'penalty charges' is denied. the fees reflect and are proportionate to the defendants admin expenses incurred due to the climants breach of contract and are a genuine pre-estimate of the damage suffered by the defendant

 

furthermore or in the alternative, even if the said fees are not proportionate to the defendants admin expenses incurred (which is denied), the claimant remains liable to pay such fees as may be found to be proportionate and he claimant is not entitled to claim repayment of the full amount of each charge made to the account

 

the defendant denies that the claimant is entitled to interest

 

no admissions are made as to the amounts claimed by the claimant and the claimant is put to strict proof of the same

[Kerrie78]

Hi.

Still at exactly same as you. I just checked MCOL and they filed my defence yesteray aswell. I haven't received it this morning though so it should be Monday. They're taking another £270 of me on Dec 14th. What are you going to put on your AQ, are you going to use the template?

[itsamomentintime]

i am a total beginner when it comes to AQ's, are you any good with them?

 

by the way, the third-to-last statement looks like a veiled admission to me.....

[Mindzai]

It is really, but they are right, you do have to pay their true admin costs. What they fail to mention is that these costs amount to more like 50p than £30. To prove this point of their defence they will have to reveal what their true costs are, and if they did that it would mean big trouble for them

[itsamomentintime]

and thats why i will be winning then

[Kerrie78]

Hope mine reads the same, I would be pleased with that. I'm a novice with AQ's aswell, I will follow the templates as they have served me well up until now. I will post my defence up as and when I get it.

My other few claims were all settled after the second letter, but they were only small amounts.

[itsamomentintime]

kerrie has their defence not arrived with you yet?

[itsamomentintime]

abbey have taken a further £486 today - 2 weeks before christmas, nice - how to i adjust the amount of the claim?

[itsamomentintime]

please can a mod move this thread to the abbey section? thanks

[orfoster]

You can adjust the amount of the claim but this will cost you £35 as i understand it and i've forgotton what form it is that you need to do it, the best thing you can do is (the £35 is not reclaimable) wait for them to pay up and then do the same process again as im sure they will charge you again before your claim is up and just remember the longer you leave it, the more interest you are getting on it.