Help Needed Urgently Halifax Really Starting To Wind Me Up Now!!!

[bigkacker]

I started my claim against the halifax in August and was successful in claiming back my bank charges or so I thought.

 

I was credited £815 to my account in a number of transactions, I have since found out that £240 of that was not infact bank charges and was a refund for a claim for fraudulend activity on my account. I never recieved any letter confirming it (stupid of me because I should have insisted) and was informed by a member of staff in the branch that the claim had been settled in full.

 

Today I have recieved a nasty letter from their collections dept stating that I am £193.70 overdrawn. (ONCE AGAIN THE MAJORITY OF THIS IS THEIR CHARGES). I only went overdrawn in the first place because to the best of my knowledge I had been refunded in full, to my surprise I got a letter stating I had been billed £30 for going £2 over the limit whilst treating my girlfriend to a meal, something I could not afford to do earlier due to their charges.

 

I have now come back from holliday and clocked up about £160 worth of charges again all because they never did what they said they had.

 

I have recieved a letter stating their collections charges. I am now worried that I could get a Default because if I do I will loose my job.

 

CAN I STILL CLAIM BECAUSE HALIFAX HAVE NOW CLOSE MY COMPLAINT.

 

I have sent them this letter (yes it's long) but they have really got my back up now. I could really use some advice on this one guys.

 

PLEASE SEE BELOW LETTER

 

 

 

Dawn Pugh

Senior Customer Relations Manager

Halifax Plc

Customer Relations

PO Box 548

Leeds

LS1 1WU

15/12/2006

Dear Ms Pugh,

ACC NO: XXXXXXXX UNFAIR TERMS IN CONSUMER CONTRACTS REGULATIONS 1999.

 

With regard to the enclosed letter I must inform you that I am disputing the balance on this account and request that you suspend any further collections action on the account until you have resolved this complaint.

As outlined in my correspondence dated August 7 2006 I explained that the charges you have applied to my account are contrary to the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999. Further or in the alternative, I believed that your charges are a Penalty.

 

Penalty charges are irrecoverable at common law. The precedent for this was Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Co Ltd v New Garage and Motor co Ltd [1915] AC 79.along with Murray v. Leisure play [2005] EWCA Civ 963.

I believe that your charges are disproportionately high and therefore they are contrary to the Unfair Terms in Consumer Regulations 1999. In addition I believe that your charges are a Penalty. Penalty charges are irrecoverable at common law. The precedent for this was Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Co Ltd v New Garage and Motor co Ltd [1915] AC 79.along with Murray v. Leisure play [2005] EWCA Civ 963 It was held that a contractual party can only recover damages for an actual loss or liquidated losses. It is clear that your charges do not reflect any actual and or real loss.

 

 

I now believe that you did not handle this initial complaint correctly, as you did not respond to me within the dedicated time scale that I set. Furthermore you did not fulfil your obligations under the Banking Code by sending me an acknowledgement letter of my complaint within five working days and subsequently I had to make numerous enquiries by telephone to be kept updated. If you wish to challenge this point I shall require a duplicate copy of the acknowledgement letter without delay.

On September 18 2006 you refunded the sum of £575 to my bank account in full and final settlement of my claim without asking me weather or not I would accept this offer as full and final settlement. Within days of this I telephoned your customer relations department who confirmed that they would be willing to refund a further £161 worth of credit card penalty charges to my Halifax One Visa account. The Durham branch also confirmed to me that in fact all of your unlawful charges had been refunded to my account.

 

On calling your customer relations department on Tuesday 12 December following a call from your collections department about this account. I was informed that this was not the case and that the sum of £575 had been refunded in full and final settlement of my claim to which I had been sent a letter confirming this. I must inform you that I have not received any such notification from you in writing neither have I received a duplicate which I ordered by telephone from you on Tuesday 12 December. It is quite obvious to me that you have attempted to take advantage of the situation by refunding as little as possible to me before I have had an opportunity to challenge.

 

I was of the understanding, that all charges had been refunded to my account until I received a letter from you stating that you had paid an item taking me over my authorised overdraft limit and that I would be charged £30. Had I not have been lead to believe by your staff that this claim was settled in full as requested I would not have engaged in further unauthorised activity on this account and would have issued you with a Small Claims Court Summons to recover the remaining charges.

In November I requested in person at your Newcastle Branch that all automated payments from this account were suspended with immediate effect to avoid further penalty charges from you. This was done immediately, however you have still refused a standing order payment since then resulting in a further charge of £39 which would not have happened had it not have been for your incompetence. Furthermore I find it too coincidental that the only automated payment left active on this account was in fact a payment to your selves.

My original claim was for £861 to which you have only refunded £575. The fact that you have agreed to refund these charges suggests to me that you are aware that your charges are unlawful, unethical, excessive and unfair. Please refrain from adding further insult to my intelligence by claiming that your charges are fair and transparent. If this was the case you would not have offered me anything in compensation as it is very unusual for a Public Limited Company like yourselves to pay your shareholder’s profits to customers in compensation for a lawful business practice.

 

I therefore require an immediate refund of £286 which represents the amount outstanding from my original claim plus all further charges which have been debited from my account since September 18 2006 and the reversal of any charges pending to be debited from my account. If you are not willing to do this I must insist that you provide me with a full numerical breakdown of your costs for each charge applied against my account together with notification as to which article of your terms and conditions each charge has been applied against. Furthermore I shall require the same numerical breakdown for any charges you apply to my account as listed in your charges for collection summary.

 

May I remind you that I have diverted my monthly salary to an account elsewhere until these charges have been refunded simply because I can no longer afford to neglect my other credit commitments through your unlawful charges. Once you have settled this claim in full and resolved this complaint to my satisfaction, I shall instruct my employer to credit my monthly salary back to the Halifax and shall endeavour to keep my account within it’s agreed authorised overdraft limit in future.

 

I must inform you that if the above charges are not refunded within fourteen days of the date of this letter I will have no further option but to file a claim in the County Courts Small Claims Track without further reference or notice to you. In addition to legal action I also reserve the right to put this matter before the Financial Services Ombudsman and Trading Standards at anytime. This action will involve extra costs to you; it is therefore advisable that you settle this claim now.

 

Yours Faithfully

"BIG KACKER"

 

 

 

 

[Gruffle Gaw]

As far as this new set of charges they have added onto your account is concerned, yes, you can claim them back. This is a fresh instance of unlawful behaviour and you can, and in my opinion certainly should, start fresh proceedings.

 

Look on the bright side - it will be much easier now you are familiar with the process.

[Gruffle Gaw]

Are you also saying that they didn't refund the charges you initially claimed back in full? If so, did you sign a form that said you would accept the payment of £815 in full? (The member of staff telling you it's settled in full is irrelevant; it's whether you've agreed to this that matters.)

 

If you have, I'm afraid you can't claim back any more in relation to that set of charges, though you can still go after them for the new ones they have imposed since. If you didn't sign any such thing, Write to them saying you are pleased they have given you a partial refund but you will continue to pursue them for the remainder of the charges, then get on with the MCOL.

 

What stage of the process did you get to before they issued this refund?

[bigkacker]

No I never signed anything, but now their collections department are on the phone daily threatening to Default me. If they Default me I'm going to start a deffamation action because they are ****ing me off big time now.

 

I've told their collections department to stop ringing me but they refuse to and also refuse to let me speak to thier manager. I sent them a letter and they ignored it (protection from harrasment letter) and now I'm off to the OFT and hopefully that will stop them.

 

These people think theyr'e above the law.

[hillards]

If you've sent the letter re harassment then call Customer Relations and insist they enforce it. It usually lands with their department, not the collections people.

 

If that fails to bring the desired result then call the Police, ask them to take action under the provisions of Section 42(2) of the Police & Criminal Evidence Act 1984, it is an arrestable offence for them to keep calling if you've told them to stop by letter - allowing a few days for that to be actioned of course.

 

I had to phone the Trinity Road office and ask them to step in, the calls stopped after that same evening. It may have been something to do with pointing out that I would have the entire staff of their call centre arrested, as I didn't know which one of them could be responsible for the call(s).

 

Chances are the Halifax will do something if you get the right people on the phone, I called 08457 253519.