Mozstar vs Capital One

[mozstar]

Hi everyone. I'm taking on 3 organisations at once so I apologise for cross posting this first message in the relevant 3 forums for speed.

 

I had already sent a prelim letter to the lovely folk at Capital One (as well as to Lloyds TSB and Halifax, whom I am also pursuing for the return of my money) before I discovered this wonderful forum - I had simply used the template to be found on the BBC website (has anybody got any comments on this template?).

 

I have since discovered the whole notion of charging interest on the amounts that were unlawfully taken from me and have decided that this would be a fair and proper route for me to take. I am therefore about to recalculate the amount which I will be demanding from them and intend to send a new prelim letter, once I have done a bit more reading up on the subject.

 

Do I need to refer to my previous letter in my second prelim letter ie. by saying something like "please disregard my previous correspondence" or "following my recent correspondence I have since discovered..."? Or just pretend I never sent it? What have other people done?

 

Anyway I'm really glad I found this forum, I look forward to following some of your threads and I wish you all good luck!

[mbdiss]

Hi, yes I would referrer to your first prelim telling them to disregard it and that the time frame starts from now your new letter.

What interest or you planning on claiming?

[mozstar]

Hi mbdiss and thanks for the advice. I was thinking about going for the full compounded contractual interest at the unauthorised rate but I shall calculate both that and the authorised rate and see what it works out at and then see how I feel. From my brief reading of a few threads it looks like that the unauthorised rate adds rather a lot onto the demand, which I'm not sure how I would feel about defending in court. I really need to read around the forum a bit more though, cos this interest idea is really kind of new to me anyway.

[AWC]

Hi Mozstar. Yes, read as much as you can before sending another prelim letter. If you plan to claim interest, either contractual or statutory, remember do not add this until it reaches the court stage or else the banks etc will think you do not know what you are doing.

 

Keep us posted!

[mozstar]

Hi AWC

Do you think so? I've seen advice on the forum in favour of including it in prelims and in LBAs - why do you think it will make me look like I don't know what I'm doing (apart from the fact that I don't right now!)?

[mbdiss]

if you are claiming contractual interest then you need to state this from the start of your claim. if you are only going for statutory then you only put this in when you get to the court stage

[mozstar]

Well Capital One have made me an offer which I am rejecting, and I am also adding on compounded contractual interest. Can anyone please verify what their rate is for unauthorised borrowing as I'm having trouble finding it:?:

 

The following is the letter I am going to send once I have completed my spreadsheet. If anyone has any comments or advice please let me know before I send this off on Wednesday. Cheers!

 

 

13/02/2007

 

Robert Udy

Executive Office Manager

Capital One Services Inc.

Trent House

Station Street

Nottingham

NG2 3HX

 

 

Response to settlement offer.

Re. Account No. xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx and Account No. xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx

 

Your reference: xxx/xx/xx-xxxxxxx

 

Dear Mr Udy,

 

Thank you for your letter dated 31 January 2007 in which you offered me a repayment of £134, however I respectfully decline your offer and request, once again, that you return to me all charges imposed on the accounts listed above, totaling £292.

Furthermore since my previous correspondence to you I now understand that I am also entitled to claim reciprocal contractual interest on the sums which you unlawfully debited from my account at your own unauthorised borrowing rate of X%. Therefore I now require you to repay to me the total amount of XXXX. I have included herewith a spreadsheet that details how I have calculated this amount.

I would only be prepared to accept the amount that you have offered as part settlement and on the clear understanding that I will pursue recovery of the remainder, with a County Court claim if necessary. I hereby give you 14 days to pay the remainder of the sum to me.

You have credited my VISA card account with £40 and have informed me that a cheque will arrive for £94 towards the Mastercard account, however if you do not accept my conditions for acceptance, or you do not respond within 14 days, I wish to stress that I do not accept your offer and the money transfered to my account should not be viewed as my acceptance. I hereby authorise you to remove this sum accordingly and I shall return the cheque to you when it arrives.

For the avoidance of doubt, I wish to stress that I do not accept your offer under the terms stated in your letter

I trust this clarifies my position.

Yours sincerely,

 

MOZSTAR

[mozstar]

I've begun filling in a Money Claim Online form to finally take Capital One all the way, but I have a question about how many times I should have sent them my schedules.

 

To bring things up to date, I've sent a prelim plus a rejection-of-offer letter and a letter before action. Now I have come to Money Claim time I was just reading through the FAQs again and saw this advice:

 

This method can ONLY be used if money is the only thing being claimed. However, you must make sure that the bank has received a schedule of your charges at least twice during your preparatory correspondence.

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/faqs-please-read-these/24031-frequently-asked-questions.html?garpg=9

 

I only included schedules with my second letter (the response to settlement) not with my prelim, so I have actually only sent the schedule once not twice. Is twice strictly neccessary? On another FAQ it suggests:

If you have not already sent a full schedule of charges

and overdraft interest to your bank -- then -- stop!

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/bank-templates-library/34887-5-money-claim-line.html

 

- which suggests to me that sending the schedule once would be ok. What can anyone suggest is the right thing to do? I would like to get this claim moving now, but don't want to do anything which could scupper the claim.

 

Secondly, and some of you might think I was mad to do this, but as I was having a lot problems calculating the overdraft interest I was paying, I therefore decided to omit the interest from my claim. Does anyone think this could cause me any problems for any reasons I have not foreseen? My thought was that it was simply up to me to decide if I wanted to claim an amount of my overdraft interest from them and it would be best if I could explain the details of my claim in court if I had to, and anyway this figure would have amounted to hardly anything at all as far as I could tell. I have added on compound contractual interest however.

 

Your help and advise at this crucial stage would be much welcomed....

[mozstar]

Letter before action: I will be posting this new letter on Wednesday, so once again if anyone has a chance to read through this and has any comments to make before then I would be very grateful.

 

 

25/4/2007

 

Robert Udy

Executive Office Manager

Capital One Services Inc.

Trent House

Station Street

Nottingham

NG2 3HX

 

 

LETTER BEFORE ACTION

 

Re. Account No. XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX and Account No. XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX

 

Dear Mr Udy,

I am very disappointed that you have failed to respond to my previous “Response to settlement offer” letter dated 16/02/2007.

I understand that the regime of 'late payments fees’ and ‘overlimit fees’ which you have been applying to my account are unlawful at Common Law, Statute and recent Consumer regulations, and I would draw your attention to the terms of the contract which you agreed to at the time that I opened my account. It is an implied term of that contract that you would conduct yourselves lawfully and in a manner which complies with UK law. I am frankly shocked that you have operated my account in this way as I had always reposed confidence in your integrity and expertise as my fiduciary.

As I previously wrote to you, you have taken £292 in total from the two accounts referenced above. I also understand that I am entitled to claim reciprocal contractual interest on the sums that you unlawfully debited from my account and I included two schedules with my last correspondence which detailed my calculation of the total amount owed to me by Capital One, which I include again with this letter. It should be noted that the interest owed has now risen due to your failure to reimburse me to date, and continues to accrue on a daily basis. Therefore I now require you to repay to me the total amount of £679.67.

You have credited my VISA card account with £40 and I informed you in my last letter that I would only accept that payment as part settlement of the claim. You also told me in your letter of 31/01/2007 that you would be sending me a cheque for £94 towards the Mastercard account, however this cheque has never arrived, and again I would only accept it as a part payment towards the full claim.

I hereby give you 14 days to pay the full owed sum to me otherwise I shall, without any further notice, begin a county court claim against you for the full amount plus daily interest which will continue to accrue up to the date of settlement plus my costs.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

MOZSTAR.