Default Served despite account being in Dispute

[bathgatebuyer]

I'm bloody mad as hell.

 

Had a dispute with the Halifax starting in Sept to reclaim my bank charges. As is common to a lot of people doing this, I was continually harassed, chased and hounded to repay my overdraft during that time. In December I was given back over £3000 worth of charges, yet today I received a notification of a change to my credit account. When I looked it up, it transpires that the Halifax have passed notification of a defult served during the dispute to the credit reference agency!!!

 

This despite them being told by myself on numerous occasions that doing so was a breach of the Banking Code and Data Protection Act! In fact, I am still awaiting a response from them to a section 10 notice served on 4th Dec advising them of this!!! I have sent recorded delivery reminders and faxes to them to this effect, but they have never responded and the first I heard was an email alert from Credit Expert to this change on my credit file.

 

To say I am fizzing mad at the moment is an understatement. I've given them until 5pm today to respond to me. If they don't, I'm appointing a solicitor.

 

I wish I'd never been a Halifax 'customer' ever in my life.

 

I guess I can kiss goodbye to that preferential mortgage rate now. I'm not even going to say what I think about them as I know it will only be edited.

[Bex123]

Thats disgusting, im not suprised you are mad. Christ, whenever i get one of those credit expert Alerts i panic.

At the moment i dont have any default on my credit report from Halifax, but am now worried if i win then they will do the same. let us know what happens next as i may need to go down the same route!

[bathgatebuyer]

I've just managed to find an email address for their Head of Customer Services despite the random call centre person telling me that he couldn't give that info out. Funny how a search of the FSA Register finds it within seconds!!

 

I definitely will keep you posted, but the next hour of will life will be spent finding a solicitor in Edinburgh willing to take this on. If no satisfactory resolution to this by 5pm tonight, my solicitors will be taking this up with them on Monday morning at 9.

 

Basically, if I have a default against me, I lose my career. I certainly don't intend being a 30 yr old who's life is gubbed because of these 'people' (note my use of the word 'people' is to avoid any editing if I used the words I have been calling them for the past hour).

[Bex123]

LOL, good to see you still have a sense of humour. Well good luck, happy sueing!!

[bathgatebuyer]

The latest is that the Glasgow branch phoned a human in customer services (a victory really since I got an automated press 1 for no help, press 2 for less help, press 3 to be insulted, press 4 to go back to the beginning and get even moer agitated............................). They said it related to my credit card. I spoke to the credit card people and they said that it was nothing to do with them! It does relate to the accout that was in dispute, it is not a default but the credit reference agency record it as if it is!

 

Now been given the number of retail bank collections to call and see if I can get through to someone in under half an hour.

[bathgatebuyer]

Managed to get his sorted on Friday afternoon. For anyone in dispute with the Halifax, I'm sure you're all aware that there is next to no communication between Customer Services and the Collections team. Although I had been constantly telling the Collections team that there was a dispute, apparently they never received such a notifcation from the team handling the dispute in Customer Services, hence the default notice being served despite the dispute.

 

Collections served my default, despite something like 20 calls where I ahd told them that there was an ongoing dispute. From speaking to Collections on Friday afternoon, they saud that they would not have served a default had someone within Customer Services told them a dispute was occuring.

 

The end result for me was that the default is going to be corrected with all the third parties that they have communicated this to. But a valuable learning experience for anyone who thinks that dealing with this Bank is straightforward. They think like seperate organisations, not one company, and it may be in customer's interests to ensure that all contact with the Customer Services Team is also relayed to the Collections Dept if they are still chasing for money.

 

I can honestly say that I wish I'd never ever stepped into a Halifax branch before in my life.