Limited Company Claims

[Colin H]

Thanks a lot Humbleman. So,in your opinion,if i won the charges back,it will be offset against the monies i owe them ? Even though i have given a personal guarantee? Like i say,the money i owe them within this guarantee,is made up by half at least by the charges levied.

 

 

Sorry to ask lots of questions,but i do want to know what i am getting in to lol

[andrew1]

I have a claim going to a bank ( will not mention at this stage which one, but will reveal later) This Limited company was dissolved just over a year ago and the Director is claiming in person as he had raised loans to support the company's overdraft throughout its life, and the bank o/d was repaid in full by the director too. There are over £3200 worth of charges, £1400 in interest on those charges dating back to '97, the claim will take it with contractual and compounded interest to over £11000. We sent in the Preliminary letter just 4 days ago and already had a reply they will respond by end of the month. Not bad going for a bank. These are mainly Daily Excess charges £12 going over an agreed overdraft limit, sometimes by as little as £5. There were some returned D/D's and the odd cheque returned, but this is mainly Excess charges.

 

I expect both rejection through the usual T & C's argument - "you were told about them and have to pay them" and I expect them to raise the Limitations Act.

 

Will keep you posted on their reply and progress.

[andrew1]

I've copied this from Ppauls150 post in the business thread for non Limited...it's a common theme and be useful to get feed back for here...thanks PPaul...

 

"Excellent thread people. I agree there should be a dedicated section with regards to just business accounts set away from the personal accounts section under each heading. I have already claimed a large proportion back from the banks and credit card companies everyone of them caving in to my demands as i wouldn't back down. Now i am looking at claiming back on a business account and have done some research but wanted to clarify some things with anyone who can clear it up, or might even be of help or throw up a debate about things.

 

Firstly with regards to Overdraft setup fees from the bank manager. It is said that you cannot claim these back as this is an actual service yes? ok so the question on this is why? When an overdraft facility is setup for a business account what is the difference in setting one up as oppose to setting one up on a business account? You don't get charged a fee on a personal account. Also why is the Fee they charge for setting up an overdraft for a business account vary in the amount that they take for setting it up? What difference does it make if they setup a £100 overdraft or a £1000 overdraft why should the fee be different? "

 

 

Anyone any thoughts... I've paid plenty of these fees myself but never asked the question..

[judi3]

started as as sole trader and due to difficulties when expanding because of the bank actions we went ltd company .

 

Due to the banks actions penalties miss selling and credit filling etc.

It put a strain on the ltd companies future and i am now personnally liable for its failure .

 

I do accept our illusion of creating jobs and a service for the community had difficulties .

 

But the unlawful penalties had a major part of its failure .

 

I have just started a new thread

 

I thought you might be interested in reading this web page:

Lloyds settled NOW its round 2 the Finale

 

I Have also started

 

I thought you might be interested in reading this web page:

Set Aside Judgement I Lost

 

We have a guarentee with the hsbc as our company failed i have negotiated with the bank to transfer the overdraft into a consoladated loan and adviced we can pay £100 per month ,they have just rang and said my intrest would be 10.95% above intrest meaning 17%.

told them we want to pay it off and it was in both our intrest to repay but it was not an acceptable rate and required everything in writing to have it looked over ,when i said what would happen if i did not accept they said it would be written off and passed to a DCA.

 

Recieved letter today because its not a loan agreement form i cannot be sent a copy of its full terms and conditions because no loan has been agreed !!!

 

i do not want to agree on anything if i can read through the t& c

sent subject access request today so i have a two week wait and im toting up the unlawful charges on the ltd .

 

 

 

 

I intend to discover for full and final closure any advice would be apreciated

[fluffycloud]

Hi all see my thread fluffycloud vs LLoyds Business Account.. Anyway great advice, we rejoined the FSB back last spring when Lloyds were starting to sting us too much, we now have free Business banking as sole traders with the Co-Op and a new streamline card account, both work really well and much much better than Lloyds! Much cheaper too!

(Ltd Company Ceased Trading last December due to excessive bank charges/overdraft then a Lloyds loan to pay off the business overdraft as advised by the amazingly stupid/unsympathetic manager at LLoyds which we have personally cleared with a remortgage as we had a personal guarantee on it! Naive I know!)

Anyway the LBA went off to Lloyds last week for £5000.. keeping everything crossed that we will get it back!

 

We havent liquidated the Ltd Company just left it there in the background... no creditors so we could do this.

 

Good Luck everyone!

[andrew1]

Right, I've just had a nice little chat with the Official Receivers Office regarding some of the points I raised earlier.

 

Sole Traders and Self Employed who have been bankrupt: If you claim for bank charges and are repaid, ALL the monies have to go into the pot to pay off creditors.

 

Sole Traders and Self employed who have closed the business but without creditors : You can claim it back for yourself.

 

Limited Companies which have gone into Liquidation without personal guarantees to the bank: All charges claimed should be paid back to the liquidator/ official receiver as they were derived from a time when the business was trading and belong to the creditors. If the company has been dissolved and you claimed them then as the company no longer exists the money belongs to no-one and is what they call ' bona vacantia' which means you have to send it to Gorgon Brown for the benefit of the nation!

 

Limited Companies which have gone into liquidation ( but not dissolved) WITH a personal Guarantee to the bank which the banks have called in to be repaid: - interesting one this, once you have established how much the banks have charged in penalties and you stake your claim from the bank you have to try to put the company back into the position it was had the charges not been made. You can establish whether you would have had an overdraft or not in the first place and effectively reverse the whole process. What they said was that the monies claimed, as they happened to be charged during the life of the business should be paid back into the business, and therefore if the monies were paid back then the overdraft wouldn't be what it was when the company failed, so the bank have to effectively refund the company ( so the excess monies go to the Liquidator AND reimburse you and your guarantee as they wouldn't have called it in had it not been needed.

( I'd also add my personal bit here where I believe the banks would have a big responsibility to cover consequential losses should it be proved the charges were so high it forced the company to close and cause personal loss, but that is a personal opinion and legal advice should be sought on that)

 

Limited Companies that have been dissolved - same 'Bona Vacantia' and Gordon Brown scenario.

 

I didn't tape the call unfortunately but they were very helpful.

[judi3]

Hi Andrew could you elaborate further on my circumstances in light of the info above x

[Colin H]

Cheers Andrew.So my business is in liquidation and not dissolved,and the bank are asking me for the sum of money i personally guaranteed,but they have charged me £10000 in unlawfull charges,this would be offset against the money I owe and not go to creditors? I think (hope) this is what you are saying

[andrew1]

Cheers Andrew.So my business is in liquidation and not dissolved,and the bank are asking me for the sum of money i personally guaranteed,but they have charged me £10000 in unlawfull charges,this would be offset against the money I owe and not go to creditors? I think (hope) this is what you are saying

 

Yes, effectively the charges have inflated the overdraft so the money would be paid to the company but the overdraft they are requesting you clear with your guarantee is reduced. It's a round about way of saying the same thing, but because the charges accrued whilst the company was trading the money is deemed to have to be paid back to the company. Do you follow the jist of that?

 

It's exactly the same as getting all the money yourself in a cheque and giving the difference to the liquidator for creditors but it's the other way around if you see what I mean.8-)

[Colin H]

Thanks andrew

[andrew1]

Hi Andrew could you elaborate further on my circumstances in light of the info above x

 

I'd like to help everyone but I'm no expert, but I'll do my best:

 

You say you have a guarantee with HSBC and just taken out a consolidation loan to repay. Well in that circumstance, the charges you reclaim from the bank will reduce whatever the overdraft was at the time the company failed and therefore the loan you have just taken out would not be as high or needed at all. Whatever they pay back into the liquidator it would be treated as a reduced liability to the bank and therefore the bank will have to reimburse you with whatever the difference is and you could seek compensation for the losses I explained earlier which will no doubt be different for everyone. I haven't had time to read through your links yet but I'll try and get a minute later.

 

Hope that helps.

 

 

Sorry Photoman I'm hijacking your thread here.. HHELP !!!!

[Breezy Girl]

Hi

I've been worrying about this myself. My partner had a personal guarantee with Barclays for his Limited Company and we ended up paying back Barclays £120,000. He will therefore be reclaiming the charges on a personal level.

[Bona]

We had an overdraft on our company account most of which was charges, they turned it into a load on my husband and I personally. The company went to the wall a couple of years latter I have done a SAR on the companys account as I was going to try and prove that the loan was made up of illegal charges and therfore the load was taken ou under duress or something so I can claim either the money back or damages

any help will be gratefully recieved

[andrew1]

Bona, If this was a Limited company you might find the SAR is of little use. A subject access request under the Data Protection Act might not give you all the statements you require. Is there any chance you still have the bank statements or was the company put into liquidation? The bank will usually charge something like £5 per statement for companies as you are supposed to keep these for 6 yrs. How long ago did the company go under and what happened to the records?

[Bona]

Company was wound up 24th August 2005 if nat west wont give them to me I will try the liquidator

[andrew1]

The liquidator will probably have his eye's on any potential return, unless you can prove that the loans were personally guaranteed. However, from my earlier post regarding the Official receivers conversation their attitude was that it is likely that as the charges occurred whilst the company traded a liquidator would need convincing that the overdraft would not have happened 'unless' the charges had not been made. This is a fine line you need to tread and you need to have a clear head when working your way through the equation. Effectively you will need to turn the clock back week by week to see what effect the charges had at each stage and why you had to take a loan out to cover the charges. I wouldn't want to pour any cold water over anyone's claims, but going by what the OR said, one would need to be careful not to be lead into thinking any potential return wouldn't or shouldn't be for the benefit of the creditors. There should be no reason why they cannot ' lend ' you the statements from these past years and you could photocopy them and return originals back to him, however, they do generally put records into storage once the formalities have been processed. I'd keep stum over why you want them for the time being until you know what the situation is.

[andrew1]

Just an update on our Limited company claim - just got the standard ' bog off' letter referring to terms & conditions etc. Trouble with this was that they actually wrote saying they were having to look into it deeper and requested a further fortnight over our requested fourteen days. Cheeky beggars just came back with the same ole tosh.

 

Now, I have looked at the Letter Before Action in the Templates Library and the one in my link and I think it will need adjusting slightly to reflect a response to their letter and also the fact of ' acting as my fiduciary' thus:

 

"I am frankly shocked that you have operated the account in this way as I had always reposed confidence in your integrity and expertise as my fiduciary".

 

I have heard it said on forum that 'fiduciary' is not used as a noun. it should read something like " .....integrity and expertise in your fiduciary duty."

 

Banks have often replied stating that they are not a ' fiduciary' to us.

 

I'm sure it will have the same effect though and they'll take no notice - LBA and then an N1.... watch this space..

[fluffycloud]

Only that for ' service fees' you can't claim them back as a penalty charge. If it's any help or not too late if you become a member of the Federation of Small Business (FSB) then they have an - it costs all of £70 a year, you can have free banking with the Co-operative Bank. That's free transactions, not overdrafts!

At £100 a month it depends what you get for that or what the business needs are. Frankly, I used Lloyds for my business accounts once - it gave the business a good feel and they charged me a management fee each month to get direct link with a Manager - He was a waste of space at the best of times and I got all my charges refunded because of it. Generally there are some benefits depending on the type of business, but you can judge for yourself whether it's £1200 a year well spent.

 

With someone like Co-op - not exactly the cutting edge name, but the service is good and on-line banking too, suits me down to the ground. They also just paid excess O/D charges back without much ado too..

I totally agree with you ref: the Co-op, we have been stung by Lloyds in a big way.. fluffycloud vs Lloyds thread, anyway I just did my MCOL for £5k with Lloyds. We are members of the FSB and we too now bank with the Co-op, online banking is real time, and they merchant services 'Streamline' for card payments from our card swipe machine is faster than Lloyds Cardnet too which is great for cashflow, FREE banking too AND since we have been with them we have not used the overdraft and they are based in the UK if you want to talk to a human!!

Keep up the good work !

 

[danler]

Hi All

 

I've decided to go for my limited companys bank account with barclays, below is a link to the thread.

I am wondering, has any one claimed compound interest on a limited account??

 

Danler

 

My Ltd Company v Barclays

[roscodog18]

Hi,

just a quick note to say if Lloyds TSB Caednet have hit you with penalty charges send them a prelim letter, I did and they sent a cheque by return post!

 

Roscodog18

[snowjo]

Hi all

 

Roscodog 18 what is a prelim letter please

[roscodog18]

Hi,

 

a prelim letter is the first request you make when asking for the refund of penalty charges.

Have a look at the faq,s it will explain everything.

 

Roscodog18

[danler]

Hi All :D

 

Just thought I'd let you all know, in todays post (nearly bined it as I thought it was junk mail), Natwest are offering the full amount of my Ltd business claim after I sent the prelim letter to them.

 

I have to admit that I didn't stick to the time scale, it's been 4 weeks since I sent the prelim letter to them, but they have offered to pay up in full !!!!!

 

Donation on the way after I've recieved the chq

 

Barclays here I come !!!

 

Regards

Danler

[Breezy Girl]

Hey well done that's excellent news

Congratulations

Breezy Girl;)

[andrew1]

Hi All :D

 

Just thought I'd let you all know, in todays post (nearly bined it as I thought it was junk mail), NatWest are offering the full amount of my Ltd business claim after I sent the prelim letter to them.

 

I have to admit that I didn't stick to the time scale, it's been 4 weeks since I sent the prelim letter to them, but they have offered to pay up in full !!!!!

 

Donation on the way after I've recieved the chq

 

Barclays here I come !!!

 

Regards

Danler

 

 

Just goes to show..... Well Done my friend, encourage the multitudes!