Atlantic vs RBoS

[Atlantic]

I also believe a similar issue (consumer account bank charges) has only just been legally resolved in South Africa. Although their legal system is different it does borrow heavily on our English (and Welsh) Common Law....... so will attempt to find some professional auditor reports, like Deloittes for e.g., that like the Australian report posted above, will calculate the actual cost incurred to banks and the profits being made from charges.....

[Sparkie1723]

Hi Atlantic,

Not quite any help to your cause but I thought I'D subscribe again and put this on your post again, just a little snippet my partner got from Lloyds to show how the banks are going to get around another way of making money, now that their penalty charges are on a loser.

[Sparkie1723]

Hi Atlantic,

Not quite any help to your cause but I thought I'D subscribe again, and put this on your thread, just a little snippet.... my partner got a letter from Lloyds to show how the banks are going to get around another way of making money, now that their penalty charges are on a loser.

My partner has a platinum account with lloyds, in this letter this morning they have told her that the charge for running her account is going up to £15 a month, and the only way she can get out of paying this is to keep her current account balance NO LESS than £ 4000, if it drops below that at anytime she will be hit with £ 15 account charge.

 

Time for a move of her account I think..

 

sparkie

[canobeans]

Hi Atlantic..........I'm following your exploits with great interest. I get lost sometimes:confused: but on the whole I can keep up:)

 

I'm waiting for a court date after Cobbetts put in an 11th hour defence. My case was originally done through MoneyClaim but has now been transfered to my local County Court.

 

One thing I'm not sure of though is do the banks have CCJ's made against them and if so does this affect their credit rating???? Isn't it rather hypocritical for them to discriminate against an individual with CCJ's when they have them themselves???

 

Anyway all the best and keep on with your blogs they're very informative

[Sparkie1723]

Sorry Atlantic should have put this on canobeans thread, I'll move it

 

sparkie

[Atlantic]

Sparkie - thanks for the support and the interesting snippet. I kind of don't think it's any suprise they're going to start charging for accounts..... but I look on choosing a bank account (between all the different providers) as if you were to choose any other product (say in a high street shop for example) - so select the very best one that most suits you or your partner/ wife's needs.

 

I guess in that line of thinking you (or any of us!! ) wouldn't go and buy a very cheap apple or orange on the condition that every time we touched it we had to pay the original shop a penalty fee of 20pence!!!!

 

Canobeans........ I can see where you're coming from about "...if we get affected by credit ratings but the banks don't..." but in reality we (the consumer) and they (the banks) straddle two different "markets" for credit ratings. Our credit rating is a consumer credit rating (Equifax, Experian etc) while they would have their credit ratings measured on the stock markets by the likes of Moody's, Standard and Poors or others. I know it doesn't seem fair - but in the scale of things even the very biggest claim that any of us has submitted (of the order of maybe £20 or 30 thousand pounds) is a drop in the ocean in terms of the amounts on the securities markets.

[nesjohn]

Can someone please advise the next step with the HSBOS when they have not answered the third step ie threatening court action. They owe me over £3000 but small claims in Scotland is only £750. Can anyone help.

[Atlantic]

Hi Nesjohn,

 

I think it might be easier for you if, going on what I have seen in previous threads, you were to use an address down in England. If not then things are a little bit more complicated in Scotland as they are frustrated by the £750 maximum limit - so you might simply just have to sit and wait for the bank to make you an offer after the usual 9 weeks or so from date of receipt of first LBA.

 

Please could you start your own thread on this website (go to the CAG starting page and click on new thread) so as not to take my thread off topic/ hijack it!!

 

Atlantic

[Atlantic]

this is just a quick note to the moderators....

 

I now have a small (and rapidly growing!) library of academic journal articles, university working papers, law articles and industry reports on bank charges, credit card charges, retail banks industry structure etc and would be very happy to annotate them and send them to you for sticking up on this website. Some are quite academic and theoretical and as such are quite difficult to read - but I am thinking could be good for "hard/ factual" evidence in court bundle preparation.

 

moderators - please pm me if you are interested....

[todd390]

Hi Atlantic

Thanks for letting me look at your claim.

I have missed out all the overdraft interest charges and only claimed the referral charges, and these are listed on my court N1 claim form.

My total charges come to £4988.00 plus £10.00 S.A.R - (Subject Access Request) fee so total £4998.00

then I have added the court cost of £120.00

I may have made a mistake on the interest calcualtions, but I'm not really bothered too much about the interest only the amount they have charged me as this it is the charges that have most times made my account being overdrawn by a lot of money.

I will be happy if they offer to settle out of court at the amount of £5118.00 as I say the interest rate doesn't mean a lot to me just the money they took.

Thanks and good luck with your claim.

This site has helped me and I tell other people to get on here the more pressure we put on the banks the easier it will become to claim what should not have been taken in the first place.

[Atlantic]

I doubt you'll get the full $5118 (I do hope you do get it though )...... but I reckon you'll more likely be offered the "flat" charges only with none of the extras that you have shelled out i.e. court fees, etc......

 

I have to admit that at a later stage in the court process bundle preparation is a fair bit of effort so I can well understand people bailing out once a half decent offer has been received..........

[todd390]

Hi Atlantic

If I get the charges refunded to me I will be happy. After all £4998.00 is not really to be scoffed at although I have paid £120.00 court fees.

The offer would probably be accepted by me and part of the sum would pay off my overdraft that I dont want.

My fiancial position would be better without the overdraft, once it is paid that is.

Just hope something happens soon.

I think I may one of the unlucky ones that lose.

Hope I'm wrong there, but cant help thinking that way.

[alanalana]

Atlantic,

 

Good luck with your claim wishing you every success and thanks for the help in my thread. I think your last post to me was extremely accurate.

I have received an offer today (yet to have sight of it) but my good lady opened it at my request and it appears to fall into your exact prediction i.e. well short of what I asked for!

 

Have been busy filling in the spreadsheets from CAG and now claiming the O/D interest and the 8% statutory interest to go with my LBA and a 14 day deadline before N1 submission.

 

Regards

al

[Atlantic]

Hi alanana - thanks for your compliment...... it's always nice to have my predictions come off (even if it's not for the best as is case with your offer from them)...

 

Now you're doing your final LBA templates and ultimately the N1 - just make sure you scruitnize all the numbers (almost to the semi-paranoid extent of going over everything 3 or 4 times)...... as that was my mistake and I had a lot of issues in persuading the court clerks to first "stop" the initial N1 form being issued and the to accept the resubmitted (revised calculations) N1 form in its place to be sent out. Thanks to the very helpful court staff I should be ok now.........

[needmorehelp]

Atlantic - seen this?? A county court judge has threatened to strike out claims by 20 bank customers who are suing for the refund of overdraft charges. District Judge Ian Besford, in Hull, said the claimants were unlikely to succeed because Lloyds TSB had won a similar case recently in Birmingham.

It is the first time a judge in the UK has quoted this case as a precedent.

 

 

BBC NEWS | Business | Judge to strike out bank claims

[Atlantic]

no I hadn't seen it...... and thanks for the link - I'll have a longer look at it later this evening.

 

Strictly speaking I don't think it effects anything, as from what I know (and may be wrong) but the only court in the land that has the power to set a precedent is the High Court in London. In general all the district court judges can make decisions on their own without it being a national precedent. At least the 20 or so people in Hull do have some recourse - as in to appeal the strike-out and elevate the decision to a higher regional authority (regional judge)......which is something you wouldn't be able to do if it were a High Court mandate..... so I am thinking carry on with claim process, business as usual.......

 

I am just speaking my mind now........ but from what I know of banks, the legal system, regulators, consumers, and all the "cogs" in the system that make up a financial system - I really really cannot see how this situation with bank charges and reclaiming them like this can go on for much longer. The banks are inundated with claims (that make their internal governance regimes look "dodgy" at best), the legal system is starting to suffer from a tidal wave of ill-prepared "template" claims that have taken all of 10 minutes to print off from internet and use media articles as "evidence".....

 

The long awaited "ruling" over bank charges in April next year from the OFT (Office of Fair Trading) is to be taken seriously - but in reality the OFT is only a Industry "good practice" structure and certainly carries no weight as a legitimate regulatory authority (which in this case is the FSA who have so far not exercised their powers).

 

If you look at things in this light....... then as this reclaiming of charges issue is now "exponentially" growing with tens of thousands more people every month logging on, printing off templates and sending them off through the already clogged small claims system........ and the industry regulator is nowhere in sight then I really wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the coming months if we all were to see a test case that will set a precedent. I almost think there will have to be a test case - purely to plug the growing hole (says me thinking of the story of the dutch boy sticking his finger into the dyke to prevent a flood) of claimants. Once one consumer has been stopped, then all the other claims can be struck out and that action will serve to "unclog" the already overstretched legal system. My guess is that when the test case does happen (soon...) then it won't "stop" people claiming it will just make it prohibitively harder and much much more difficult. Once the legal system has "unclogged" itself of all these claims and "blocked" the flow...... then the OFT report and FSA can probably step in and defend the consumer by telling banks they're only allowed to charge a fee of say £12 or so. Within 6 months the entire story will be forgotten and the media will have moved onto something else.... as will all of us.....

 

My feeling is claim now or don't claim at all - because I don't think this situation will go on for much longer...... I have stuck in claims for everything in my case - banks and credit cards....... Equally if I were to "settle" for a bank offer of charges only - then this would be my logic of accepting - because I don't know how much longer things will be like they are now.....

[Atlantic]

that said and Kevin berwick still has to appeal the decision at the high court............. and in the swing of things I also have a feeling that with the sheer mass of claims now going through the system at the moment that in the coming months there will be cases where the banks will "score" minor victories and then other cases where the consumer will score minor victories....... until ultimately there will be a test case upheld with the effect of almost instantly striking out all claims altogether.......

 

I might well be wrong - but in this one case I can't see how I can be so wrong with what I have said above........

 

Hence my thinking claim now or don't claim at all........

[Atlantic]

just another thought........... but in the light of judges making en-masse strike out decisions about bank charges claims - I am going to make sure that my court bundle is as novel and well prepared (using serious evidence sources and *not* speculative media reports etc).

 

This way a district judge looking through a huge pile of bank charges claims with the Berwick case in mind will be less liable to simply throw mine on one side in the "strike out" pile.......... the whole point is that aas long as the judge is *interested* in your case then he/she'll accept it and be prepared for you to carry on with the legal process. If your claim remains within the legal system and is not struck out then the process is simply the same (with similar anticipated results as up until now) as things have been up until now - i.e. your case will remain a threat to the bank and they're likely to settle for more than just "charges only"......... the trick is getting the judge to take your case seriously..........

[Atlantic]

this is my exact point about novelty and preparation: BBC NEWS | Business | Lloyds wins second charges case

[Atlantic]

if your home/ work PC has realplayer then it could be interesting to log on tommorow to the BBC website as they ahve an interview with a senior judge who apparantly will give his opinion on what will likely happen and is needed to resolve the charges furore and mess (as the situation is now). The link is: BBC NEWS | Programmes | Moneybox | Bank charges confusion

 

personally i reckon things will probably "sort themselves out" sometime early next year when a test case of sorts goes through the courts. it'll probably hurt a heck of a lot of claimants but it will have the effect of putting a dampener on all of this........ as it is going mad now......

[canobeans]

Why are you assuming the Judge will come down on the side of the banks........maybe a judge will get so sick and tired of the banks defending the claims they will through out the banks case in favour of us siting the fact the banks are using bullying tactics.

How can so many (ordinary people) be wrong and so few (banks) right???

 

I do agree with you though.....if you're going to claim then do it now!!!

[needmorehelp]

Hi Atlantic,

Tend to support your views - too many abusing the system by not taking it seriously when submitting. That said - even though the last court bundle was 211 pages and had some personal circumstances to be considered - I still wish that I had taken a bit more effort. We'll see what happens end of June!

 

The next one is Lloyds then back to RBoS. Too many kids I guess.

[Atlantic]

canobeans.......

 

i'm not denying the concept of fight the good cause and that the banks are using bullying tactics against us.........

 

but look at us - we're a pretty disjointed bunch (some are organised, some not so much, some not at all). The bulk of our complaining is done through the already overstretched small claims legal system....... and given two cases have been lost on basis of poor preparation (and i just read that Kevin Berwick, whose lost case started this, is not going to appeal) and the law is not as clear cut as people would like to think....... then it will simply take one test case to stop the rapidly growing tidal wave swamping our court system.....

 

as for the banks and their charges....... my guess is once the flow of claimants is "plugged" then the regulator (FSA) will probably be better able to work with the less inundated banks to fix a universal charge rate of 10 or 12 pounds as they did with the credit card companies not so long ago.....

 

i reckon too many people are simply printing off the templates (available virtually everywhere on the net) and then backing it all up with a PoC (again available everywhere and with little thought involved when copied) that itself is backed up by "evidence" from news articles......

[Atlantic]

This is the point I was trying to make......and I reckon it will happen very soon in the coming months: BBC NEWS | UK | Bank test case needed, judge says

[needmorehelp]

Hi Atlantic,

Interesting view from my daughter re Statement of Evidence. Too generic and the Judge prefers a succinct case - not tons of paperwork. Will see how it goes later this month (will post result on this thread), but if we lose there are still four other cases at later stages ....