Letter recieved from the Coop - please advise

[Shadow4]

Hiya

I am new to all this and wondered if someone could please give me some advice. I sent the DPA letter to the co-op and recieved a list of all the charges applied to my account over the last 6 years - they total £3k and when I have used the interest calculator come to a whopping £7600! I then sent them the 14 days before I will take action letter - the deadline being this Thursday, they have replied back to me to say they are looking into my compaint and will deal with it within 40 days, do I wait for them to respond or do I file in court on Thursday - the 15th day? any advice would be really appriecated. Thanks x :-?

[ladybird17]

no - go ahead - it's YOUR claim - not theirs.

 

If you owed them money and they said we want it in 14 days, and you said to them, I'm a bit busy at the moment, but I'll get around to it in about 6 weeks........ well....need I say more??!!

 

Good luck & keep us posted.

[hagenuk]

How have you calculated the interest? For it to go from £3k to over £7.5k is abnormal.

[Shadow4]

How have you calculated the interest? For it to go from £3k to over £7.5k is abnormal.

i used the interest calculator on every amount since year 6

some of the amounts we got charged back then were £100 + per time

and thats what it came out at.

[hagenuk]

Which spreadsheet did you use and what rate of interest did you use? For example, statutory interest is 8% simple interest. If you take your total charges of £3000 and calculate 8% per year, you get £1446.06, you do not get another £3600. And that is if you presume you got charged the whole £3000 in one go, six years ago today.

[Shadow4]

we used an intrest calculator we found on the net

we calculated each amount at 8%,date and amount which gave us our totals

[Shadow4]

i do hope this is correct because we will look like right pillocks if it goes to court

[hagenuk]

This is interest calculated at 29.8% and not the statutory rate of 8%, it is also a compound interest calculation.

 

Have you explained in your letters to the Coop that you are charging them interest at this rate and why?

[Shadow4]

now i see we have made a mess of our first claim-probs why the banks have charged us lol

what can we do to rectify our incorrect calculation ?

[Angel04]

Hi I sent the 3rd letter to the Coop saying I would be taking this to Court etc. received a letter from them this morning saying they will investigate and take 4 weeks, I rang them and they insisted they were within their rights to take 8 weeks and were not very nice about it. Do I wait for them or do I go ahead, though they said that they were within their rights?? Can anyone help me? Thanks

[hagenuk]

Hi I sent the 3rd letter to the Coop saying I would be taking this to Court etc. received a letter from them this morning saying they will investigate and take 4 weeks, I rang them and they insisted they were within their rights to take 8 weeks and were not very nice about it. Do I wait for them or do I go ahead, though they said that they were within their rights?? Can anyone help me? Thanks

 

No you do not wait, you stick to your own timetable.

 

Please also start your own thread, this is someone elses.

 

Click the "New Thread" button at the top of this page http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/cooperative-bank/

[hagenuk]

now i see we have made a mess of our first claim-probs why the banks have charged us lol

what can we do to rectify our incorrect calculation ?

 

You have not made a mess of anything. You may resend your LBA and at this stage and until you file a court claim, you are not entitled to charge interest - so do not worry about it.

 

The spreadsheets to enable you to calculate your interest are here.

 

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/bank-templates-library/182-6-interest-calculation-spreadsheets.html

[Shadow4]

Thanks for all your help guys - I wonder if you would be able to give me some more advice. I have sent my 14 day LBA to the Coop and I am going to send the account is in dispute letter to the DCA. Last year I owed the Coop £200 in penalty charges they applied to my account, as I was in a lot of debt I contacted CCCS who told me to open a new bank account and transfer my wages etc into it, which I did. I then wrote to the Coop with a copy of my budget statement which the CCCS done for me, showing I was only able to make token payments each month. They would not accept this and transferred my account to a DCA. I have still been paying them my token payments but I now owe them £600 - Can I claim back the £400 in charges they have added to my account as the reason I owed them £200 in the first place was due to unlawful penalty charges and the Coop actually now owe me around £2700 in penalty charges. Also if the Coop do pay me out, will they take the £600 I now owe to the DCA out of this amount?

[hagenuk]

You should write to the DCA with a DPA SAR and find out precisely how they have come to this figure of £600 - and yes, if these are penalty charges you may claim them all back.

 

When the Coop repay your charges, they should not pay them to anyone else but you, certainly not to a third party, the DCA. Which DCA is it?

[Shadow4]

Hi Thanks for your reply. The DCA is called Scotcall Debt Collecting Services, based in Glasgow. I did send them my budget statment and have been paying them token payments ever since but they must have been adding charges to my account as my last letter from the Coop states that I owe them £200 and they are transferring me to them and a recent letter from Scotcall states that my outstanding balance with them is £600.

[hagenuk]

Then you must serve Scotcall with a SAR letter and puruse them in the same way that you are pursuing the Coop.

[Shadow4]

Hi - I sent my LBA to the Co op and today is now the 15th day - do I now file in court or do I need to send them another letter first? The only reply I have had from them is a letter stating that they will look into my complaint which can take them up to 40 days. Thanks

[hagenuk]

Strictly, you should give them 14 days plus 2 to allow for the delivery of your letter. But once that deadline expires, then issue your claim.

 

Look here for details.

 

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/bank-templates-library/681-4-particulars-claim-n1.html

[Shadow4]

I am just filling the court claim forms in now and I am going to post them off registered post tomorrow but I have a couple of queries;

How do I find the address of my local county court?

on the claim form under values I have listed the charges, under the overdraft interest is that the amount of interest of 8% that the have charged on the charges?

How do I work out the interest under s.69 of the county courts act 1984?

I think I will not have to pay the court fee as all the charges and penaltys from various banks and credit card companies have left us in financial difficulties and I have a budget from the CCCS showing this - should I send a copy to the court and apply to be exempt from charges?

Also if I am exempt do I put the charge down for the court fee I should have paid?

Sorry for all the questions but I want to make sure I have filled out the form properly before I send it off.

[hagenuk]

http://www.hmcourts-service.gov.uk/HMCSCourtFinder/

 

Regarding the interest, use the spreadsheet from the template library - it calculates the interest for you.

 

In order to be exempt from charges you need to complete an EX160 - look here for details.

 

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/faqs-please-read-these/25457-guide-reclaiming-bank-charges.html?garpg=9

 

If you are exempt then you leave that section of the form blank.