RBoS Settled & Closed Accounts

[James_0555]

Okay, here goes. Totally new here, I've been reading through FAQs, success stories, and various cases, and decided it's time to post my experience and ask for a prod in the right direction.

 

My RBoS account was my first account, set up in 1991 when I was about 12. It ended up being defaulted, and hence closed, a few years ago when I got into lots of trouble paying for everything. From 1991-2000 or so everything was fine. In 1997 I took out an RBS credit card.

 

I moved out in 1999, and started living in my own flat. Unhappily, life decided to bite me and I ended up losing my job and finding it difficult to find suitable work. I ended up bouncing around temp jobs while trying to make ends meet.

 

Predictable enough, I failed, and I got stuck in the spiral of charges upon charges, and ended up taking out a loan with the bank to cover the overdraft and get the account back on it's feet.

 

Needless to say, I couldn't keep on top of things for very long, and eventually took out another loan to cover the first one and refinance the account for a second time. No prizes for guessing what happened next.

 

I ended up moving out of my flat and back in with my mother, and upon starting a new job in October 2004, and foolishly hoping the problems would 'go away', I was contacted by a debt recovery agency demanding the princely sum of (get this) £3,937.47. All from charges, loans taken out to repay charges, and interest. My largest overdraft limit was £500!

 

Shortly afterwards another recovery agency contacted me about the credit card. From a £750 credit limit the sum, including charges, demanded was £1,120.61.

 

For each debt I set up a Direct Debit paying variable amounts every month (totalling around £100/month and varying for a couple of years). I kept up payments on this and eventually managed to save up enough to settle both accounts. The total amount paid amounted to £2,737.47 for the bank account and loans, and £850.43 for the credit card.

 

In 2005 (again, rather stupidly) I took out a loan with one of the 'specialist' (ie rip-off) companies to pay for some emergency expenses. The payments with this company have been kept up-to-date and I'm hoping to be in a position to settle it before too long.

 

In December 2006 I was made redundant, and it was my redundancy money combined with final salary payment that enabled me to settle everything - although it did wipe out all my savings at a stroke.

 

I therefore 'repaid' in total £3,587.90 to RBoS over approximately 36 months. I firmly believe that nearly all of this can be directly traced back to charges.

 

I have since received a letter from RBoS confirming that my indebtedness to the bank has been discharged.

 

Currently my credit rating is awful, I have accessed my credit report and found something of a mess, some debts seem to have been duplicated, and several weeks after settling the debts, they have not been marked as settled, even though I have since had confirmation in writing.

 

This leads me on to my questions...

1. Is it possible to claim back charges, even on settled debts?
   
2. Is the bank still obliged to hold and provide information in these circumstances? Rather stupidly I managed to lose all of my statments when I was trying to stick my head in the sand around 2002. I do still have the account numbers.

Any thoughts are opinions are valued, I'm thinking of sending one of the standard 'please provide info on account numbers XXXXXXXX' letters and seeing what I get back.

[tiggersmum]

We had all our bank accounts (personal, joint and business) closed by the RBOS last year following defaults. We then cleared these debts following the sale of our house.

I have just received an offer for the full amount of bank charges on our joint account (£902) so it can be done.

[James_0555]

Well, I got hold of my statements, after a little confusion at the bank where they accidentally didn't give me the ones for the period I was accruing charges left right and centre.

 

I'm actually pleased to say that the bank staff were indeed very helpful in obtaining duplicate copies of my statements for me.

 

So... I've just finished adding up the total charges applied to my accout, not including interest and anything under £10.00.

 

The grand total is a whopping £3,025.47!

 

Which means, of the £3,500-plus I ended up paying back, just under £500 of that was money that I'd actually spent.

 

On with the next letter...

[Yanni]

James

I can only say I had a situation, in no way as severe as yours, but in some ways similar, with an overdraft of £1700+ which I would have been paying off over 4 years if I had not found CAG - on Monday I discovered RBS had paid over £2500, in reimbursed charges I had been demanding back, into the account -

 

so tally up all your charges using one of the spreadsheets on the site, making sure that you do not try to claim back legitimate account fees otherwise they will knock back your claim, and get off your first "gies my money back" letters - they will hopefully come back offering you a percentage of your claim, which you should accept as partial payment against your full claim - they should some weeks later perhaps offer you the full amount, less interest, which you should accept unless you want to pursue them to court for the interest.

 

Good hunting!!