Kiddo VS Abbey

[Kiddo]

Hi I am a new member. My brother told me about this forum and I decided to join up. Sometime in April I used a SAR Template to ask for my statements from ABBEY. I received all of them within 1 month, due to other problems I did not proceed further, not even to calculate the charges. My situation improved a bit so, I decided to start 'the ball rolling to recover 'ALL' the bank charges. I began adding up all the charges and I obtained a copy of the request letter. Now ABBEY shocked me on Saturday 23rd June. I haven't even telephoned them or send the request letter asking for the charges back and they sent me the following letter.

Dear Mr XXXXXXX

Thank you for your letter dated 23rd April 2007 (SAR Letter), about the charges on your bank account. I apologise for the delay in replying and I have now carried out a full investigation on you behalf.

I'm sorry you are unhappy with the charges and I understand you would like these refunded. Although the charges were correct, as a gesture of goodwill, I am happy to refund £300. Your account will be updated within the next 10 working days.

I appreciate your feeling on this matter but we are satisfied that the charges do not contravene the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999. We also comply with Office of Fair Trading, in dealing fairly and openly with our customers.

When opening your account you were provided with information detailing the terms and conditions. We have also sent you regular updates and Tariff of Charges, which detail the amounts of our charges. I have enclosed you a further copy for you.

To avoid charges in future, please ensure that there is enough money in your account to cover direct debits and other payments made. I would also recommend checking your balance regularly, through an Abbey cash machine, online and through calling our Telephone Banking Centre on 08459 724 724.

Please be assured that I have carried out a full investigation for you and I hope you feel I have offered a considered and complete response to all of these issues you've raised. I will keep your file open for the next eight weeks and if I don't hear from you within that time, I will assume that everything is resolved and will close your file. If you remain dissatisfied though, the leaflet you'll find with this letter explains your rights and how to take your complaint further within Abbey.

If you remain unhappy with the response from the Complaints Department, you have an ultimate right to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman.

Yours sincerely

Barry Discombe

Senior Custom Resolution Manager

 

I have read through a few threads and I haven't come across any like mine so far. I just cannot believe how SHABBEY they are, I just completed the full calculations of charges totalling £4619.00 so I don't know where they are coming from. Any help on this matter so far is fully appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

Kiddo

call me Charles if u like.

[petcat]

hi, i think they are covering their backsides!proceed with your first request letter and schedule of charges. follow the process religiously. ie 14day wait then lba then court after a further 14 days. its your money you will get it back but its a timely process. my claim is for 3000 and ive just refused a 65% offer. if you read lots of threads youll be able to compare them and gain in both confidence and knowledge.goodluck dont give up again charles.

[Kiddo]

hi, i think they are covering their backsides!proceed with your first request letter and schedule of charges. follow the process religiously. ie 14day wait then lba then court after a further 14 days. its your money you will get it back but its a timely process. .

 

Thanks for your reply. I am trying to get the best way forward. I am not asking for miracles but apart from following my schedule how is the best way to deal with my situation? I have had an offer before asking for the correct charges back. I cannot understand how abbey seems to be giving 'Goodwill' to me without a claim being made. I could have asked for my statements for various reasons apart from claiming bank charges. So, what do I do? How do I phrase letter regarding goodwill and request for the bank charges back? Hellp.

Kiddo

[petcat]

hi i agree it seems odd, but as i said earlier they are probably covering themselves with the offer. send a first letter but adjust it, either rejecting their gogw or partialy accepting it- see the rejecting offers thread for help with the wording.post your letter up here minus personal details and somebody will advise you.however i would send afirst letter telling them that this is the first time you have asked for the charges to be returned and therefore will disregard any payments to your account prior to this request being made.

[Kiddo]

My situationis a bit different to most of the threads listed here. I am being advised to send a letter asking for the charges back but adjust it:confused: . Can anyone help me out here. I cannot send an LBA becase I have never sent a letter asking for any charges back. Abbey sent letter with good will even before I calculated the bank charges:o . I don't know what they are playing at. I was thinking that they had made a mistake but after thoroughly checking letter again it has all my details. PLEASE!! PLEASE!! HELP.

[Kiddo]

PLEASE!! PLEASE!! HELP.

[ohoh4312]

Hi Charles

 

I was just reading your thread. I agree this is very odd - Abbey appear to have jumped the gun in your situation.

 

I was trying to compose a paragraph to add to your Prelim letter regarding this payment, but I don't know if I will get it done before the school run. If you can hang on till 9.30ish I will get back to you, if someone else hasn't in the meantime.

 

Best regards

 

Jo xx

[Kiddo]

I'll be holding on here for help. Thanks Drive safely.

 

Kiddo

[ohoh4312]

"Drive Safely"

 

Hey I wish - Abbey have taken so much money off me I can't afford a car anymore, so it's an hour round trip on my poor old legs!

 

Will get back to you ASAP

 

Jo xx

[petcat]

kiddo i didnt mean to confuse you, its quite straightforward,was about to let you know il post something tonight but looks like jo has thought the same thing. will take a look later,and see how your getting on.Busy day got my own tailored rejection letter to write, but will have a go at something for you too. post later.have a good day.

[Kiddo]

Morning again to you all. It has taken me ages to draft this letter, please I am looking for some responses to the letter below that I am about to send to ABBEY today. Any help, ammendments, suggestions will be appreciated.

 

*****************************************************

ABBEY

Complaints

P.O Box 5129

Milton Keynes

MK9 2YN

 

 

24th June 2007

 

 

ACCOUNT NUMBER: XXXXXX

Request for repayment of Bank Charges

Response to settlement offer.

 

Dear Mr Barry Discombe

 

Thank you for your letter dated 19th June 2007

I respectfully decline your offer of £300.00 as full and final settlement and request, that you return to me all charges imposed on this account, totalling £4619.59

 

I will accept the sum offered only as part settlement and on the clear understanding that I will pursue recovery of the remainder, with a County Court claim if necessary.

 

I find it quite strange that you have offered me goowill and I have not initially requested full refund of bank charges. However, In the event you are not aware of the schedule of charges I have attached them to this letter and I now formally request for these to be refunded to me. You have 14 days from the date of this letter to respond before I proceed to the next stage which is legal action. My deadline remains the same despite this offer.

 

My request

Despite your offer of £300.00 as full and final settlement I am writing to ask you to refund to me the charges which you have levied from my account between 29th March 2001 and 12th May 2007.

I now understand that the regime of fees which you have been applying to my account in relation to direct debit refusals, exceeding overdraft limits and so forth are unlawful at Common Law, Statute and recent consumer regulations. If you say that they are not, then will you please demonstrate this by letting me have a full breakdown of the costs to which you have been put by as a result of my breaches, in order to reassure me that your penalties really do reflect your costs.

 

Additionally, it has now been confirmed that your particularly high level of penalties are considered to be unfair per se by the Office of Fair Trading who reported on the 5th April 2006 and are therefore presumed to be unlawful in the absence of specific proof to the contrary.

 

Your responsibilities

I would draw your attention to the terms of the contract which you agreed to at the time that I opened my account. It is an implied term of that contract that you would conduct yourselves lawfully and in a manner which complies with UK law.

 

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

 

I consider that your repeated representations that your charges are fair and reasonable are deceptive and that they have deceived me into agreeing to pay them.

Your concealment of the true nature of your charges has prevented me from asserting my right until now.

 

 

What I require

I calculate that you have taken £4170.97 plus £448.62 which you have charged me in overdraft interest for the sum which you have taken. Total £4619.59

I enclose a schedule of the charges which I am claiming with this letter.

 

My targets to resolve this matter

I hope that you will enter into a sincere dialogue with me about this matter and I am writing this letter to you on the assumption that you will prefer to do this than merely respond with standard letters and leaflets.

 

I will give you 14 days to reply to me accepting, unconditionally, my request in principle and letting me know a date by which I will receive payment.

 

If you dispute that I am entitled to a refund of these charges, I request that you forward within the above mentioned time scale, a copy of the Terms and Conditions that were in force at the time my account was opened, and any subsequent amendments to those Terms and Conditions. These are requested under CPR Pre-Action Protocol 4.6©, and failure to provide them will be brought to the attention of the court, should it be necessary to commence a county court action.

 

If you do not respond, or you do not respond positively, within this time period, I shall send you a letter before action giving you a further 14 days in which to reflect. I believe that these targets are more than sufficient for a large company such as yours with dedicated staff and departments.

 

After that, there will be no further communication from me and I shall issue a claim at the expiry of the second deadline.

 

 

 

Yours faithfully,

[ohoh4312]

Hi Charles

 

This is a toughie!

 

Here is my suggestion:

 

Use the template letter here http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/bank-templates-library/671-2-letter-preliminary-approach.html

 

and in the "What I require" paragraph put the FULL amount of your charges from your spreadsheet.

 

Then add a paragraph like this straight under:

 

However, I note with some displeasure that you have pre-empted this initial request for a refund of charges with a gesture of goodwill payment of £300 as per your letter dated n June. I am at a loss to understand this, as I have not asked you for a refund prior to this letter, and would like to know how you arrived at this particular figure.

 

Then I would add in paragraph 2 of letter 1, rejection letters

 

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/bank-templates-library/25716-rejecting-offers.html

 

This the bit I am stuck on - do you accept is as part-settlement and then reduce your claim to reflect the GoGW? Theoretically it does not form part of your claim because you didn't ask for it!

 

Hopefully someone else can shed some light on this bit.

 

Anyway if you do have to take it off your claim, I would then add something like:

 

Therefore my total claim to you is £xxxx, ie the total charges taken from my account during the period (date) to (date), less the amount of the goodwill payment £xxx.

 

And then continue with the rest of the letter as per the template, and on your spreadsheet insert a line on the bottom showing "miscellaneous fee refunds" the date of the refund and the total amount as a minus figure in the "Charges" column.

 

Oh gosh, I sincerely hopes this helps you - it it purely my personal opinion on what I would do in the same situation, and I just hope it is not bad advice.

 

If you are really unsure, then you could PM a Mod to ask for their input - they may have some better advice for you.

 

Hope this helps you a bit anyway

 

Best of Luck

 

Jo xx

[ohoh4312]

Hi Charles

 

We must have been typing at the same time!

 

Yes your letter looks fine, but just as a note of caution you are not supposed to reproduce template letters on the open forum.

 

Regards

 

Jo xx

[GaryH]

The letter you proposed is fine. They have jumped the gun but its not a big deal, just reject it and proceed as normal with the claim, as that letter does do. FWIW your Subject Access Request (if you used our one) does mention you intend to claim your charges back.

 

Also, yes as Jo said your not supposed to post templates on the forum, although its fine temperarily if your just checking something as you are. If you could edit it out now that'd be great.

 

Ta.

[Kiddo]

Thanks GaryH and the rest who helped so far. . Editing Letter and off to Post office. Will not post templates on the forum, thanks.

 

Kiddo

[petcat]

hi kiddo, see you could do it all along!your letter sounds good to me.I wish my thread got such prompt advice.No seriously i find it intriguing that they preempted the claim and will be following your progress.bestwishes.

[Kiddo]

Thanks guys:D for your help so far. Even though my starting off with Abbey seems difficult, I have thought carefully about it sought help (CAG) and hooooooray, letter is off to Abbey (first class signed for). Will update this post as soon as possible.

 

Kiddo

[Kiddo]

Hi all!

Just received another letter from ABBEY today as follows.

Dear XXXXXX

 

I have just received details of your Complaint and I am sorry to hear that we have not yet been able to resolve your concerns. One of my team will look at all the relevant facts, review any paperwork and talk to the people involved, so that they fully understand the problem.

I know it is important to you that we resolve your complaint quickly. However, we want to do a thorough investigation and this can take time. We will investigate your concern fully and reply to you within four weeks.

Although I do not know what the outcome will be, I do hope that we will be able to find a solution that you are happy with.

 

Yours Sincerely

 

Richard Harris

Head Of Complaints

 

I believe that this division needs to be taken out of service they are ABSOLUTE SHAMBLES.

Can u imagine that they sent me a letter of goodwill on the 19th June 07 ....Thank you for your letter dated 23rd April 2007, about the charges on your bank account. I apologise for the delay in replying and I have now carried out a full investigation on you behalf.

I'm sorry you are unhappy with the charges and I understand you would like these refunded. Although the charges were correct, as a gesture of goodwill, I am happy to refund £300. Your account will be updated within the next 10 working days....

 

I thought that they had done a full investigation:D . Are they trying to say that 'full' and 'thorough' doesn't mean the same?

 

Another point I note is in the letter today they state that ...I know it is important to you that we resolve your complaint quickly. However in the letter received on 19th June it clearly states....Please be assured that I have carried out a full investigation for you and I hope you feel I have offered a considered and complete response to all of these issues you've raised. I will keep your file open for the next eight weeks and if I don't hear from you within that time, I will assume that everything is resolved and will close your file.

 

Bunch of idiots.

 

Now question time!!!

Based on the above, should I

1. Reply and point out the above

2. Carry on with my times scales?

 

Once again your help is greatly appreciated.

 

Kiddo

[ohoh4312]

Hi kiddo

 

Those letters are standard computer-generated guff that they send everyone.

 

Carry on with your timescales, and don't bother to dignify that letter with a response.

 

Best regards

 

Jo xx

[kia]

hiya charles kia here carry on with timescale no matter what they say or do its just trying to slow you down everything they do now just a quick question which name do you go by as there seems a little confusion on your name that and we do already have a charley falrey the great apparently is it charles or andy or something else prefer charles myself better that charley common i think bye for now xxkia

[Kiddo]

Thanks for your inspiring words Kia. Will continue as per timescales

 

Charles

[kia]

you are very welcome charles just ask if you need any more help although i never got to court bundles but if i can help i will xtracy