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£20k? WOW. Good on ya. Invest it wisely. Odd

It's all over. Nat West has given up the fight stating in a letter that although it believes the "particulars of the claim disclose no reasonable grounds or course of action against the bank" it will settle the claim as it is not "commercially viable or cost effective for the bank to defend". This letter was attached to a cheque for a £128.32. However, it also put in a gagging clause. That was removed when I telephoned the bank telling it that I did not accept the terms of settlement. It really is quite absurd that these banks can continue to do this without their shareholders getting quite ****ed off. If it had paid up the £30 that I requested rather than wasting its time (and undoubtedly, its money) then it wouldn't have cost almost £100 more. Still, I guess £100 is nothing to Nat West.... But £100 x 1000 claims (or more) surely can't be ignored....

There's a lot of panic here. Please do get it all in perpective. This is one loss out of thousands and there appear to be a number of reasons for it (discounting conspiracy theories) Court is a serious step. MANY, MANY people have been encouraged by the thousands of cases and thousands of wins and have throw their ball into the Court, so to speak. I think it's extremely easy to get swept away in the euphoria of the success stories and encouragement from people on here who, like me, have very little legal experience. This is not a dig, just a statement of fact. The upshot can easily be that we begin to lose sight of the relatively serious nature of all this and start taking things for granted. As soon as you do this, you're causing problems - it's easy to become complacent for instance and miss vital things that need to be presented should you ever face a judge. This appears to have been a contributing factor in this Birmingham case. The Small Claims Court does not expect us to be legal eagles, but it does expect us to be dilligent and reasonable in our claims and presentation of cases. If we can't manage this, then the chances of losing increase. Put this loss into perspective and take it as a warning that without proper presentation, etc. you might not get the outcome you want.

For the moment, I am seeing this as a blip - nothing more. Facts are: 1) Thousands of cases uncontested in court - If the banks thought they could win, they've have been in court EVERY TIME. They all push us to the time limits and cave in - they don't have to cave in - they choose to on "economic" grounds. This is ballcocks and much of thier expenses have already been incurred in the fight up to the point of caving in. 2) It's quite possibly a mistake as touted in the followup BBC news story BBC NEWS | Business | Was the bank victory an accident? 3) If this goes to appeal, there's a VERY good chance that the bank won't let it get that far - it's well aware that a loss at that stage could be catastrophic. This is probably as much of a wakeup call to the banks as it is to us. We are suddenly aware that things might not go our way after thousands of cases where they have. It's a reminder that every case is different and that we can win or lose. It's also a "coffee smelling moment" for the banks as this minor victory (which is quite possibly an accident caused by overwork) could quickly turn out to be anything but a victory. There's also the possibility that it's a "staged loss" in order to put the frighteners on us. DO NOT GIVE UP THE FIGHT

An interesting concept and certainly not one that I would put past these operations.....

Ah, but if you disputed the charge, that would be a different story, surely?

Here's an idea. If we refuse to pay BT these extra charges, what will it do? I would suggest that if it cuts you off if you pay the bill minus these charges it will be acting unreasonably as you've paid the bill for the service provided. Views?

Given that many judgements are based upon people being "reasonable" about things, I would argue that 10 days (especially when you can lose some of those days by delaying the sending of the bill) is a little unreasonable.

There's a huge amount of digression here so, trying to get back to the matter in hand.... BT's outrageous attempts to screw more money out of us without actually raising its telephony charges. There's a lot of talk about debts and legal tender. Here's a spanner. I beleive I am right in saying that the BT phone bill is made up of two elements; 1) the provision of the line and 2) the calls made. I beleive I am also right in saying that the provision of the line is billed IN ADVANCE and the calls are billed in ARREARS. If this is the case, as much as it pains me to say it, the argument about the settlement of a debt is somewhat changed as only part of the bill is a debt. Please ignore me if I'm talking rot.

Indeed. The UK banking system is slow by design - it may be old and antiquated but it's well within the powers of the banks to change this. The fact is, they choose not to.

Sorry, I don't agree at all. You can't just make sweeping generalisations like that. Just because someone earns £1m a month don't mean they don't have commitments of £1.2m a month.

Quite.

Errr? Yes, of course big businesses would be "bothered" to do this. Many of these big businesses didn't get big because they are nice and cuddly. It's surely worth bothering if you can lever more money out of people on a false premise that's going to largely go unchallenged. Let me think where this may have happened with other big businesses.... Ah, yes, I remember now; banks and unlawful charging. I run my own businesses - 3 in fact. I don't charge my clients for processing their payments - I respect them too much.

That day can't come quick enough. Good luck to him.

Don't you just wish you could be there? In the meantime, I have received a copy of Shat Vest's ack notice stating that they dispute all of the claim and will file a defence. Oh well, just another saga that needs to be played out. Was interested to see yesterday that Tim Brennan's Damages case has been adjourned. Very keen to see this man win.....

Indeed, I will fight for the money. What's daft is that they must believe it too; my final letter to them contained a copy of the N1 form I was going to submit. To be honest, £30 is neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things. It's the principal and the reasonably safe knowlegde that I am protected from it's costs should I make a hash of it - which I don't expect to. Already, the £30 has balooned to nearly £130 including court fees. Now it's going to have to waste some legal person's time in dealing with this too. It's utter lunacy but the banks appear to have dug a hole from which they are unable to crawl - there be dragons wherever they go from here and Abbey has taught this one to breath fire......

Same here. I issued a Small Claims action against Shat Vest yesterday for EXACTLY this. My charge was in Feb 06 (£20 + £10 so £30) and they haven't mentioned the £10 charge. But they kindly told me that the offer was for the difference between the £20 and it's new £12 charge plus interest etc was now £25.44. Effectively it's £8 plus interest etc over 14 months or so. So, using this calcuation, I reckon the £30 they charged me is now around £95. I'd have accepted the £30 in the first instance to save hassle. However, now they've got me rilled, it's costing them MUCH more. At what point are the big investors in these banks going to turn around and question this lunacy?

Well, due to exessive workload, Nat West has got away with a few extra days of not paying - but today, I found time to fill out a moneyclaim form and this bank has managed to incur a further £30 on top of my request for £95.40 - oh, plus £2.94 in S.69 interest! I am astonished that Nat West has taken this approach - if it had played ball, I'd have settled for the £30 it originally took. Since it takes no interest in trying to negotiate a solution (apart from a take-it-or-leave-it offer of £25.xx) then it's left me with no option. That seems like justification in itself for court action.

The deadline was Friday - Nat West ignored it. Actually, they did more than ignore it. I telephoned on two occasions during the week to invite them to settle to avoid the hassle and cost of court. I was told that the bank had issued it's final decision (ie to pay me only £25.44) and that was that - I could take it to the onbudsmen if I wanted. Nat West has made no attempt to justify the charges, despite having been asked to do so. This is an important point as it's made up of two charges £10 and £20 relating to the same item. Neither has been justified and Nat West is chosing to ignore the £10 anyway, making reference to the £20 only. That alone is reasonable justification for taking the matter to court. Anyway, completing a moneyclaim form now. Will keep you posted. Odd

That's an interesting point and unless BT can justify this, I fear that a court might find in the consumer's favour. It's also interesting that BT seems to be able to apply the charge when it likes in a billing cycle - it's not charged universally on X days of being late. Indeed, the late charge is in addition to the equally diaboloical £4.50 per quarter charge for those who aren't on Direct Debit. My feeling is that BT is sailing VERY close to the wind on this.

Sorry, this is a little off topic, but I think provides a reasonable account of the kind of customer service you might expect from this company: Carphone Warehouse leaves caller hanging on telephone | The Register and Carphone Warehouse 0870 [problem] exposed... - Google Video ------------------- Abbey - Won DPA Claim - Aug 06 and got bailiffs in to recover my court costs of just £30.00 Abbey - Won Charges Refund of £1050 - Nov 06 Egg - Recovered £220 due to Customer Services misinformation - Feb 2007 Nat West - Prelinimary Letter to recover on Credit Card charges £30.00 sent March 2006. £25.40 offered - rejected and the bank reckons that this is it's last word on the matter. We'll see if that's still the case when it reads my N1 form sent recently. It has until the 17th April to respond or the N1 will be submitted. Please check out my web site www.BankChargesScandal.co.uk for Research, Useful links and my story.

I am in receipt of a letter from BT (yesterday) that's in response to a complaint I made on the 19th March about BT's proposed penalty if you don't pay by direct debit. Has anyone else had this letter? I assume it's a standard one. What's most annoying is that Gillian Lewis couldn't even be bothered to sign the letter herself - it's PPed from someone else. What's worse than that is that it's a scanned signature! Jeeeeez, why can't they scan Ms Lewis' signature?

Thanks Got a link? That's priceless! A Fee. Hmm. This will be in relation to some bounced DDs last Feb then. The same DDs that I took Abbey to court on and won.

Yep, that's what I'm hoping. I spoke to Martin Hickman at the Independent about this. As suspected, he's not interested right now, but has asked that if I need to call the bailiffs in again to get in touch with him as he wants to be there this time.