Notice of Hearing of Application In the xxxxxxx County Court Claim No. xxxxxxxx Claimant: jax1964 Defendant: Citi Cards Citifinancial Europe Plc Date: 05 October 2006 The hearing of the defendant's application for An Order (see copy attached) will take place at 10:15 on the 18 October 2006 at xxxxxxx County Court. The Application Notice In the Northampton County Court Claim No. xxxxxxxx Claimant: Jax1964 Defendent: Citifinancial Europe Plc Date: 11/09/2006 1. How do you wish to have your application dealt with a) at a hearing b) at a telephone conference (this one is ticked) 2. Give a time estimate for the hearing/conference ans - 30 minutes 3. Is this agreed by all parties? No 4. Give dates of any trial period or fixed trial date (left blank) 5. Level of judge. ans - District Judge 6. Parties to be served ans - claimant Part A We Citifinancail Europe Plc (the defendant) intend to apply for an order (a draft of which is attached) that the judgement in this matter entered on 14th August be set aside because the defendant was unaware of the claim and has had no opportunity to defend itself. The Defendant believes it has a defence to the claim and that such a defence has a real prospect of success. Part B We wish to rely on: Evidence in part C in support of my application (ticked) Signed Brian Smith Position held: In house lawyer Address: 1 Exchange Quay, Salford, Merseyside, M5 3EN Tel: 07618696146 Fee paid £65.00 chq Part C We wish to reply on the following evidence in support of this application: The defendant was unaware of the claim and only received the claim form after judgement was entered. The defendant believes the claim is misguided and will be relying on the case of Jobson v Johnson (1989). Which in support of its contention that the right to claim damages against the claimant for his admitted breaches of its contract survives any finding of the court that the clause was a penalty. The defendant has given the claimant several opportunities to withdraw judgement but has so far failed to do so. The defendant has therefore applied at he earliest opportunity. The applicant believes that the facts stated in Part C are true Signed Brian Smith Position held: In house solicitor

Rec'd notice of hearing from the court, with regards to judgement being set aside. 10:15 on 18 Oct. Do both parties have to turn up. Will Brian Smith really be going to Hitchin County Court from salford

This is long winded so please bear with me. I sent my Prelim ltr on 20 june 06 and received the standard reply, dated 22 June 06,that everyone else appears to be getting. I sent my ltr b4 act on 28 June 06 to which I received no reply. On 19 July 06 I sent a further ltr advising that my claim had increased due to further charges having been imposed. Again there was no reply so I issued MCOL on 20 July 06. I received a ltr dated 25 July 06 from Citi solicitor Brian Smith stating in with the usual blah blah: "In line with the OFT statement, I have advised my client that, in your case, as a current cardholder who has been charged 13 late fees of 25.00 and 2 of £15.00 and 3 overlimit fees of £25.00 and 1 of £20.00 which is a total of 445.00, it would be appropiate to write off the difference between our charges of £25.00 and the OFT's recommended level of 12.00. Having reviewed your account, I have therefore recommended that the sum of £217.00 be written off, reflecting the difference between £445.00 and £228.00 had the charges been £12.00. Accordingly your account has been reduced by that amount." I replied with a letter on 27 July 06 sayiny: "Thank you for your letter dated 25 July 2006 regarding the default charges applied on my account. I am please that you have responded in principle to the request but was unable to refund the full amount. As you are aware the OFT have stated that charges of this nature are not unreasonable for breaches of account conditions but should only be set at an amount to cover any costs incurred. The £12.00 figure suggested by the OFT should be a maximum but is not necessarily a fair amount. I should be interested to see a breakdown of the costs incurred by Citifinancial Europe plc in respect of overlimit, late payment and returned payment fees and can demonstrate that they are a true reflection of their losses. As I am sure you are now aware, I issued a Court Claim against CitiFinancial Europe PLC on 20 July 2006 and am, therefore, only prepared to accept the full amount as stated on the claim form which at present amounts to, inclusive of interest and court fee, £742.30. I require payment by cheque made payable to myself and once the funds have been cleared by my bank, I will instruct the Court that the matter has been resolved and no further action will take place. I look forward to your reply. Yours faithfully," I received a reply dated 31 July 06 from Brian Smith: Dear Sir, re: Your claim I write further to your letter dated 27 July. Unfortunately, I am unable to comply with your request for full reimbursement of all your default charges as to do so would necessarily imply that you can breach your agreement with my client at will and with impunity, which I'm sure would will agree, was not the intention of either party. I have yet to receive a copy of your claim against Citi. My client will defend your action in due course and will provide the court with the details of its charging structure at the hearing. Yours faithfully Brian Smith Solicitor " On 12 August 2006 requested judgement (this is where I may have made an error) When completing the request for judgement I did not state that any money had been refunded. I was of the impression, after reading the reply from Brian Smith, that Citi would not comply with my request and therefore the offer of a refund would not be tendered. I had not received any statement at this point in time to see whether the amount had been credited or not. (...cont) I received a reply from Brian Smith dated 30 August 06 " I act on behalf of Citifinancial Europe and write further to your claim. I note that you obtained judgement in default of defence on 14 August, this on a claim, issued on 20 July, for £742.30 comprising a principle sum of £405 plus interest & costs. However, as you are well aware, your account was refunded the sum of £217 on 24 July and the account was only ever charged £445 in default fees not the £495 alledged. As you are or ought to be aware, if judgement is obtained when the Defendant did not receive the particulars, as I informed you on the 31 July 06 then you are obliged to set aside judgement and cannot enforce the same Civil Procedure Rules Part 13.5(2) a copy of which I enclose for your attention. I have now received your claim and I also note that you have obtained judgement for an incorrect sum. If you atempt to enforce that judgement rather than setting it aside voluntarily, I shall apply to the court to have the case thrown out for abuse of process and shall refer to the facts above. You are well aware that your case is based on inflated figures and the judgement is also above what you would have been entitled to even on the best case since a sum has already been tendered to you. I expect to receive notice of your applicatio to be set aside by return. Yours faithfully Brian Smith Solicitor. " I replied on 31 August 06 as follows: I refer to your letter dated 30 August 2006 and should like to confirm that the charges of £495.00 taken from my account are as follows: A list of fees from spreadsheet was enclosed. The interest is calculated daily at 0.00022%, with £177.14 being the amount due as of today's date and increasing at a rate of 15p per day. As you can see there was 1 late charge of £15.00 and 13 of £25.00, 2 over limit charges of £15.00 and 3 of £25.00, and 2 returned payment fees of £25.00. There was a late fee of £20.00 debited on 15 March 2002 and another for £25.00 debited on 17 May 2005 which were refunded the following month so have not been added to my calculation. I have looked over my statements again and can confirm these figures are correct up to and including my June 2006 statement. My claim was submitted to the court before you made the offer to transfer £217.00 to my account, therefore my case was not based on inflated figures. I was not aware that a sum had been tendered to me when judgement was entered as I had written to you, reference my letter dated 27 July 2006, stating that I was only prepared to accept the full amount as settlement and therefore assumed, after reading your letter dated 31 July 2006, that the offer had been withdrawn. Your letter of 31 July 2006 stated that you had not received a copy of my claim against Citi, there was no mention that Citi had not received it, in fact you stated that Citi will defend in due course, which led me to believe that they just hadn't passed it onto you. I did not, therefore, see the need to set aside judgement. You state that Citi are prepared to provide details of their charging structure at a court hearing, should this demonstrate that they are a true reflection of their losses, then it would have saved a lot of time to you, me and the court if they had provided me with the information when requested on 19 July 2006 and again on 27 July 2006. Having now received my August statement dated 17 August 2006 I can see an amount of £217.00 has been refunded and I shall, therefore, be willing to accept this as a partial payment of the amount claimed. The amount of settlement is now £528.75 which is the amount claimed on the 12 August 2006 when a request for judgement was made, inclusive of interest and Court costs and minus the partial payment received As previously specified, I require payment by cheque made payable to myself and once the funds have been cleared by my bank, I will instruct the Court that the matter has been resolved and no further action will take place. I look forward to your reply. Yours faithfully, Reply dated 4 September 06 from Brian Smith was: "I write further to your letter of 31 August. I note the points made in your letter but these do not change the fact that you obtained judgenment in default of defence on 14 August on a claim where you had received notice that the claim had not been received and where a refund was being made and such a refund was made prior to your obtaining judgement. I also do not accept there was any difficulty in understanding the import of my letter of 24 July. I told you that the refund had taken place. If you claimed then my client would defend. In what possible way can that be construed into your suggested withdrawal of an offer. No offer was made, my client unilaterally refunded these monies. Furthermore, I do not accept my letter to you was ambiguous in any way. The fact is that it must have been obvious to a reasonable observer that I was acting in my capasity as solicitor for my client and that when I said I had not received your claim I did not mean that "it had come into the business but had yet to be received by myself" as you appear to suggest. That interpretation is simply fanciful. With the greatest of respect, your claim for the whole amount of all charges levied is misguided. Your letter suggests you believe that no charge is justifiable. The OFT report which started all these claims accepts that banks have the right to levy charges. It also accepts, based on submissions made by the banks as to their actual costs, that charges can be levied up to £12 My client has adopted that report's recommendations and reduced its charges. That figure is actually lower than my client's estimate of the costs incurred in servicing accounts in default such as yours was but it has agreed to be bound by that figure. For the record, Egg charges more because it's business case was accepted by the OFT as truly exceptional. I also note that in your cae my client has refunded a sum which, in effect, you have not paid, given that your account has an outstanding balance of £xxxxx on it. That sum you owe is far and away in excess of the default fees levied. Had you paid off the entire balance then perhaps you claim would have more merit. Given all of the above, my client shall not being paying you any more money and will certainly defend this claim if you attempt to enforce the judgement you obtained in default of a claim I would certainly defend to its conclusion given that I can convincingly demonstrate to a court that you have never paid the monies you claim and therefore can be no "debt" to claim against. As I wrote in my last letter, I expect to receive notice of your application to set aside by return. Yours faithfully, Brian Smith Solicitor My reply dated 7 September 06 was as follows: Thank you for your letter dated 4 September 2006. I am not prepared to set aside the judgement obtained, as I was unaware that the monies had been refunded until I had received my statement dated 17 August 2006. In order to prevent further action the balance of the claim should now be paid. The refund to which you refer does not represent the monies claimed. I can confirm that, no letter dated 24 July 2006 has ever been received and there was no mention in a letter from myself that you were being ambiguous in any way and can only assume you are confusing files from different claimants. Your comments regarding receiving the claim are not understood; you either did or did not receive the claim. I am not, or could never be aware if other members of staff had not passed the claim onto you. My claim is not at all misguided. The charges are unfair. If the figure of up to £12.00 is not correct then why has Citicards accepted it for future charges? Their financial advisors/ actuaries are obviously misguiding them. Your comments regarding not paying the charges are not understood. Surely if I wanted to close the account then I would pay the charges added to the account. I am, however, prepared to accept the balance of the claim as a credit to the account. I should be obliged to receive the breakdown of the £12.00 costs the bank suffers as a loss, as this is information they must have. I expect this by return of post. I await this information and confirmation of the further refund. I look forward to your reply. Yours faithfully, .........(cont in next post) ....cont The final letter Ihave recieced from Brian Smith was dated 12 Sept 06: I write further to your letter of 7 September. With respect, I cannot agree with you regarding when you knew of the refund. The refund was effected on 24 July and you were informed of the same by letter dated the 25th. you acknowledged the refund in your letter of 27th July. You are therefore at best, simply being disingenuous when you state there was no letter dated 24 July received. What matters is that the refund was notified to you by letter prior to you obtaining judgement. On this ground alone your judgement is defective. The refund does not reflect the monies claimed for the simple reason that you are not entitled to the same. I have explained this to you. You state the charges are unfair and parrot the line adopted by the OFT and other claimants without showing any understanding of the law or the commercial position of the Banks. The charges are not simply unfair because you or even the OFT states they are but this is an old arguement. Your account was so badly mishandled that it was sold, at a loss, by my client. Despite that, you have received the benefit of a refund on monies you never even paid thereby reducing your indebtedness to the third party debt purchaser. You seem unwilling or incapable of understanding these basic points. Once again, and for the avoidance of any doubt, my client shall not being paying you any more money. I have today applied to have your judgement set aside since you appear so reluctant to comply with the laws that you so casually invoke when it suits you. Yours faithfully, Brian Smith Solicitor I called Citi yesterday to ask if my account had ever been sold and they said it hadn't and was still active with them. Notice of transfer of proceedings to another county court and an application to have judgement set aside arrived this morning. Reasons given to have judgement set aside are: the defendant was unaware of the claim and has had no opportunity to defend itself. The defendant believes it has a defence to the claim and that such defence has a real prospect of success. I wish to rely on the following evidence in support of this application: The defendant was unaware of the claim and only received the claim form after judgement was entered. The defendant believes the claim is misguided and will be relying on the case of Jobson (? can't read writing very well here) v Johnson (1989). ??? in support of its contention that the right to claim damages against the claimant for his admitted breaches of its contract survives any finding of the court that the clause was a penalty. The defendant has given the claimant several opportunities to withdraw judgement but has so far failed to do so. The defendant has therefore applied at he earliest opportunity. Any advice on how of whether I should reply to this last letter would be very much appreciated. Any advice would be appreciated Sorry to bump this - but has anyone got any advice please.

Money may possibly have been credited to account now but haven't had statement confirming it yet. Just applied for internet banking, so hopefully will be able to check it in the next couple of days. According to Marbles/HSBC solicitors it has been paid now and they have advised the court, who have sent me a form to complete asking if I wish to proceed with the claim.

Thank you and same to you.

Thank you Glenn UK for your views. I must admit I was thinking along the same lines as you.

Have completed survey and will donate when the money is received. Thanks to everyone who has given advise on this site, I have managed to to have my money returned without having to ask for too much individual help as I have found almost everything I needed to know by reading advise on other threads. So thanks again to you all and this wonderful site. Can you please add SETTLED IN FULL at the end of the title to this thread.

Thanks Surreyscouse

After sending my letter to MBNA with the paragraph: 'I now understand that the scale of fees, which you have been applying to my account in relation to late fees and overlimit charges, are unlawful at Common Law, Statute and recent consumer regulations. Should you disagree, I shall require you to 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.' I received the standard reply offering me a goodwill gesture but with the added paragraph: 'The way in which we calculate our default fees is confidential & contains business sensitive information, which could not be disclosed to the public domain. We are therefore unable to comply with your request.' I am drafting a reply declining their offer, but would like to add something in reply to their above paragraph, if this went to court would they not have to show their calculations? Any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks. Have filled in survey and will donate as soon as I receive the money. Thanks again for a fabulous site and all the help given.

Rec'd an offer from DG Solicitors yesterday for the full amount. Will accept today. I will wait until I receive the amount b4 cancelling the court claim. Another one bites the dust!!!!.

I am attemping to claim back, from Lloyds TSB, bank charges from my closed Business account. After sending my prelim ltr I rec'd no reply. I then sent my Ltr B4 Act reworded slightly to inform them I had received no reply from my 1st letter. In with the reply I got they included a copy of the letter they (apparantly) sent in reply to my prelim. ltr. The copy shows that they had addressed the 1st reply to my old business address - rather than the address at the top of my letter - but had changed the postcode to that of my current address. Surely this is underhand, I don't think the post office would have known where to deliver it, as the address for delivery was for one town whilst the postcode was for another town. I appreciate that the address they held, on their system, for the closed account was out of date but they managed to retrieve the current postcode off my letter so why not the current address. Their 2nd letter managed to have the correct address & postcode. The same thing happened on my husbands closed Business account he held with Lloyds - old address current postcode. Is there anything I can do about this? At the end of the day they are sending confidential information to the wrong address. (If it ever got there or indeed they ever sent it). Also had a letter from Lloyds solicitor Martineau Johnson asking 1. if my claim was made on behalf of 'company name' Limited or an incorporated organisation, company name (without Ltd)?. 2. To provide a breakdown of my claim (which I can do as I have spreadsheet with calculations already done.) Can anyone help me with point 1. I have a feeling it will be something to do with the fact that I didn't put Ltd after the company name when I put in my claim and they want to get it struck out. Was hoping if that is the case then I can come back with some legality about sending letters to wrong address which may force them to settle claim. Any advice would be gratefully appreciated.

I sent my DPA ltr on 30 May 2006 and received all the info requested on 8 June 2006, very good service, this is a good start I thought. I wrote my prelim ltr on 13 June 2006 and by the 3 July I had received no reply so sent my ltr B4 Act ltr. As of today (24 July) I have still heard nothing from them. This morning I started my MCOL. Lets see if they reply to that!!

Thank you cumbria123. I will go for it then.

Can anyone help me with this?

I am trying to claim charges incurred on my Limited Company Business account, they are in excess of £10,000. The letter I received from Natwest says: 'We are concerned that the OFT has publicly called into question the setting of charges applied to other products, including current accounts. The OFT has restricted its investigation to credit cards & made no attempt to consult with RBS or the industry in relation to other, entirely different products. In addition, the OFT has expressly stated the business accounts fall outwith the scope of its review, as they operate under different terms & conditions from personal accounts.' Can anyone advise me - does this affect me trying to claim back my charges from a business account. Many thanks

Hi all, Received a letter from DG Solicitors, on behalf of HSBC - Marbles, this morning stating HSBC are prepared to offer me the full amount. HSBC didn't even wait the 14 days from me submitting my claim. RESULT ...

Just an up-date. Submitted my on-line claim against Marbles on 10 July. Waiting to see if they respond. Please can the title be changed to 'Claim against Marbles' Thanks

Thanks for the help Bookworm

Hi to everyone What a wonderful site this is! It has brought me confidence. This is my first post.and I just wanted to say hello to everyone and to give details of how my claims are progressing. Marbles: Sent DPA ltr 30 May2006 - received reply plus copy statements on 3 June 2006. Sent Prelim. ltr 5 June 2006 claiming refund of £530 - received standard reply 14 June 2006 Sent Ltr before Action 19 June 2006 - Received reply and offer of goodwill payment of £250.00 on 22 june 2006 Am replying today refusing offer and giving them 14 days to refund or I shall proceed with legal action. Keeping my fingers crossed. I am also claiming refunds from Citibank, Natwest, Abbey & Beneficial. Citibank - Perlim ltr sent 20 June 2006. Reply received 23 June 2006 Natwest - Prelim ltr sent 20 june 2006. Reply received 26 June 2006 Beneficial - Prelim ltr sent 13 June. No reply yet Natwest Cr. Card - Prelim ltr sent 30 May 2006. Reply received 17 June 2006. Ltr before Action sent 23 June 2006. Awaiting reply. Abbey - DPA sent 30 May. Reply received but still awaiting statements.