Do you think it is worth trying to reclaim charges from Swift advances please? Or is it just a waste of effort? Any advice would be welcome, thank you

Thanks to those who have taken the time to read my long post - apologies again for it's length! I'm coming to the conclusion, though, that in the light of what Overdone has said regarding the company helping him against Swift having given up - that it's not worth pursuing them, so I don't think we'll bother. There don't seem to be many people claiming success against them??? Landy

Hi Everyone, I have been reading the various tales of CAGGERS exploits regarding Swift Advances with interest as we too have had dealings with these notorious swines and are about to wage war against them! In May 2006 we were experiencing some financial problems (mainly due to Lloyds TSB - another bunch of ****) and having tried to increase our mortgage with them to no avail, we took out a mortgage/loan for £58,553 with Swift which was arranged by Norton Finance. As we were doing major renovations to our house at the time which unavoidably ate up more money than we had envisaged, we soon fell behind with the repayments to Swift. In early 2007 they threatened us with repossession unless we coughed up £4000 which they said we owed. Unbeknown to me, my OH borrowed this money from his boss, but unfortunately he required it to be repaid within about 3 weeks. This was impossible, so although OH had managed to prevent us losing our home we were still in a terrible mess as to try to repay his boss OH stopped paying other bills etc. To cut a very long story short, OH had got himself into such a terrible state that he tried to take his own life by taking an overdose of painkillers, in which attempt he very fortunately did not succeed. With help from our very generous families we came out the other side of all this relatively unscathed (including our son who was in the middle of his A level exams at the time) and in November 2007 sold our millstone, I mean house and bought a smaller property with no mortgage. Both our Swift and Lloyds mortgages were paid off and despite Swift's hefty charges levied at the time of settlement, we thought no more of it - well tried to. Recently I stumbled across this wonderful forum and realised that after all the bank (and credit card co.s such as MBNA) had done to us it might be time to make a stand and try to get some redress for all they had put us through with the help of the incredibly knowledgeable people here! We have set the wheels in motion to reclaim our bank/credit card charges and PPI etc and now want to tackle Swift. In case anyone has managed to read this far without falling asleep, lol, here is some of our Swift related info - We took out the mortgage on 30th May 2006, for £58,553.00. This included £5323.00 for PPI - single premium - for 3 years only. The interest rate at the time was 14.52% annually, 1.21% monthly. The mortgage was for 25 years - 300 monthly payments of £728.23 (variable). The broker's fee was £2500.00. When we settled the mortgage in full on the sale of our house the settlement figure was £69,728.49. This was broken down into the following - Original loan amount £58,553.00 Interest charged £13,844.34 Less payments received £11,538.75 Subtotal £60,858.59 Charges incurred - Court fees £150.00 Legal fees £1,318.03 Post default collection charges £420.00 Solicitors charge to attend court hearing £82.25 Loan Co Admin charge - R/D cheque charge £165.00 Eastern Counselling Agency - Default Charge £360.00 Other fees and charges £906.00 Subtotal £64,259.87 Add: Redemption Administration Fee £250.00 Early settlement interest charged £5,218.62 Settlement figure £69,728.49 I should point out that although we were in receipt of a letter informing us that a hearing for repossession was to take place - we paid the full amount of arrears well before this date and sent a letter to Swift asking them to ackowledge that the case against us would now be dropped. I must admit that they did not respond, but we assumed (naively, no doubt) that it never took place as indeed there was no need for it to have done! We did also receive a couple of letters from the 'Eastern Counselling Agency', but at no time did we have any meetings with them nor did we miss any arranged meetings - as there were none! We did receive 2 or maybe 3 solicitors letters also. Therefore all the above charges for legal fees etc I cannot account for. We realise the ERC cannot be reclaimed, but are wondering just how much (if anything!!!) we should be reclaiming from the dreaded Swift? Very many apologies for the overly long post, thanks to all who read it and any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Regards, Landy

Hi fellow Swift-haters! I have been reading this thread with interest as we too are about to take on Swift for repayment of charges and PPI - it makes for very fascinating reading! I will post our story regarding Swift on a new thread later on, but for now Good Luck to all and don't give up! Regards, Landy

Thanks for that mmmarble - so there's hope for ours yet then! Good luck with your claim by the way

On 21st Jan we sent off 2 x CCAs and an Subject Access Request regarding 2 credit cards my husband has with MBNA. These are both currently in arrears by a couple of months (and are no longer being used, I hasten to add), although repayment has been a bit random since OH gave up a well paid job to get out of the rat-race and go self-employed as an internet based seller due to the money related stresses that caused him to take an overdose in 2007 - see my thread in the Welcome Forum for all the gory details. Yesterday (30th Jan) he received a letter regarding the first account stating that if he didn't make a payment of £80 within 6 days he would be defaulted and another two letters (one relating to each account and obviously in response to the CCA) stating - 'Thank you for your recent communication. We are currently investigating your complaint and will provide you with a full response by 18th February 2009'. I guess that's better than ignoring us totally, although 18th Feb sounds like slightly longer than the 12+2 days to me, lol! As for the default threat, I'm disinclined to pay them anything at the moment as it's because of idiots like them that OH got into his predicament before - although maybe it would shut them up for 5 minutes as yes, the dreaded phone calls have started again!

On 26th Jan we sent CCAs to Lloyds TSB for two personal loans - one mine and one my husband's. Royal Mail Track & Trace said these were received in Brighton on 27th Jan. I feel I definitely should have a case for mis-selling of PPI as I was a stay-at-home mum/housewife at the time and most certainly not employed in any way. OH could also have a case as he was led to believe he wouldn't get the loan unless he took out the PPI too. Today OH received 2 letters from Lloyds - one a letter stating he is behind in his payments (we know!) and the other being a statement of his loan account - quote 'a handy summary of the main points to do with your loan and loan protection insurance........a new style of yearly statement....introduced by the Consumer Credit Act'. These are dated 27th and 28th Jan respectively. I guess it is just coincidence that he has received these now, as nowehere in either is there any reference to our request for CCAs! Should be interesting to see what else (if anything) turns up within the next couple of weeks!

Hi Pompeyfaith! Apparently not - OH took it to the post office, but the way recorded delivery is done now there is no little sticker with your return address on and no-one asked him for his address. I suppose they assume that if it's sent recorded it's guaranteed to get to it's destination. I guess we'll just have to send another SAR with another £10 postal order and put it down to experience. Meanwhile someone somewhere will be £10 better off, lol! This time we'll write our return address on the envelope though! Cheers, Landy

Having finally sent off our CCA and Subject Access Request letters to Lloyds this week, it turns out that the Subject Access Request (sent by recorded delivery to the Chatham address given on here) has not been delivered due to the postcode being incorrect. According to the sticky I read, the postcode is ME4 4JF - but the Royal Mail website shows the actual postcode as ME4 4JA. Hopefully it will be returned to us in the next few days, otherwise it's another £10 postal order You would think that the postman would be able to work out where to deliver it to as the rest of the address was correct though! Anyway, for anyone else about to send anything to the Compliance Dept in Chatham, make sure you get the postcode right! P.S. At least our CCA has been received at Brighton though.

Thanks Pompeyfaith - will read your MBNA thread with interest! Sounds promising for us if what you say is true regarding their poor record of storing docs!!! Hope it's good news for you tomorrow when you call re your court case. Regards Landy

Pompeyfaith - many thanks for your offer to check the letter for me Have just checked the scanner and the lead is missing, so called Son at uni who said he has the lead there - typical, eh? OH is going to sort through huge box of spare leads later to see if we have another one. In the meantime I am reading up on the photobucket stuff and will start experimenting with it. Will get letter underway, but don't know if I'll be able to scan it tonight now! I have plenty of other stuff to get on with on here though including MBNA who are next on my hit list Regards Landy

Brilliant - many thanks Pompeyfaith! Have to pop out now, so will get the letter printed out on return and will get in post to them both tomorrow. Landy

Cheers guys!

Pompeyfaith if you're still around - I've just thought of something else - Do we need to put anything more specific in the SAR to Swift/Norton, particularly as the mortgage is paid off/account closed etc? Having left out the stuff about the loan accounts to Lloyds, I don't want to miss out anything important to Swift! Also, should we be CCAing them also? I guess so. Thanks for all your help!

Unfortunately we don't seem to have a copy of the agreement for the actual mortgage - only a scedule for the PPI and the settlement statement I am going to get the scanner out later - haven't used it since since we moved 14 months ago - and check whether it's working ok, as I can see I'm going to be using it a lot in the coming months! (Will also have to learn how to use photobucket!) Back to the mortgage info, at the moment all we have figure wise is what I listed in my first post above - which won't be any help I'm sure........ .........will just have to get the old SAR off and await a response! Thanks again, Landy

Thanks Pompeyfaith - I will get the letters off to Swift and Norton today and hopefully set the wheels in motion to get some of our money back! Have you any idea how to best work out the interest we would be entitled to reclaim on the PPI? I have looked at a couple of the calculators on here for that purpose, but am finding them a bit complicated - or maybe it's just me, lol! Thanks again, Landy

Hi Redvixen and Pompeyfaith, Thanks for all the info - the address we sent the Subject Access Request to was the Chatham one (Compliance dept). Unfortunately the letter (although a template from here) was less specific, obviously more like the one you used first, Redvixen, asking for 'a complete list of transactions and charges relating to my banking history', so I guess this will not not show up the loans then - doh! Do you guys think we should just wait to see what kind of response we get in the specified time or do we need to send another letter(s) relating specifically to the loans? Many thanks in advance for your help and sorry to be such a pain!

I am about to start trying to reclaim some of the charges and hopefully a portion of the PPI we had with Swift Advances and was wondering whether anyone here could offer any advice please? In November 2007 we paid off a mortgage to Swift Advances (which we took out in June 2006)on the sale of our house which also enabled us to pay our main mortgage with C&G, before buying a new house and becoming MORTGAGE FREE - YIPPEE As we had previously run into difficulties with the repayments to Swift (and had been threatened with repossession, court date set etc, but we paid arrears in full before it came to that), there were extra charges on our final settlement figure from Swift. The amount we borrowed was £58,553 which included £5323 for PPI (single premium I think). The settlement statement reads as follows - Original loan amount £58,553.00 Interest charged £13,844.34 Less payments received £11,858.75 Sub total £60,858.59 Charges incurred - Court fees £150.00 Legal fees £1318.03 Post default collection charges £420.00 Solicitors charge to attend court hearing £82.25 Loan co admin charge-r/d cheque charge £165.00 Eastern counselling agency-default charge£360.00 Other fees and charges £906.00 Sub total £64,259.00 Redemption administration fee £250.00 Early settlement interest charged £5218.62 Settlement figure £69,728.49 We expected that there would be an ERC and realise it is unlikely that we would get this back, and understand that they were probably justified in making charges for bounced direct debit/cheque payments, but believe it is wrong that they didn't refund us any of the PPI (???) and were not sure whether they were right to make all those charges regarding a court case for repossession which never took place? Also, we believe we may have a case for mis-selling of PPI as we were led to believe it was a condition of taking out the mortgage with Swift and were not told that as it was a Single Premium we would still be paying interest on the loan and the insurance. We don't seem to have a copy of the original mortgage agreement, although we do have a policy for the PPI, which seems to state that it was only for 3 years, not the 25 which the mortgage was for. We intend to send a Subject Access Request to Swift Advances, but as the account is closed and paid in full are they likely to just ignore the request? Also, as the mortgage was arranged by Norton Finance, is it a good idea to send a copy of the Subject Access Request to them and if so, to whom do we send the £10.00 postal order fee please? Any help and advice would be most welcome, thank you!!!

Hi again Pompeyfaith and thanks for taking the trouble to read my post! Yes, we did enclose the £1.00 postal orders for the two CCAs. We have Subject Access Request'd Lloyds for our joint account (with the obligatory £10.00 postal order fee) - will this definitely show up all the loan stuff then? I assumed it would only show stuff related to day to day running of our account, not loans specifically - sorry if I'm being thick here! I've read a lot of the sticky threads, but it's just a matter of there being soooooooooo much to take in at the mo. We sent all letters recorded and have kept the receipts - checked this morning and the CCAs had arrived, but the Subject Access Request had not yet. We've made duplicates of all letters and are keeping a diary of times sent, time-scales for responses etc. We are also chasing MBNA to see if their credit card agreements are enforceable/PPI was mis-sold (have sent CCAs and Subject Access Request last week) and will be attempting to get something back from Swift Advances (some hopes, I know!) for their extreme charges/PPI and will be posting messages on the relevant forums soon. In the mean time I will keep reading and trying to acquire as much knowledge/ammunition from here as I can manage. Thanks again, Landy

Thanks Pompeyfaith - all help gratefully accepted (and needed) We lived in Southsea (Portsmouth) until we moved to Essex in November 2007 so I guess we used to be near(ish) neighbours! Unfortunately as well as all our other problems, I am incredibly homesick for good old Pompey, although OH is from Southampton originally and supports Saints (say no more!) but please don't hold that against us, lol

This week we have rather belatedly sent off 2 CCA requests to Lloyds TSB regarding a pair of unsecured personal loans taken out by my husband (Nov 2004) and myself (Feb 2005) in an attempt to finally sort out our badly managed financial situation - see my introductory post in the Welcome forum. These loans are still running, but we can find no paperwork - credit agreements etc - relating to them. The thing is, having spent days reading and inwardly digesting as much info on this great site as possible for my feeble brain, we have sent off the CCAs but didn't mention anything about PPI in them. Mainly because I forgot, but particularly in my case, as I believed I didn't take out PPI because I was a stay-at-home mum/housewife at the time of application, yet a letter found by chance today states that I do indeed have PPI. Sounds like a possible case for mis-selling??? This means I don't have either the loan agreement numbers or any figures regarding how much PPI exactly we have been paying. Now, does anyone know if this will automatically be covered in the CCA info they (hopefully) send back, or if I should send a separate letter to Lloyds asking specifically about the PPI relating to these loans? I'm sorry to be a pain, but am going round in circles trying to work out if I'm doing it all correctly, lol!

Thanks Martin! Exactly, I will welcome any help offered by the experts on the forum and in charting my progress - or not, as the case may be, lol - if in turn my experiences are of any use to others, all the better!

Hi Everyone! This is my 1st post on this brilliant forum, although I have been a lurker for sometime. Please accept my apologies in advance for what I fear will be a rather lengthy opening post! After many years of burying our heads in the sand, my husband and I (well me really, lol!) have decided to finally get our act together and with the help of some of the incredibly knowledgeable people on here hope to reclaim a bit of the money the unscrupulous banks etc have misappropriated from us in the past! We first got into financial problems in about 2005 after we took out a 2nd mortgage (from C&G, same as our original one) on the large house we were renovating. As this 6 bed house was divided into 4 DSS flats when we acquired it a considerable sum was necessary to bring it up to habitable standard. Considering that only two years previously we had owned it outright with no mortgage, no credit cards and only two smallish bank loans to our name, we quickly descended into the mire of debt from which we are still struggling to free ourselves. At around the time of taking out the small top-up mortgage my OH also took out a couple of credit cards with MBNA followed by one with M&S Money and another with Sainsbury's Bank - all to help pay for the work necessary on our money pit! In no time at all we were borrowing from one card to pay off another and never seemed to have enough to pay all our direct debits. To compound this we were doing virtually all the house renovations ourselves - I was working on it more or less full time as a stay-at-home Mum of one and my OH was returning home from a stressful sales-management position to knock down/plaster walls etc into the early hours. As a result of our growing financial difficulties (a lot of which I must admit my OH kept hidden from me, not wishing to burden me as my Mum was in the early stages of Alzheimers), in June 2006 we applied for and took out another mortgage with Swift Advances for £50,000. (The reason for making this rather unsavoury choice of lender was obviously a result of my OH's ever declining credit history and also as C&G refused to lend us any more, despite the fact our house was valued at £625,000 and our current mortgage was only for £170,000.) Unfortunately, things had got so bad that after only a handful of payments our direct debits to Swift began to be returned unpaid and they wasted no time in saying they were taking us to court to repossess the property. At this point we were £4000 in arrears, but being a twit who didn't read the bank statenents (nor open nasty-looking letters for that matter!), I was unaware of this to begin with. When my OH finally did let on about the situation (early in 2007) we had already discussed selling the house - which was now finished and very obviously far too large for us (particularly as our son was about to take his A levels and would hopefully be heading off to uni in the Autumn) - so we had put it on the market at the price suggested by our agent - £695,000. After some soul-searching my husband approached his boss, who very generously offered to lend us the £4000 to stop the court proceedings. What my OH didn't tell me was that his boss expected repayment within 3 weeks - something we had no chance of doing. It all came to a terrible climax on Mothers' Day 2007 (of all days!). Our son, who had recently passed his driving test a couple of months after his 17th Birthday was taking us out in his car (to look at a house as it happens), when he was stopped by the police for having no insurance. Now we had always (or so both I and our son thought) made sure that important things like car insurance were paid, but it turns out the direct debits had been bounced so the insurers had stopped the policy. My OH was deeply embarrassed and humiliated that he had got our son into trouble (the case did proceed against him and was due to be heard in court in the middle of his A level exams - of all times - but thanks to our wonderful family solicitor, the case was dropped due to mitigating circumstances just days before the hearing) and we returned home with him in a state of shock. What followed next was worse - having gone outside 'to look for the missing insurance documentation in the car' my OH vanished and to cut an already too long story short, was found the next day in the woods, having taken an overdose............. Very luckily for all of us he was found in time and despite having taken a huge amount of pills, he suffered no ill-effects and made a full (physical) recovery. Thanks to our generous families we were able to pay back OH's boss as well as paying off some off the most pressing credit cards etc. In the Autumn of 2007 we finally sold our house (for the significantly lower sum of £585,000) and in November 2007 relocated to a different part of the country and a much smaller property with no mortgage! However, as a result of Swift charging us over the odds for Early Redemption as well as their many other charges, such as PPI, court fees etc, we were left with much less cash than we had expected. We therefore were unable to clear all our debts (personal unsecured loans with Lloyds TSB etc). Due to the stress my OH had suffered over the past year or so we decided when relocating that he would not get a new job, but that he would set up a small internet-based business once we were fully settled and he felt up to it. In July 2008 he duly set up his business, but due to the 'credit-crunch'/recession, this hasn't taken off in the way we had hoped. Because of this we have again fallen into arrears with our remaining repayments - 2 MBNA credit cards (OH) and one personal loan each with Lloyds TSB. This January I decided to finally take the bull by the horns and have a jolly good (well, not so GOOD actually) read of all our banking history - statements, agreements etc. Typically though, as you would expect I suppose in our situation, a lot is missing - I think OH went on a shredding spree when he was at his lowest point. This forum has been invaluable in pointing me in the right direction for how to trace all the missing paperwork - I have accessed all our missing bank statements from the last 6 years oline and have in the last week started sending off SARs and CCAs using the templates to be found here and for that I am truly grateful!!! I will start separate posts on the relevant forums concerning my plans (well, hopes, lol) to regain some of our lost cash (unlawful bank charges, PPI sold to me whilst I was not employed, not having had the Single Premium/extra interest explained to us by Swift etc) and would again be most grateful for any help offered! Thanks so much to anyone who has had the stamina to read this tome!!! Landy