Just a bit of an update on this after a few months! Following the complaint to the FOS Amex apologised for the lack of assistance given to my friend and have paid compensation for the distress called. My friend is now working once more. Amex passed the details on to RMA - who were told that FOS were dealing with things and things were on hold pending their review. RMA sent out two standard letters (ignoring my friend's response) then gave up. Amex now seem to have passed on the details to another agency (I've not seen the correspondence and she couldn't remember which one when I spoke to her earlier) They somehow found out where she was working and emailed a central email address at her employers asking that she contact them as soon as possible. A bit flustered at receiving the forwarded email she called them (yes I know). However she's a strong cookie now - she wouldn't do the security thing and told them the call was a courtesy call to advise them that she would not deal with this by any other method than by post. I believe that the latest OFT guidelines prohibit emailing someone's employer - so once we've checked it out another formal complaint will go in. If they keep having to compensate her for breaching guidelines this way they'll end up owing her!

Just to clarify the above - she did a CCA request to Newmans in early April. After they failed to respond she got a statement from Amex showing the £1 fee had been credited to her account - despite the usual "this is not to be applied to my account" clause in the letter. She complained to Amex who sent the agreement - which looks enforceable - and the above response to the fact that Newmans had failed to pass on the CCA request and misapplied her £1.

Oh it gets better and better! She complained to Amex about the fact that Newmans didn't pass on the CCA request. This - I kid you not - is a direct quote from Amex's response to the complaint: ....your request for a CCA should have been made directly through us. Newman & Co are not legally obliged to forward such a request though out of courtesy I would have expected them to do so. So there you have it - "never mind the law it doesn't apply to us!"

Here's something. Amex have sent what they consider to be a CCA. It consisted of the application form plus terms and conditions. The application form is dated September 2000 when she took out the card. The terms & conditions are the standard ones - dated 2009!!

Thanks for the blank lines! Well I'm sort of doing a bit of a rescue job here - she's had a rough time of late over the past few years. She has split up with her other half, been made redundant and suffered from depression. She owes various amounts on credit cards which she fell behind on and made the classic mistake of ignoring all correspondence. I haven't got full details with me - it's all at her place and we don't exactly live close together so I tend to catch up properly every few weeks when I visti the frozen north! I'm well aware that they have no entitlement to see an I&E statement. However, on the other cards the lenders have been sympathetic and based on the I&E sent have accepted the instalment arrangement which is fair and reasonable. My problem is that (in retrospect naiively on my part) we presumed that because three other creditors saw sense maybe Amex/Newmans would as well. There would be no problem if they accepted the instalment arrangement (in fact she's putting away the amounts she would pay Amex if they'd play ball so as to get used to living on that amount each month). There's lots of stuff about Newmans being agressive - but it seems that they may have crossed a line here.

Apologies for all that appearing in one paragraph - I didn't type it like that honest!

I'm helping out a friend who is at her wits' end and seems to be on the same Newmans/Amex going round in circles treadmill as others here. So far so similar and I'm going through all the processes with her and playing it by the book. Newman & Co seem to have a rather cavalier attitude to the OFT gidelines - they've ignored reasonable requests to pay by instalments, demanded full repayment (which she hasn't got obviously) and threatened to send field agents around all of which seem to me to be fairly clear breaches. A complaint to Amex simply said that they didn't believe that any of the actions breached the OFT guidelines so I'm helping her to go to the FOS with this. However, a worrying new development is that Newman & Co appear to be making false statements to Amex in defence of their position. In particular they have denied that my friend has ever sent them details of her income & expenditure - something that Amex has accepted as gospel. Now I know this not to be the case as I spent a whole night going through her I&E with her and drafting the accompanying letter. I also posted the damn thing for her (she has mental health issues which mean that going outside the front door is often a major effort) and they responded to the letter so I know it was posted and I know it was received!Amex's only comment on the matter was to say that "Newman & Co have confirmed that no financial statement was received". This to me seems to move a little beyond breaching guidelines since on the face of it it appears that false statements are deliberately being made. Any ideas as to how she should progress this?

There's been a further update on this one. Somewhere somebody has failed to push a button and some more bailiffs visited C's place to collect the difference between what she paid and what they said they'd paid. It's now happened three times since they originally apologised. It's caused her no end of problems in that she ended up having a major argument with her other half and they've split up. I've filled out the relevant form of complaint to the county court and written letters to both the company and the Borough concerned and, at least on the phone, the company has promised no further action. I think she has a case for some form of redress over this. However, having little experience in this area I wouldn't have a clue as to how much, if anything the court would be likely to award. Any suggestions?

C has written a letter to JBW setting out precisely what happened and requesting full details of what her account shows. I'm supposed to be going over there this evening to have a look before she sends it on and I'll make sure whichever local authority iissued the original ticket is copied in on everything just so she doesn't get clobbered again. I guess that a "rogue employee" could happen to anyone!

Thanks for all the advice - I thought you might like to know how this has ended up. C faxed a copy of the receipt to JBW who - and fair play to them - have now apologised unreservedly. She has been credited with the original amount she paid over and they will be writing to her with full details of her account and full written confirmation that all is now ok. JBW have told C that the original bailiff has been arrested and I don't want to go into too much detail but the advice C wants to give everyone is that if you pay a bailiff cash and he provides a hand-written receipt, make sure that your copy and the copy he takes with him match. Above all, if he has some thick paper or card between the two copies alarm bells ought to start ringing! Oh and I scored brownie points for being the supportive male as well!

Just to clarify a few points: The suggestion that the bailiff collected the money but failed to pay it in came from JBW themselves. As far as C was concerned it might have just been some admin mess-up. C called them to sort things out and was told that they had a record of her having given money to the bailiff but they could not trace it having been received by JBW. It is also significant that the second bailiff mentioned that the first was "no longer with the company" and suggested there had been other problems with his work. My whole problem with this is not whether or not JBW's employee misappropriated funds paid to him (if he did that's their problem) but the fact that JBW had sufficient information to suggest payment had been made but still clamped the car and would still have been willing to try to enforce the debt even though it had been paid. Funny I don't get this annoyed when people try to stitch me up but when someone tries to mess about with my chums it's a different mtter!

Thanks for that K1mmie. I suspect she will just want to forget about the whole thing - it's just me that hates seeing people turned over!

Well yes and no - if the bailiff company had kept their own proper records and checked they would surely have noticed that whilst the original bailiff had phoned in and said he'd collected the money the cash hadn't been paid in. She'd paid the money and wasted a day not because of where she kept the receipt but because the bailiff company made a second and unwarranted effort to collect money that was not due. And the problem wasn't that the receipt wasn't safe - it was too safe! I've spent hours waiting on her doorstep over the years while she looks for stuff she put "in a safe place" before we go out!

A friend of mine has been in tears over the actions of JBW. She incurred a local authority parking fine (or several) and did nothing about it. Eventually JBW got involved and called on her adding the usual fees and levies. She ended up paying the bailiff £450 in cash.Team edit-For clarification there remains no evidence that the management of JBW were aware of this,nor did they sanction or have knowledge of it at this time. So far so straightforwrd. Except about two months later another JBW bailiff turned up demanding over £500, clamping her car in the process. She pointed out she had paid it (same reference no. and everything) but couldn't find the receipt at that time. The bailiff returned to the office then returned to her home saying that, whilst they had a record of the earlier bailiff calling in to say he had visited her to collect the debt, he had now left the employ of JBW and they had no record of him having paid the money in. The second bailiff decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, removed the clamp and issued a further notice giving her 7 days to come up with a receipt. Team edit-again there is no evidence that JBW had knowledge of the alleged earlier payments being made,not sanctioned the alleged actions. Thankfully - and after a whole wasted day turning her house upside-down - she managed to locate the receipt and a scanned copy is on its way to JBW with an appropriate letter of complaint. (She isn't letting the original out of her sight!) It seems clear that the first bailiff hs simply pocketed the money from his call and not paid it in. My view is that she shouldn't be held responsible for theft on the part of JBW's employee and that the burden of proof ought to lie with JBW to show that she didn't pay the money rather than the other way round. (Though the point is academic since she found the receipt). Also the actions of JBW in all this wasted a whole day, her car was clamped for several hours and she tells me that she spent most of the day crying her eyes out and was even physiclly sick with worry at one point. I've suggested she might have a case to seek some sort of compensation since their failures clearly caused her considerble distress - or am I just being wildly optimistic?