Hello, I bought a hot air hair styler from Argos a few days ago. When I tried to use it, it was awkward to use and didn't curl my hair as it was supposed to to ( it said that the large roller could be used to produce curls at the ends of the locks of hair, but it didn't curl my hair). Also the attachments were difficult to change( you are supposed to push the attachment in, then twist it to secure it, but this was very difficult) .All in all, I was disappointed with the styler, as it didn't do what I thought it would do(i.e. curl the ends of my hair). In fact, none of the attachments worked well and it left me wondering if anyone else was satisfied with it. I tried it again the next day, just to satisfy myself that it wasn't just me having a bad day, but again found that the hair styler was difficult to use and mostly ineffective. I decided to take it back. I thought I would say that I had made a mistake and bought the wrong hair styler, rather than tell the staff at Argos that I was disappointed with it, as I thought that they would accept that reason more readily. However, they refused to give me my money back because I had removed the 'hygiene seal' ( the plastic bag that contained all the different parts of the hair styler). They told me that as it had been opened, they could not resell that item. It did say on the bag 'do not remove unless you intend to keep the item', but I didn't notice that. I argued saying that how was anyone to know what the hair styler was like without opening the 'hygiene seal', but they told me that I could have had a look at the product out of the packaging if I had asked to do so before I bought it. I didn't know that either, but even if I had, I probably wouldn't have asked to see the styler, because I assumed it would work effectively. In the instruction booklet, it says 'remove all of the packaging and keep it safe until you are satisfied with your product'. To me that implies that if you are not satisfied with your product, you can pack it up again and take it back. So I now have a hair styler that I don't want and am £22.99 worse off. Does anyone know any way I can get my money back?

There have been no developments since my last post. I have heard nothing from Lloyds TSB re my last offer to settle which was 18th October. We have not replied to Lloyds TSB's offer to settle by waiving their costs if we drop our claim as we don't intend to drop it at the moment. They never sent any pre- hearing documents( I can't think why as for all they knew we were going to court) and we did not pay the hearing fee. As I said before, we are well out of pocket and cannot afford anymore money to pay for court proceedings which, from past experience, will turn out to be an expensive disappointment. We await LloydsTSB's charges department's investigation into our extra overdraft charges(from PPI) claim and hope for the best. We can still ask FOS to act on our behalf if we feel it is necessary. Anyway, I'm off to Oz for two months. Thanks to all who have been supportive, I will update in due course.

The judge will strike it out when the hearing fee is not received by the cut off date, which is six days from now.

I really don't know what to do when a judge is told that the claimant is trying to mediate by writing to the defendant with an offer and is in the process of mediating with another claims department of Lloyds TSB and he still says 'no' to an adjournment. I would have thought it made perfect sense to try to settle this out of court and not have a hearing at all if we can avoid it. Well, there won't be a hearing anyway, because we simply don't have the money (£325) just to request a stay. I am wondering what Lloyds TSB are doing about it, as we should have received copies of their hearing documents by now according to the judge's directions (14 days before the hearing)and we haven't received anything. They can't know that we have been requesting an adjournment, although they must have been informed of the earlier hearing date(it's the 8th by the way).So if they think that the hearing is taking place on the 8th November, why haven't we received anything? Also, we haven't had a reply from them to our offer to settle either, so goodness knows what's going on.

Well, the court has refused an adjournment, but have stated that we can apply to have the order set aside, varied or stayed as long as we apply within seven days of receipt of the order and pay the appropriate fee. You were right, they won't do anything without a fee. I thought this would happen, but had already decided I wasn't going to waste any more of my dwindling resources on court fees. So that's that. Now all that is left is the result of the Lloyds TSB charges department investigation and the possible services of FOS.

We will wait to see what the court says about the adjournment and then decide what to do next. I do know that we should have applied for an adjournment on form N244 but have run out of money.

This is for the final hearing, even though we did ask for the date to be put back until next year when we are both back in the country, March/April time. We have delivered another letter to the court today, saying that we are now in mediation with Lloyds TSB and as this may take some time, request that the hearing(if indeed we still need one), be put back until next March/April time, as per our original request. Apart from anything else, there is not enough time before the 8th November, to copy all the documentation and deliver it to the court and the defendant within the 14 day period as directed by Judge XXXX. We are not with the courts mediation service, but would like to be. Being litigants in person has meant that we have made many wrong decisions and not taken advantage of the court mediation service when the opportunity arose on the allocation questionnaire. Lloyds TSB said 'yes' to mediation on their questionnaire, so I don't know why the judge didn't order that we try to come to an agreement that way. We are already out of pocket with this claim and can only see future costs mounting. The court now want another £325 for the hearing but we don't want to throw good money after bad. We have been ruled against twice now and have lost confidence in the legal system. We received a refund of the extra £180 for the allocation questionnaire and are grateful for that. We are putting our hopes in FOS and waiting for that outcome before we make a decision about whether or not to finally go to court.

The court rang today, they told my husband that the court had changed the hearing date to the 7th November. That's only fifteen days from now and the two sides are supposed to deliver copies of all the information they intend to use at the hearing fourteen days before the hearing as I'm sure you know. Anyway, I haven't paid the hearing fee and don't intend to unless I know I'm definitely going to court. Also, we are now mediating with the defendant and Lloyds TSB's charges department are investigating our claim, so having the court case now is not appropriate. We did ask for it to be adjourned until next March/April time, but that request has been ignored. We will have to write to the court again and tell them that we require time for mediation, I'm sure they would be willing to grant that, don't you think? By the way, they are refunding the allocation questionnaire fee which was incorrect, as you pointed out Ford. Thanks very much for that. If it hadn't been for you, I wouldn't have questioned it.

The judge said that the SO costs were 'not to be enforced until the conclusion of the substantive hearing'(that's exactly what he wrote). My husband says that if we never have a final hearing i.e. If we agree to settle beforehand or FOS uphold our claim and order Lloyds TSB to pay us, then the SO costs will never be enforced. Right? When I was communicating with Lloyds TSB Customer Care department in Tredegar Park, I received replies to my letters from 17 different people! Not one of them thought that perhaps the part of my claim that was for extra overdraft interest caused by PPI payments should be passed to their charges department. Had they done that, I'm sure this claim would never have taken the direction it has.

We have heard nothing from the court re our adjournment request (delivered 10th October) and nothing about our query re the £220 allocation questionnaire fee(delivered 17th October). Today we received an offer from Lloyds TSB to settle our dispute out of court. The letter was dated 18th October, the same date we sent our offer to them. They offer to waive the £1,000 costs charge, if we will discontinue our claim. That's it. Nothing else. They express confidence in winning at the final hearing and remind us that we will still have to pay their costs even if we win. Interestingly, we also received a phone call from Lloyds TSB Customer Care charges department. They had received FOS's letter and were investigating our complaint. They asked my husband for details of what we were claiming and his bank account numbers. They are looking into it. So it looks as if there are two different Lloyds TSB customer care departments dealing with our claim and they are not talking to one another! We now await Lloyds TSB's response to our offer to settle. If they are negative, we will ask them if this is their final response. If it is, then we turn it over to FOS in it's entirety.

Unfortunately we said 'no' to mediation on the allocation form against our judgement but again on legal advice. This was mainly because we had already been refused two offers of settlement with no counter offers and therefore assumed that mediation would be another excuse for Lloyds TSB to procrastinate. With hindsight of course this was another wrong decision but we don't know how to reverse it. As I said before, we have again written to Lloyds TSB with another offer to settle, if they at least suggest a counter offer, we might get somewhere. I don't know what part FOS would play in this?

Sent another letter to the solicitor who represents Lloyds TSB repeating our offer to settle out of court at the original amount claimed. We said that in view of the facts that :- a) Whatever happens at the final hearing it wouldn't cost us any more money b) We can prove misselling c) We have documentary evidence of the overdraft charges, PPI details, loan agreements etc. d) FOS have told us that the charges should have been refunded e) We will need a whole day in court perhaps he might reconsider his former refusal to make any offers and avoid considerable expense to Lloyds TSB. It's worth a try. Also we received a letter from FOS today saying that they had written to Lloyds TSB about our claim and if we didn't hear anything from them within 8 weeks, or if we are not happy with their final response, to fill in the forms they(FOS) sent and they would take over our case.

Thanks for your kind encouragement Ford. We are not beaten yet, it's not over till it's over. We are considering writing to Lloyds TSB again and suggesting they reconsider our previous offer of settlement, in lieu of the fact that the final hearing won't cost us any more even if we lose, but it will cost them plenty. We will tell them that we can prove misselling(we have documentary proof that my husband would not have been able to claim on his policies). We can also produce all the statements showing the overdraft charges and PPI payments and I will be able to demonstrate how some of the overdraft amount was due to PPI alone. We will also tell them that FOS have told us that the extra overdraft interest is owed to us under 'unreasonable charges'.

Update. I've written a letter to the court asking for proof that the allocation charge is correct. My husband has spoken to FOS who will send us some forms to fill in. No word from the court about the adjournment.

My claim was issued on 16th April. However, it's only just been allocated to the small claims track by the judge on 7th October.

Yes, andyorch, that's what I read, so are the court wrong? That court woman was adamant she was right.

I can't find anything anywhere about how much to pay for the small claims track allocation questionnaire if your claim is over £5,000. So we only have that court employee's say so that £220 is correct. I just don't think it is, but what to do? The deadline for paying the hearing fee is up today and we haven't had an answer from the court about the postponement request we made. To sum up costs so far :- 1. £210 for the initial claim hearing. 2.£80 for the application to have their defence struck out. 3. £1,000 costs to be paid to the defendant 4. £220 allocation questionnaire 5. £500 legal fees 6. £113 other costs such as letters, phone calls, scanned documents, petrol etc. Total ;- £2,123 The above takes no account of my time preparing everything and doesn't include the hearing fee of £325. Not worth it, definitely not worth it.

No, you're not missing anything. I paid £210 to start the claim which was set aside as you know.The woman on the phone was adamant that £220 was the correct fee for the allocation questionnaire. She said it was £40 for claims under £5000 but as ours was over that amount we had to pay the higher amount even though it was small claims. If we'd started the claim after 1st July, we would only had to have paid £40. We have written to the court telling them that we had told the judge that we would be away on the date of the hearing and he had told us that the hearing would be before that. Now we have been informed it is after that date, could we please have it adjourned until after we are both back in the country in March 2014. If they agree it gives us some time to think of the best course of action re the hearing.

I see from the PDF court fees leaflet that the changes were implemented on 1/7/2013. Had I known, I would have waited until then.This is very confusing for the litigant in person who can only go by what is printed on the government websites. My claim was for £6,107 rising by 77p per day at 8%.

Thanks again Andy for the info about the latest CPR changes. I will write to the court enclosing a copy of the new rules and the date they came into force. My claim was issued on 16th April.

Thanks for that Andy. I had never read that piece of legislation in detail before. It may be very useful in future

By the way, when my husband phoned the court, they said that £220 was the correct amount for our claim because it was over £5000. Apparently, although the upper limit for small claims increased to £10,000 this year, it didn't happen until July and my claim was put in in April. (I had read that the increases were due to take place in April and had deliberately put off my claim until then for that very reason). But why jump from £40 to £220? I can't believe this is correct.

Yes, you did Andy and I'm sorry that it seems as if I ignored your information, but that London barrister made me doubt everything when he said all losses were included in the 8%. Presumably your knowledge is from FOS redress procedure? There is no law supporting it is there? If I went to court and told them that FOS uphold my claim, they are just as likely to ignore it as to let it sway their judgement, right?

Yes, you're right about everything of course. Thanks for pointing out the error in the allocation questionnaire price. It is definitely small claims, so my husband will phone the court about that today. As for the strike out, the advice to try that was given by a third party with legal know how. Having said that, I did myself believe that we had a good case as Lloyds TSB's defence was just a denial (apart from the time barred bit which was on shaky ground to say the least). I had read in Patricia Pearl's book that judges require reasons for defence and a mere denial that they owe the money is not acceptable. Nevertheless, this judge saw no reason why Lloyds TSB could just say they didn't owe it! We are requesting an adjournment administratively, citing the fact that we did inform the judge that we would be unavailable on the dates given and he assured us that the hearing would be before then. If it is granted then we will have time to regroup, lick our wounds and think about how we can win in court. Interestingly, FOS have told us that the extra overdraft interest we are trying to claim should have been refunded by Lloyds TSB as well as the 8%. Apparently, the 8% is for the amount owed only, despite what the London barrister said. They said they would take our case for us so we will probably go that route now. I didn't go with FOS in the first place because our case was before 2005, but they are still willing to help us, so that's good news.

Update. Today we received a letter from the court giving the hearing date as the 15th November. We had already told the judge at the last hearing that we would not be able to attend between the dates of 10th November 2013 and 15th March 2014 because we are spending time abroad. Also I was shocked to read that we have to pay another £325 for the hearing! I have only just shelled out £220 for the allocation questionnaire, now this. I really feel that Lloyds TSB should pay as they were the ones who applied for the set aside after I had already paid for that hearing, so why should I pay for another one? And this is the small claims court which is supposed to be free! My husband is phoning the court at the moment, but I don't hold out much hope of any satisfactory result.