Dear All, Sorry for the abscence. Been too busy chasing Capital One and MBNA (succesfully!!!). Received the following snotty letter from Pam Green in response to my LBA : Dear Mr Hindley, The administrative "charges" made to your account are in accordance with the terms and conditions of the mortgage. I would draw your attention to the terms of the contract which you agreed to at the time the mortgage was advanced. The basic requirement that you were expected to adhere to, in the conditions of the loan, was to make payments each and every month. You breached the terms and conditions by failing to honour the contract upon which the mortgage was advanced. You consistently failed to make monthly payments. The payments were not necessarily late, not paid for only the odd month or the occasional month or even less than the amount required. You simply did not pay and for periods at a time. I am frankly shocked that you consider your default in payment to be satisfactory and our action to recover the debt, to be outside the terms and conditions of the mortgage and the law. The charges made for the action taken for over 21 years in order to try and establish regular payments and to urge you to comply with the conditions of the mortgage will not be refunded. Yours sincerely Pam Green It seems to me Ms Green is getting a tad tetchy!!! Accordingly, I started my claim today with Moneyclaim and will send her the following letter, tomorrow. Hopefully both will arrive on her desk on Monday morning. Ms Pam Green, Customer Relations Manager, Collections Dept, Alliance and Leicester PLC Customer Services Centre Narborough, Leicester LE19 0AL 30th June 2006 Dear Ms Green MORTGAGE ACCOUNT NUMBER: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Thank you for taking the time and trouble to reply to my letter of 31st May 2006. I realise this must be a busy time for you with lots of customers’ accounts to close. Fortunately, I am not in a position to be threatened in this way, having fully discharged my indebtedness to the Alliance & Leicester more than three years ago. You, on the other hand, Ms Green, as a representative of your bank, have a legal obligation to refund the unlawful penalty charges extortionately and arbitrarily added to my account over the years. I had hoped that you had read and understood my previous correspondence, or, at least sought the advice of a colleague in your legal dept. Since this is clearly not so, and at the risk of boring you, I will quote verbatim from my first letter: It is my opinion, and that of the Office of Fair Trading, that these charges are punitive in nature, not a genuine pre-estimate of cost and not intended to re-imburse your losses for a breach of contract occurring. Further to the 1999 Consumer Credit Regulations quoted by the OFT, there are numerous cases in law that prove that punitive charges in contracts are unenforceable at English Law. Murray v Leisureplay (2004) Dunlop Tyre Company v New Garage and Motor Co. (1915) Bridge v Campbell Discount Co. Ltd. (1962) Further to these cases, I also believe these charges to be a direct breach of the Unfair Contracts Terms Act, 1977, which require that contract terms are reasonable. I do not believe these charges are reasonable as outlined in the aforementioned Act. I do not deny that I have been guilty of breaches of the terms and conditions of your contract. To make my point absolutely clear, and for your benefit, any charges which do not reflect a genuine pre-estimate of the costs incurred by that breach are penalty charges and therefore unenforceable. I am still waiting for you to provide me with a breakdown of the costs involved in sending me an arrears letter or notice of a returned cheque. It is also true that I agreed to your terms and conditions at the time the mortgage was advanced. As a point of law, however, if those terms and conditions contain elements that are unlawful, then the contract, itself, is not worth the paper it is written on. As I mentioned in my previous letter, I expected, as a matter of course, the bank to conduct its business in a legitimate and legal manner. In my naivety I had trusted the Alliance & Leicester to be familiar with their legal obligations, to act within them and, to quote the Banking Code: “consider cases of financial difficulty sympathetically and positively.” To continually charge disproportionate penalty fees and astronomical legal fees (which, at this moment in time, I am not disputing) to an account that was clearly in difficulty, seems to me a blatant abuse of the bank’s power and authority. I do not intend to go into the history of my mortgage account at this time; the fact that when I sought a re-mortgage in 1987 it took eighteen months for the funds to be made available, and only then as a further advance with a one and a half per cent interest premium; the numerous occasions when I was refused the opportunity to absorb the arrears into a new mortgage, thus keeping me tied into a disproportionately high interest rate and making it impossible to re-mortgage with other lenders; the hectoring and bullying letters which reduced my partner to tears and me to despair. The tone of your letter has brought back many memories and made me all the more determined to see my claim through to a satisfactory conclusion, (satisfactory to me, that is.) I resent your offhand and untruthful reference to default in payment. Let me once again remind you that any debt I had with your bank has been fully discharged at a more than advantageous rate to yourselves, voluntarily and not under legal judgement or by means of re-possession. The amount repaid includes your unlawful fees and the interest charged upon them. It will be interesting to see if your indebtedness to me is repaid in a similar fashion. You conclude your letter by reminding me that I held my account with you for twenty-one years. Do you seriously believe that the Alliance & Leicester would have allowed this to happen had they not received considerable pecuniary advantage in doing so? In conclusion, since the deadline I set for re-imbursement in my previous letter has now passed, I have today initiated my claim against you in the County Court. I am seeking a judgement in my favour for a total sum of £1,622.57, this figure to include statutory interest at 8% up to today’s date, and also my court costs. If you do not fully understand the implications of this, then you should seek advice from someone familiar with legal matters or better versed than yourself in Customer Relations. I remain, Yours sincerely,

This is a similar argument to the one used by MBNA in a letter I received, before I had even sent them a LBA http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/mbna/1895-mbna-credit-card.html What they neglect to mention, however, is that if you maintain payments to the DCA, as I have done, then ultimately you WILL have paid their charges. The fact that they will not benefit from that money is not your problem. They made the commercial decision to sell your debt on, presumably because they had made enough money out of your account to make any further action unjustifiable.You can be certain that, taken overall, they will not have made a loss, as, I am sure any judge would reason. Bankfodder would be able to present a much more cogent argument than I, but, in my case, MBNA settled in full immediately after filing a defence, and regardless of their worthless argument. Good luck,

Speaking for myself, before agreeing to settle my claim in full, MBNA wrote to me saying they had made payments of approx £900 to the DCA, 1st Direct. I don't know if they actually did this, but am about to send 1st Direct a Data Protection Act request to find out. When MBNA sent cheques to refund all my charges plus interest, I didn't want to push my luck any further by asking about the payments to the DCA! I'll let you know when I get an answer from 1st Direct

Other people's opinions may differ from mine, but, if you are feeling determined enough to get back what is rightfully yours, it might be worthwhile ringing Gareth Tunicliffe. I found him to be OK, fairly sympathetic and not difficult at all to deal with. Tell him you want a refund of all the charges applied to your account, plus the interest charged on those charges. He may have to call you back when he has worked out a figure and checks with his superior (Steve Bailey, I think). If he cannot agree to that, inform him that you are quite prepared, once you receive a reply to your Data Protection Act request, to file a claim against MBNA with the court. DO NOT accept anything other than a full refund. You may have to listen to the tired old argument about the charges being fair, the agreement you signed, etc, etc, but it is his job to say this. Be calm and polite and you may save yourself some time and hassle. MBNA will save themselves the court fees. Might be worth the cost of a 'phone call, Cheers

Dear Mdtd, Thanks! Please feel free to use anything you feel appropriate. I'd love to have been able to see the faces of some of the objectionable people I've written to when they realised that, what they had thought of as a minor irritation was in danger of turning into a major source of aggravation. Some have been ok (see Gareth Tunicliffe, above) and although they've had to toe the party line, I hope, privately, they may have been amused at seeing their superiors treated with disdain and irreverence. In previous postings I've expressed my opinion about the most valuable benefit given by this site: regardless of any financial return of illegitimate charges, to be rid of the shackles of guilt deliberately heaped on our shoulders by financial institutions when we fall on hard times, and to be able to turn the tables, has been one of the most uplifting and liberating experiences of my life. The best of luck to you in your claims. You know where to come if you need help!

MBNA have just settled my in full, my having filed a claim with Moneyclaim. I neglected to add on the 8% interest (£693) to the total amount claimed, and when I informed MBNA of this, telling them I would let my claim go to court in the hope the judge would award me the interest, they offered to repay me the interest they'd actually charged on the charges. Obviously they thought that this would be less than the 8%, but it actually came to £1603.95. I banked their cheque for this amount yesterday Good luck!

Thanks for your kind thoughts. We won't be packing the buckets and spades 'til mid August, so I've a lot of work to do before then. I received a really snotty reply to the LBA letter I sent to the Alliance & Leicester three weeks ago, so they're now next on my list. As soon as the cheques from MBNA clear I'll be starting my Moneyclaim against them (A&L, that is!) Lloyds TSB have been trying to be nice to me since I sent them a LBA (its true, honest!), but ultimately it won't save them. How these two work out depends on whether we end up in Blackpool (just down the M55) or somewhere hot(ter) and sunny(nier)!!!! Watch this space (or, rather the A&L and Lloyds TSB threads)!!! cheers

Thanks everyone for your kind comments and support. Received a second cheque this morning, as was promised by Gareth Tunicliffe, on Thursday. Can now afford to make a donation, start claims against the Alliance & Leicester and Lloyds TSB and take the kids on holiday for the first time in five years! Good luck to everybody claiming against the banks, and DON'T GIVE UP!!!!!!!

Hi Delly! In my case, it took MBNA 36 days before they sent my statements to the wrong address, but my original Data Protection Act was back in February, when this sort of request was quite new to them. Since then they seem to have got themselves a bit better organised, so I would give them about a fortnight before a gentle reminder. Can't put my hand on my MBNA statements at the moment (they're buried amongst all the stuff from the other banks I'm annoying), but they must have been fairly straightforward for me to understand them! cheers

Hi Delly, Good luck to you in your claim, although I'm sure you won't need it! My claim against MBNA took four months to be settled, but in my recent dealings with them, I detect they recognise the inevitability of the legality of your claim. You must make sure they realise, however, that you won't be fobbed off. Like all banks, they rely on you accepting their authority, without question. If you do query the legality of their actions, they are unable to do anything but re-iterate their tired ( and unlawful!) old terms and conditions. Use the arguments scattered throughout this site to refute everything they throw at you, but above all, be tenacious and DON'T GIVE UP! Best wishes,

The time limit for MBNA filing a defence was up on the 19th June and I was about to ask for a judgement by default, when I realised I'd made a mistake on my claim form. Although I'd shown the interest at 8% (£686.89) in my particulars of claim, I hadn't included it in my total amount claimed. Help!!!! I telephoned the Moneyclaim helpdesk who said I should wait until the case went to court, explain my error to the judge, who, they felt certain would look sympathetically in my favour. They went on to inform me that MBNA had filed a Defence that very morning! Help!!!! (again!) The following day I received a letter from Steve Bailey in which he re-iterated the bank's view that their charges were part of the credit agreement which I had signed, but, as a gesture of goodwill he was enclosing a cheque for £2383 in full and final settlement (this representing the total amount of my claim including court costs, but not including the 8% interest. He went on to request that I withdraw my claim with the court and that, should I wish to discuss it further, I should ring Gareth Tunnicliffe. I much prefer conducting this sort of business by letter than on the 'phone, but , none the less, I thought I had little to lose by giving Gareth a call. I explained to him my error in omitting the interest from my claim, but that the court had suggested the judge would possibly look sympathetically on my mistake. I thanked him for the cheque, but said I would not terminate my action in the hope that the court would indeed award me the extra £686.89 interest. Gareth was very pleasant, telling me that, in view of the OFT's recent statement, MBNA had found it neccessary to look at this type of claim in a different light. Because they had sold my £5000ish debt for about £500, and lost so much money on it, he felt it was unlikely that they would be able to pay out any more. He also said my request for recompense for them sending all my statements to the wrong address was being looked at separately. I told him that, had they settled the matter back in February, when I first wrote to them, they would not have been liable to pay me the interest at all. In view of their continual stalling and 'fob off' tactics, I was quite prepared to let a judge decide whether or not to award me the interest. Gareth said he would calculate what the interest actually charged on the 'charges' amounted to, speak to his superior, and telephone me back. Unexpectedly, he was as good as his word and called me at 4.30p.m. He said his calculations showed they owed me a further £1603.95 in interest, and if I was prepared to terminate my claim, he would arrange for another cheque to be sent to me next week! I agreed. Throughout our conversation I got the impression that Gareth was a decent sort who, while having to follow the official line had a degree of understanding for my position. (I would say that though wouldn't I ?) So, anyone else who rings him, don't give him a hard time !!!!! Now, if Bankfodder or Dave reads this, all I need to know is how to make a donation without a credit/debit card or cheque book.

Hi Crispdust, The wonderful thing about this site is the encouragement and enlightenment freely given by people such as yourself, Surreyscouse and all the other members. Not that long ago I would have accepted anything the banks told me as gospel. For years I've been made to feel guilty and irresponsible by people whose only motive was self-serving greed. Yes, I've made mistakes, but who hasn't. To have those mistakes compounded and taken advantage of by those who were in a privileged position of trust, I now find particularly galling. People like Matt McGrath and Gavin Theobald (see above) seem to genuinely believe their employers are above reproach. They confidently expect the 'customer' to accept half-truths and misinformation simply because it is they, the bank, who utter them. Perhaps they, themselves, have been 'brainwashed' into being unable to question the integrity of the banks. I await MBNA's response with eager anticipation, and some amusement, and not the fear and dread that, at one time, a letter from them would have evoked. Thanks, once again for your encouragement,

Still had no reply from MBNA, so, on Saturday, I began my claim with Moneyclaim. This morning I received the following: Dear Mr Hindley, Account xxxxxxxxx & xxxxxxxxxxxx We refer to your letter dated 18th April 2006 concerning default fees on your accounts. I would like to clarify the situation from our perspective. We have always set out precisely what our charges are in our agreement with you, as they are an integral part of the terms and conditions under which we are prepared to provide credit facilities. When Customers pay late, we incur substantial costs in dealing with their default. Similarly, we have set credit limits carefully for each Customer and for good reasons. We expect every Customer to respect their credit limit. If a Customer goes over their credit limit, he or she is using the card in a way that is not allowed, in effect obtaining unauthorised borrowing. We, therefore, lend more than we agreed to, and take on risks, which were never accepted in the first place. In the case of both late payments and overlimit usage we look at the portfolio as a whole and set uniform charges to help cover our costs, as do all other major credit card providers. This approach allows us to be clear and upfront about all default charges and the basis on which they are applied. Our view is therefore that the charges you agreed to are valid, fair and enforceable. Term 3b of your credit agreement with us clearly states that you must pay £25 each time a payment has not reached your accounts within one day of your payment due date, or when you exceed your credit limit, or a cheque is returned unpaid. Given the fact that your accounts defaulted with a total outstanding balance of £5,511.42, you have not ultimately paid the charges that have been applied to your accounts. However, in order to resolve matters, I have credited your account reference XXXXXXXXX with a goodwill payment of £510.00. I have credited your account reference xxxxxxxxxxxxxx with a goodwill payment of £450.00. As both of your accounts have been legally assigned to 1st Credit, we have contacted them to request that these goodwill payments are removed from your remaining balance: all future correspondence should now be made with 1st Credit. Yours sincerely Gavin Theobald Interesting to see that they are now trying to justify their charges by calling them 'default' fees . This is the letter I intend to send them tomorrow: Dear Mr. Theobald Account xxxxxxxxxx and xxxxxxxxxxx Thank you for your letter of 25th May 2006, received today. In my letter dated 18th April, I gave your colleague, Matt McGrath, fourteen days notice of my intention to raise my claim in the County Court, failing a full refund of all penalty charges levied against my accounts. Since that deadline passed on 2nd May, without any communication from Mr. McGrath, I have already commenced proceedings against your company. As it would appear that you have either not read my previous correspondence, or failed to understand it, I would like to take the opportunity to answer the points made in your reply, as follows: 1. It is true that your company is ‘upfront’ about its penalty charges. However, if I wereto tell you in advance that I was going to steal from you, the warning would not make the theft any more legitimate. Likewise with your charges, which, as you are aware, the Office of Fair Trading considers to be UNLAWFUL. 2. Over limit charges on my accounts occurred solely as a result of penalty charges imposed by you. I fail to see how, from anyone’s viewpoint this could be considered as ‘ in effect unauthorized borrowing’. 3. You inform me that you incur substantial costs in dealing with late payments and default. Despite repeated requests, I am still waiting for a detailed breakdown of what these costs are. 4. You mention that your charges and costs are in line with ‘all other major credit card providers’. To take my previous analogy further; if I suffered the misfortune to be mugged in the street, would the thief be able to justify his actions by saying he had acted in the same manner as other thieves. 5. Since you draw the comparison between your company and other credit card providers, it may be of interest to you to know that within the last week, Capital One have refunded to me ALL charges previously levied against my account with them. 6. You mention that at the time of default my accounts with you showed a total outstanding balance of £5511.42. In Matt McGrath’s letter my indebtedness totaled £5111.42. Clearly, one or other of you (perhaps both?) is wrong. Since Mr. McGrath also miscalculated the amounts of penalty charges applied to my accounts, you may be able to understand my reluctance to accept at face value anything that emanates from your bank. 7. Your letter begins by referring to ‘default’ fees. Let us be absolutely clear on this point: at the time these charges were applied, I had received no notice of default from you. Your charges are PENALTY charges, for my breach of your contract, and, as such are unlawful. From the statements, which you eventually provided, I have calculated that the sum of £2263.00 represents unlawful penalty charges. It is this amount, plus the interest, which you levied on those charges, that I require you to refund in full. Of course, you will now need to add my court costs plus statutory interest at 8%. I calculate that this amount, together with the monies I have already paid to 1st Credit will pay off any residual debt. Unless this is done, and the default removed from my credit record, I am determined to seek redress through the court. I appreciate and thank you for the offer of partial ‘goodwill’ payments to the accounts sold to 1st Credit. From what I have recently learned about this company’s financial standing I am sure any money offered will be gratefully accepted. Likewise, I am happy to accept your offer, with the proviso that, until full redress, as outlined above, is forthcoming, my court action will continue. The time for ‘goodwill’ was several years ago when penalty charge upon penalty charge was being added to my accounts, before you defaulted me and before you arbitrarily sold my debts to 1st Credit. Finally, on a separate but related issue, I am surprised that you make no reference to the arrogant letter, signed by Mr. McGrath, which, together with copies of my statements, was sent to the address I left three years ago. Not only have communications from both yourself and your colleague, Rachel Nixon, been sent to my present address but, in the past, I had also received monthly statements. I felt that in my last letter, I had made clear to Mr. McGrath how seriously I viewed his error. Clearly, he has chosen to disregard his responsibilities with regard to rectifying this matter. You, as a bank, have a duty to handle customer's personal information with care. This has clearly not happened. I believe you have breached Principle no.7 of the Data Protection Act, which reads: “Appropriate technical and organizational measures shall be taken against unauthorized or unlawful processing of personal data and against ACCIDENTAL LOSS (my capitals) or damage to personal data. Please let me know, by return, how you intend to recompense me for this breach. Be aware that if you ignore this request or if I consider any offer does not reflect the seriousness of the offence, I will be seeking damages through the County Court. I remain, Yours sincerely,

Hi Meggie! Received my cheque yesterday, which was just about three weeks after returning the acceptance form. Now I can start my court claims against MBNA and Lloyds TSB. What better use could there be!!! Good luck to you and don't spend it all at once!

Hi David! I see Mint have passed your debt to Newman & Co. I had dealings with these people three years ago when my debt with Capital One (yes, them, again!) was passed to them. Unless things have changed, in the interim, they are absolute ********! They made my life a misery for twelve months with all sorts of threats, many of which, together with their general tactics, I now know to be illegal. There is all sorts of advice on this site for dealing with people like Newman & Co. Start by doing a search under Debt Collection Agencies. Don't let them get away with harassing you, and give them a hard time for me. Cheers,

Not quite the same thing, but Capital One asked me to sign a confidentiality agreement when accepting their offer of a full refund. I crossed it out, and told them that if this was unacceptable, then they should let me know and I would continue with my court action. I received a letter, by return, saying that it was my choice not to agree to confidentiality and that their offer was not conditional upon my compliance. I agree with Alan, they cannot stop you taking future action against unlawful charges, so long as the law remains unchanged. Just the same as when you agreed and signed their T & C's, an unlawful contract is not worth the paper it is written on. Take your money and enjoy!!

David, my friend, Good to have you on board. As a matter of interest, when the debt was passed to the DCA, presumably you were defaulted. Have you paid them anything, the full amount or have they agreed a 'short settlement' ? If either of the last two, what is shown on your credit reference file? Sorry to be nosey, but having accepted Capital One's offer to repay all my charges, I may, in time, challenge them over my CRF entry which shows my debt as being only "partially settled". cheers

Just worked out that I can 'cut and paste' from Word into my postings (Duh!), so thought I would share the acceptance letter I sent Robert Udy: Dear Mr Udy, CAPITAL ONE CARD ACCOUNT NUMBER: xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx Thank you for your letter of the 24th April, reiterating your company’s position with regard to your charges. I feel sure that, were you to look again at the result of the investigation by the Office of Fair Trading, you would see that they stipulate £12.00 to be the MAXIMUM level at which charges should be levied. The OFT goes on to say that “ if a charge is set below the suggested maximum threshold, this does not make it fair. It is true that your charges are shown in your terms and conditions and welcome pack. To take my argument to an extreme, were your terms and conditions to say that a breach of contract was punishable by death, it would be no more unlawful or unenforceable if the penalty were to be carried out, than the pecuniary penalties which Capital One attempt to impose. You say that your charges are based on the costs incurred as a result of a breach of contract. I have yet, however, to be given a legitimate breakdown of what those costs might be. Mr. Udy, I understand your position, and I realise that our viewpoints are, of necessity, diametrically opposed. I appreciate your offer of a refund of £444.00, this representing all the charges added to my account, and am happy to return your settlement form, in acceptance of this. I do, however, find your request for confidentiality disquieting, and whilst I have no intention of taking advertising space in the Financial Times to publicise our dialogue and its outcome, would query how far this condition impinges on my civil liberties. I have therefore struck out this proviso from my agreement. If this is unacceptable to you, then please let me know, by return, so that I may proceed with my claim via the courts. Yours sincerely,

Hi Sportbeth! Last question first. No, I'm not THAT Phil Hindley. As to your Capital One dilema, I was really hoping that someone wiser than me would be able to offer you some advice. If you look back at my situation, you'll see that the amount of charges (£444) was just a little more than the amount written off in short settlement (£416). While I was trying to work out what to do for the best, and before I'd even sent a Letter Before Action or told them the amount I intended to claim, they offered to repay ALL the charges. I'm not happy about my credit record still showing the debt as "partially settled", but this should be cleared next year, and, more importantly, I've got MY money back. This I can now use to fund my claims against the other Institutions, and it may be, that I decide to re-open my argument with Capital One at a later date. If I were you (other people may not agree), I'd start off by claiming the whole £702 they charged you. They'll soon let you know if they don't agree, and it wouldn't surprise me if they don't eventually offer you this much anyway. In my opinion, returning the charges is an admission that they were wrong in the first place. This ought to add weight to any subsequent negotiation or court case to have the default notice removed. I'm afraid that in my case I subscribed to the advice once given by Mike Harding in his song about "Uncle Groper" : ' Take the Smarties and RUN!!!!!! ' Good luck

Lueeze is right, check the FAQ's, but my case was similar to yours, so feel free to have a look because it may help, http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=2564 I've been offered a full refund, and so should you! Go for it!!!

I'm sure other people will have opinions, but, personally I would wait another week. If you receive a cheque, then deduct it from your claim. If not, then file your claim for the full amount. If nothing else you will gain a little interest. From my experience of having a closed account with Capital One, http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=2564 they will be desparate to settle without going to court. They will however try to test your resolve by fobbing you off without refunding the full amount. I would write to them, thanking them for their offer of £100, which you will be happy to accept, when it arrives, but reiterating that you will only be satisfied by a full refund, which you intend to obtain via the County Court. Good luck!

Hi Dappa! Thanks for your comments. Looking at other threads on the Lloyds TSB forum, the consensus of opinion seems to be that Overdraft EXCESS fees are reclaimable, but Overdraft USAGE fees are not. In my case, the change in terminology from USAGE to EXCESS coincided with changing my account to a Select one. For most people on the forum, the usage fees seem to have been at a fairly low ( eg £5) level and remained constant. Mine, on the other hand, as detailed above, seem to have varied wildly between £5 and £70. I don't want to be greedy, but I don't see why Lloyds TSB should be able to charge such a high fee when they are already making money from interest on the overdrawn balance. At the same time I don't want to jeopardize the whole claim for the sake of £400 to which I am not entitled. Any other observations or advice would be appreciated.

Sorry I've not been keeping everyone up to date, lately. Been a bit busy chasing Capital One ( successfully!), MBNA, Alliance & Leicester, etc. You know how it is! Anyway, I eventually received the last six year's statements, which show I've been charged £3,719. No wonder I had to sell two of the kids for Medical Research!! This amount does include approx £400 of "overdraft usage fees ". I know some people see these as legitimate, but it puzzles me why, in my case, these can be varying amounts; eg, £5, £15, £20, £35, £40 and £70. Am I being thick, and there's a simple explanation, or can I claim these back too. I sent a 'Letter Before Action' to David Just at the end of April, and yesterday received his reply, in which he says he respects my opinion about their charges, but that I can sod off! ( Sorry about that. It must be the influence of some off the more beligerent subscribers to this forum.) So, he's got another week or so until I start my claim with Moneyclaim. I'll keep you all posted.

Received a letter 10 days ago from Robert Udy, reiterating the tired old arguments about T&Cs, the fairness of their charges, etc, etc. However, he was anxious to avoid our dispute ending up in court, and so was prepared to offer a " full refund of all charges ever applied to your account." He asked me to sign and return an acceptance form which included a confidentiality clause. I duly signed and returned the form, having first crossed out the confidentiality clause, explaining in my letter that I did so because I considered that it impinged on my civil liberties. Received another letter, today, saying a cheque for the full amount will be sent within 28 days and that, " I realise that you do not wish to agree to our confidentiality request. Please be assured this is totally your decision and doesn't affect my offer." Another victory for the CAG, I think! A donation will follow when the cheque arrives. Thanks to everyone for the advice and support. Just got Lloyds TSB, MBNA, Alliance & Leicester and the Halifax to sort out now!!

I agree. You WILL be able to claim back the charges, whether or not the account is closed, and even if you have agreed a "short settlement". However, if you accept the £395 "discount", it may prove extremely difficult to get your credit rating repaired. Do you need the £395 more than a clean credit rating? My advice would be to pay off the account and close it, making sure you get in writing that the account is closed without anything owing on your part or default registered against you. Then SUE THE B******S!!!!!!!!! Good luck!