My apologies if I didn't make myself clear. I've already made a formal complaint to Abbey. I've followed their complaints procedure (letters back and forth twice now) which has now left me with either contacting the Ombudsman or bypassing them and going straight for a LBA, this was essentially my original question, whether I sould bother with the Ombudsman, or just go straight for the jugular and send a LBA?

I paid the £999 upfront and Abbey haven't given me anything back

Here's page 3 (the pertinent bit) of the Abbey's offer. What I will say is that nowhere in the offer/T's & C's does it say what happens when Abbey terminate the contract.

I agree, but if you put yourself in their shoes, would you give me any money if you thought you had every right to keep it all? Or if you thought you were being unfair, send me a 'goodwill' gesture in the hope I might go away? I know only what I've read on the internet about the law, but as I understand it, the only thing that has been decided is that Bank/Credit Card charges are covered by the UTCCR 1999, now it's up to the OFT to decide if they are fair or not (and even this may go to court)?

I did approach them, but only because they advertised In the same way we all agreed to the terms of our current account/cerdit cards I've looked at it from their perspective and would have taken a part refund if they had offered it (based on the fact that they have incurred some cost) - however, I'm now disgusted with they way they have dealt with this whole affair and used the fact that I am in a weak position from a negotiation stance since they already have my money and I need to borrow money to buy the property. Also, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have sent me a cheque as 'full and final settlement' if they didn't already know that they were in the wrong.;-)

I can fully understand where you're coming from Hobbie - yes I knew when I signed the document that the fee's were non-refundable, but I had every intention of completing the process. It never occured to me that Abbey would terminate the application? At every oppourtinity we complied with thier requests, provided them with a full Structural Engineers Report as requested with which their valuer was still not happy, we then had the Structural Engineer write another letter re-enforcing his first Report the Abbey's valuer was still not happy. At no point did the valuer suggest what could be done in order to come to a successful conclusion. This is when Abbey terminated the application. I asked to talk to someone who made the decision and was told that no-one at Abbey made the decision, if the valuer says no, then Abbey say no! There are other points that make me question the Abbey's valuation, but I did not comment on them so as not to delay the process further. Either way, just because I sign to agree to something, doesn't make it fair does it -think about all of us who have signed agreements to current accounts/credit cards and are now getting our charges back.........

I'll scan and post the documents tomorrow (bit late now). I've quickly looked over the documents and it clearly shows that they're non-refundable, but even so, i still think it's taking the 'mickey'. I know the fees are nothing new, but I have noticed that since the 'credit-crunch' Abbey's fee on the same product has risen from £1000 to £2500 as well as the interest rate going up from 0.49% above BOE to 1.47% over BOE.

I'm not saying they did, but surely it's entirely feesable that they could - espescially if they're having trouble securing funds themselves, they could stop underwriting anything that has even the smallest risk, bang goes my mortgage and my 'Booking Fee' with it. Sounds unfair to me?

I'm pretty sure these 'Booking Fee's' were introduced to stop borrowers jumping ship and going to another lender and getting a cheaper deal during the application stage.

I'm sorry but that's outragous. I pay Abbey a 'Booking Fee' for a product in good faith - Abbey change their lending policy and decide not to lend on the property (not me personally, although I would have to re-apply for a different property) - £££ they keep my £1000 booking fee (now increased to £2500) - nice little earner I'd say. Lets not lend anyone any money and get short-term gains from 'booking fee's'. I still don't see how this doesn't fall foul of 'Contrary to the requirement of good faith it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations under the contract, to the detriment of consumers'?

It was made clear that it was non-refundable, but surely that doesn't stop it from being an unfair term within the contract, specifically as I did not terminate the application but Abbey did - in fact I gave Abbey two oppourtunities to complete the process to which they declined. If I had pulled out for whatever reason then sure, I have terminated the 'contract' so would expect to forfeit the fee.

I recently applied for a mortgage with Abbey and paid the 'Booking Fee' up front to avoid paying interest on this amount as well as the mortgage. Everything was going fine until the valuation of the property came back requesting a full Structural Engineers Report, which we duly had carried out. We satisfied ourselves afer speaking to our structural engineer and reading his report that there was little to worry about - however, Abbey's valuer had other ideas. To cut a long story short, Abbey terminated the application and kept my 'Booking Fee' (I have since gone with a different lender who's valuer didn't even ask to see the SER). I have complained to Abbey and at both stages of Abbey's complaints procedure, have been told that the fees are clearly non-refundable, this last time they have sent me a cheque for £30 as a good will gesture for my spending so much time on the phone. My question is should I go to the Financial Ombudsman or just threaten them with legal action (LBA) as I think that surely this must be a breach of the Unfair Terms in Contracts Regulations? Does anyone have any insight/experience with this type of thing? Thanks

Wendbrid is my partner so I thought I'd update on how things have gone so far. We had no joy with the above email and so this months charges were taken. The 14 days were up on the 31 August and we send a LBA yesterday. Today in the post we got a reply to the prelim letter offering half of the amount of the charges (less interest) claimed for the joint account and what appears to be about half the amount plus interest claimed for my partners son's personal account. Now, the letter before action has been sent and these offers run out in 10 days so do we just sit it out or do we reply to these offers accepting in partial payment with the intention to claim the rest through MCOL or reply rejecting these offers and do the MCOL thing anyway?

Hi Mark we haven't added the 8% yet, but expect to do so at the MCOL stage. By the way, my missus has has started her own thread http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/hsbc-bank/24062-hsbc-me-too.html

My partner's son and his girlfriend have got themselves into a fair bit of debt and are being charged approx £125/month for exceeding the agreed overdraft limit (£25 each time), so after finding out about this forum we've decided to help them to help themselves. They sent the data protection act request letter on 7th June '06 and received a load of statements. Today we have filled out the advanced excel spreadsheet and are sending the prelim letter tomorrow asking for a total of £4016.61 from 2 accounts over 6 and 2 years (respectively) :o We're sending this to the Service Quality Team in Leeds (hope this is the right place):idea: Hopefully HSBC will do the right thing and cough up without too much fuss - I'll keep this thread updated with progress. Thanks