I'm with Virgin Active Gym... I signed a 1 year contract, but if I don't cancel it by 14 days before it expires I automatically get another 1 year contract. I don't want to cancel at the moment, but I did think it was a bit unfair when I joined... so 3 months in some ways is not so bad!

Keep at it, they will pay up in the end, including interest.

Received my cheque this morning - First Direct suddenly got their act together when they had less than a week to go. It's taken 6 days for 2 letters and a cheque to come from them to get this settled. Took them 3 months for 2 letters before this! So, I have from them... *refund of all original charges *refund of contractual interest (at authorised rate) *8% stat interest *£80 court fees *over £50 in my own costs which I added onto the claim when they really started messing me around. Something tells me HSBC/First Direct REALLY don't want to go to court! Good Luck to anyone who is left going to court tomorrow.

I don't see the relevence of most of this. The T & Cs can be the clearest anyone has ever written anywhere, but this has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on how legal they are. I don't think anyone has claimed the banks charges have been unclear and are claiming them back on this basis? Sliding scale of charges - some banks have these too - no penalty the first time you exceed your limit, so much the next time, and more again the third time. Again, this does not make them legal. Similarly if you are forced to pay a cancellation fee for a holiday and it then gets re-sold, the penalty clearly bears no relation to the losses incurred. Either it gets resold or it doesn't. Again with the banks, no-one is forced at gun point to sign the T&Cs, but it's close to impossible to live without a bank account in this country these days, so we have to sign with someone. If you know of a bank which doesn't charge penalties (or only charges it's actaul losses of a few pence), please let us all know. The same applies to holiday companies, they all charge cancellation fees because they know they can get away with it, regardless of whether they have an actual loss or not.

Please don't give up on this one now... I have vowed never to fly with this lot again after shocking customer service from them recently, and would love to see them start to get screwed over things like this.

Any offers from Jet2 on this yet? When is the hearing? I'm hoping they do show up in court because I'd be very interested to know the outcome.. but I'm guessing they will settle to avoid costs. Also, their HO has now moved to Leeds, so it's not so much of a treck (although their lawyers could be anywhere I suppose...)!

Congratulations Clare! Looks like they had a busy day sending out offers yesterday

Finally got my full offer from First Direct today... still holding out on the cheque though and my acceptance letter told them as much!

The site is about guidance, every case is different. Basically I was claiming contractual up until the point where I issued moneyclaim, at that point I added on the 8% - after all the contractual is what they had charged me anyway, and the 8% is what I could have had if the money had been mine and I'd invested it somewhere. So it seems pretty fair to me. In addition to this they messed me around by asking for the same info over and over again, and ignoring many points in my letters, so I started charging them for every letter and phone call I had to make. Basically it has proved they are still VERY scared of any case going to court. They will try everything in the book to reduce the claim if they can, but when court is under a week away they stop taking any chances. The joke is they could have settled with my 2 months ago for about half of what they've ended up having to pay out. If anyone wants more details on my case feel free to PM me.

Finally received the letter I've been waiting for... FD have offered full refund of all charges plus: Contractual Interest, Statutory Interest, Court Fees and my own costs. Never give up, they will ALWAYS pay up in full before court. They have asked for confidentiality, which of course I will not be giving them. They will also have until Tuesday to get the cheque to me or I will still expect them in court on Wednesday

Well, I've had another letter from DG asking me to reply to their offer.. which I already did. The court date is 7 Feb so only just over a week away now. I think I'll just send them a letter reminding them of the total new amount as the interest is going up, see if they offer it in the next week or actually turn up in court!

You'd be best off going down the next stage of the complaints process, you will at least get a professional individual response: Putting things right We'll look into your complaint immediately and try to sort the issue out as fully as we can. If you're unhappy with our decision, ask for one of our Customer Service Team Managers to investigate further. An impartial view We hope that we will have been able to sort out any problems by this stage. However, if you are still not satisfied after speaking to one of our managers and would like an impartial review, please write to: O2 Complaint Review Service PO Box 116 Leeds LS11 5DS Fax: 0113 388 1153 What we need to know In your letter please include the following information: Your name and address Your mobile and account numbers A daytime phone number Details of your complaint A suggestion of what you'd like us to do to put things right If you've had any previous correspondence relating to your complaint, please send copies of these as well as any names of supervisors and managers you've spoken to.

Blackers, your original post is confusing... You said "decided to monitor my monthly payment for any anomolies" but your next paragraph says "I discovered 2 weeks ago that after the 3 months free isurance ended 02 had been charging me £4.99 per month for insurance" So this suggests you didn't monitor your payment? If there was a fault with viewing your account online did you pursue the matter to get it fixed - it can take a couple of weeks but they always should get fixed if you complain. Also, you state you knew there was 3 months free insurance, so I'm sure you would have been aware that this would continue and be charged after the 3 months and could have cancelled.

Yes it is wrong I'm afraid (would be nice if it wasn't!)... you can only claim interest from the date of each charge. So if they first charge was 2409 days ago, you can claim 2409 days interest ON THAT CHARGE. If the next charge was say 2000 days ago, you can claim 2000 days on that charge etc etc... if your most recent charge was only 90 days ago, you can only claim 90 days interest on that one. Make sense?

We are aware they charge an admin fee. The point is if it's not reasonable and in line with their costs, it's unlawful.

My claim has now been transferred to the mercentile court in Leeds along with over 60 others (against different banks).. getting very interesting now! See this thread: http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/mercantile-court-cases-stays/52143-directions-hearing-leeds-4.html#post500946

I've now got 2 cases against First Direct on the list! Don't know if I'll even bother rejecting their last offers as my previous letter made it very clear I would not accept any offer of less than the full amount - see if they actually turn up at court! Looking at the list of 61 cases I have, there are no other First Direct or HSBC cases not settled so as it stands they would be attending just to defend my relatively small claims!

You could try this one: RYANAIR UK LIMITED SATELITE 3 LONDON STANSTED AIRPORT STANSTED ESSEX CM24 1RW Company No. 01917579

I've just received notification from the court today that I'm in on this list too... I'm claiming against First Direct. They have made me an offer but it's not for the full amount. Sorry for sounding thick, but do people know how this hearing will work? Does the judge just make a decision that will be the same for all (eg: all charges are unlawful, refund the lot - or all charges should be £5, refund the difference etc.) or am I missing the point? I have a couple of "legal" friends so will try to find out what this judge is like!

Well done - and I bet the original reason for cancelling was just due to low loadings. Easyjet have now pulled the Bristol-Hamburg route (along with endless other routes, their prices are so uncompetitive compared with some others now, I'm not surprised they struggle to fill their planes!) Unfortunately they will still win in the long run - I bet for everyone like you who goes all the way, there's another hundred or more people that give up.

I had a very similar issue with Voda over £37! Basically they claim they never received my letter giving a month's notice, even though I had recorded delivery proof that they did. It went on for months, passed to a debt collection agency (who were VERY persistant for the sake of £37!), in the end I got totally fed up and paid the bill to save the stress. A month or so later I checked and the default was still the same, I wrote to them and asked them to remove it, as the account was always in dispute so should never have been marked as defaulted. They declined but marked it as satisfied - thankfully I think mainly because it was such a small amount - it didn't stop me getting credit. Anyway, about 6 months later I got another credit report and the default had just disappeared! Don't know whether it was an error or whether they had a change of heart, but you may be lucky!

Two weeks ago I went to my local dealer to get my car MoT'd (had a cheap offer on)... it failed the MoT on 2 tyres, wing mirror loose and rear brakes. They wanted £110 for the tyres, £102 for the wing mirror and TWO HOURS LABOUR plus parts for the brakes - didn't know what parts the brakes needed until they have taken them apart. I agreed to take the car back in 4 days later to get the work done. In the meantime I took the car to a garage which does free brake checks, to try to avoid the 2 hour labour cost if I could - only for them to be tested and told there was nothing wrong with them at all, and they couldn't see why they would fail the MoT. At this point I decided I would take the car elsewhere to get the MoT done and also got the tyres changed elsewhere. I called the original dealer the day before I was due to go back and told them I wouldn't be coming back in. When I went to the other garage for another MoT it failed only on the mirror - which they said they could fix with a bit of superglue for £10! (it's now stayed on fine for a week even in these storms!) During this, as an oversight, I forgot that I hadn't paid the original dealer the cost of the MoT, so 2 days after I was due to go back in the "Service Manager" rang me up asking about payment. I immediately agreed to pay him via CC over the phone and asked him what the cost of the MoT was. He mentioned having parts which had been ordered in for me and I explained I had called to say I was going elsewhere. I thought this was the end of it... a few days later I got a parcel from the dealer, containing - a mirror, and a credit card receipt for the MoT cost AND the mirror. So my question is where do I stand, I did originally verbally agree to take the car back in, but nothing was signed. Also, as the original mirror was easily repairable at a much cheaper cost, should they not have offered me this option originally? Not to mention the fact they were going to charge me 2 hours labour for brakes which were subsequently tested twice and found not to be faulty! Can I just send the mirror back and demand a refund, or could they say there was a verbal contract in place for me to purchase it?

I would.. but I suppose it depends on your circumstances. There's no easy answer really.

This is no [problem], it's VERY clear on the Easyjet site what your baggage allowance is. If you chose not to read it, you really can't blame them. Their policy of paying for an extra bag without extra weight might be a bit tight, but it's well within their rights and much better than another carrier I could mention!

I think you will struggle... what stage did you get to before you "won". If you filed a claim just make sure not to let the court know you've settled until they pay up, otherwise your only option would be to start a claim now. Bear in mind though, you will be saving interest if they apply it to your card (unless you have a very low interest rate on it!)