Ray111 v Bank of Scotland / Halifax

[asdf54321]

I've alleady thanked you Hagenuk in private but thanks again, that's good advice.

 

Have a look at the rejection letter that I sent after they made an offer of £215, this was from Card Services, Pitreavie Business Park,Dunfermline, KY99 4BS, a department that deals with credit cards for HBoS and has nothing to do with current accounts so what they offered was half of my Visa Credit Account charges, fair enough. I needed to inform them that I was doing a joint claim though, I'd sent the LBA for the current account to the central Halifax address in Leeds so I let them know about it in this rejection letter that I sent around the 15th, what do you think about it? Have I done a good job?

 

Just to update everyone I'm about to take the advice of hagenuk and sign for the full ammount of credit card charges £525 that I've explained and typed out the non binding conditions above.

 

I made this rejection letter out of a mixture of the seven provided in the templates of this forum http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/bank-templates-library/25716-rejecting-offers.html that I've adapted to my needs:

 

 

HBOS

Card Services

Pitreavie Business Park

Dunfermline, KY99 4BS

 

 

12th May 2007

 

RESPONSE TO SETTLEMENT OFFER

 

 

Dear XXXXXX

 

Thank you for your letter dated 16/04/2007

 

I respectfully decline your offer of Full and Final settlement and request, once again, that you return to me all charges imposed on my Halifax Bank of Scotland accounts, totaling £1564.50, or as a good will gesture, see my offer in the last paragraph.

Attached to this letter I have included once more the total of charges that I attached with the Letter Before Action for the following account that I sent on the 26th of March 2007.

 

ACCOUNT NUMBER: XXXXXXXX

SORT CODE: XXXXXXXX

ROLLNUMBER: XXXXXXXX

 

I have also attached once again a total of charges for the following account number that I had attached to the Letter Before Action sent on the 21st of April 2007.

 

ACCOUNT NUMBER: XXXXXXXXX

Which later changed to

ACCOUNT NUMBER: XXXXXXXXX

 

I will accept the sum offered only as part settlement and on the clear understanding that I will pursue recovery of the remainder, with a County Court claim if necessary.

 

My Letter Before Action sent on the 21st of April indicates that you had until the 4th of May 2007 to respond before I would commence legal action.

 

The offer you sent dated 16/04/2007 that I am rejecting was sent to my old address and it had to be forwarded on. This was despite you having my new address included at the top of my recent letters, on envelopes for those letters, the fact that I had the address verified in a Halifax branch and also please note that the above address is the one that you have used before without a problem to communicate my private business with me and which you have hitherto found to be acceptable.

 

Because of your letter being delayed due to an error by yourselves and as a good will gesture I am willing to suspend proceeding through a County Court claim for a further five days and will give you the chance to not pay the interest on my charges and my court fees once it goes to court as I am willing to accept only 95% of my charges totaling £1564.50. This would mean you could only pay £1486.27 if you write back to me in the next five days offering for this amount and not a penny less to be paid back to me with a similar form requesting a signature. If you decline or I don’t hear from you I will not delay one more day in commencing legal action. Because the amount I was defaulted for on my HBOS Visa account was less than the total of charges applied I also request that my ‘Default Satisfactory’ notice is removed from my credit file for that particular account if we were to reach such an agreement.

I trust this clarifies my position.

 

 

Yours faithfully,

 

 

 

 

XXXXXXX

 

What do you think? Shall I still send the LBA again after advising them about it here and having included the schedule of charges again with this rejection letter?

 

Cheers,

Ray

[asdf54321]

OK I have just called the bank asking if they have received my LBA regarding my Student Current Account.

 

It turns out that they did receive it on the last few days of March but haven’t replied to it because they considered my 'complaint' (complaint meaning my Prelim letter) that they received on the 14th of September ‘closed.’ (!)

 

This is because apparently they sent me out an offer of around £400 (full amount is around £1050). All I received from them regarding my prelim letter are two standard fob off / recognition letters basically saying:

 

16th of September

 

Dear Mr XXXX

 

Thank you for your letter that was received on the 14th of September 2006.

 

“I am sorry to learn that you are unhappy with charges with you account.

 

We’re keen to deal with your concerns as quickly as possible. A customer Relations Manager will investigate the points you have raised and you will receive a reply shortly, but certainly no later than 4 weeks.

 

You will find enclosed a copy of our leaflet, which tells you how we will handle your complaint.

 

Your concerns will be dealt with as quickly as possible, but to hep us deal more efficiently with your enquiry, please quote XXXXX when writing or telephone the number at the top of this letter.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Mark Coldwell

Customer Relations Officer

 

 

Then I got another letter dated 11th of October (this date is important later on to understand this post)

Dear Mr XXXX

 

Further to our letter of the 16 of September 2006. I’m sorry that you have not yet had a full response to your concerns.

 

We’re still investigating your complaint, and you will receive a response from us as soon as possible, but certainly no later than the 8th of November 2006.

 

Our Complaints leaflet, which we sent to you previously, explains how we will handle your complaint.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Ruth Stringer

Redress Assessor

Core Business

Customer Relations.

 

Following this letter there was a large gap before sending my LBA I fell ill for a while and was waiting for aaages for Patricia Pearls Small Claim book to arrive, just so I could be fully prepaired if per chance the bank decided to put in a proper deffence, understand the process etc.

 

Therefore I only got round to sending my LBA off to them at the end of March.

 

I received no recognition for it, but I waited before filing for court (still haven’t done) because I was just sending a prelim for the Visa account at the same time and wanted to wait until I’d ran out the LBA time limit for the other account as well so I could tie the two accounts with the same claim. The Visa now ‘seems’ to have been sorted and I’m not concerned about that just now, so I’m back to the original Student Current Account for £1040 regarding the LBA mentioned above.

 

Since I had received no recognition letter, I checked with the Special Delivery receipt and it was definitely signed for, I’ve obviously kept the receipt.

 

I called the bank to find out why they have not sent out an offer or a recognition letter. I was quite shocked by their answer: They HAVE received the LBA giving a date coinciding with the special delivery date, but they didn’t send me out anything because my complaint was marked as ‘closed’!

 

Apparently they closed my complaint on the 18th of October because I had been “sent an offer” apparently for around £400. Now, because I didn’t reply to this offer (that I never received) the lady said "following the standard time of FOUR WEEKS RESPONSE TIME they closed my complaint on the 18th of October."

 

Now, I didn’t receive ANY offers at all from them, how can they say the did when you can look at the dates from the letters above which clearly state that they had bought themselves more time to give me a response. NO WONDER I HAVN’T RECEIVED A LETTER. I told them that I hadn’t received anything and they said they would look into it and maybe send me something out again, but I hadn’t noticed what I’ve just explained just now about the dates of the letters that they DID send containing discrepancies with the letter that they APPARENTLY sent and I didn’t receive.

 

There are only 7 days, not four weeks, between the 11th of October and the 18th of October, see what I’m saying?

 

Now what should I do? Is a wise move to resend the LBA with an extra paragraph saying some eloquent and clever wording which I’m not very good at basically saying that I never closed my complaint and never received your offer so I am asking you once again to give me all my money back or I will file for court in _ _ days time.

 

Or should I go straight ahead with filling an N1 or Moneyclaim. My fear with that is: I think there is a condition for filing a case that you haven’t rushed into it, that you have been willing to negotiate things before hand before jumping into court. I don’t want the bank waving me that letter that they apparently sent waiving me their apparent letter saying, well be gave you a full response with this letter offering you over a third of your money. Maybe? I don’t know.

 

So what’s next? What shall I do? Another LBA or Court Claim? If it’s another LBA anyone got any idea of some snazzy wording to add to the front, concerning my account being closed or whatever, if that’s necessary?

 

Any help much appreciated,

Cheers,

Ray

[hagenuk]

It's not a complaint, it's a claim for money. They cannot close it, because it is not theirs to close - send another LBA giving them just seven days then file your claim at the expiration of the deadline.

 

As for any extra paragraphs, nobody reads these letters that closely, it would be a total waste of time.

[asdf54321]

I'm in the situation that I've had an offer of £410 out of £1050 after sending my LBA. I’ve tried to reject it with a rejection letter and the Bank of Scotland/Halifax said that they can’t negotiate any more cases for the meantime until the OFT ruling. But I still had another two months to accept their pathetic offer if I wished.

 

I live in Bristol at and it looks like I'm going to have to accept it as I was just talking the courts today and they haven’t had any requests to remove the stays because of hardship accepted, that's NONE at all and various people have requested for them to be removed.

 

Sounds like a lovely judge or whoever makes the decisions there! As well as them putting ALL the cases on ‘Stay’ I have found out that they have knocked back all hardship requests so far!

 

My situation is that I've lost the good job through mental illness, I can't claim benefits of any type because my wife is a 'no recourse to public funds' stamp on her 'spouse visa' since as we just got married last year and she's from abroad and we obviously want to carry on living with each other in this country for the rest of our life.

 

Plus she has a standard £6.50p/h type job and I live with her so I wouldn't be able to claim anyway even if she was British.

 

I have rent arrears, council tax arrears, other bills arrears etc, court threats and have recently received another default.

 

So look like I'm going to have to accept the offer? OR would I be able to carry on negotiating the 'hardship situation' thing if I send the bank a rejection letter, detailing my situation with photocopies of my bills with lots of re letters and threats etc? I'm already late with last months rent and I have another one on the 25th and I may be forced to accept the £410 offer.

 

Is there a 'chance' that even if I sign for it, accepting 'full and final offer' that I may be able to get the remainder early next year should the OFT Court Case test case thing rule that the banks have to pay out the remainder even if they have signed for it?

 

Obviously there's some people that are going to say to me now, "we don't know as we can't predict the future etc etc, BUT what I want to know is there a CHANCE and is it one of the things consumer groups are pushing for? As well as pay outs of bank charge history to be made instantly with interest added on top, without having to write to request for it etc etc.

 

Are there other people out there at are hopeful that this may happen? That those people that have been forced to sign to accept offers due to hardship may have their remainder bank charges paid to them sometime next year?

 

Any help advice much appreciated,

 

Cheers,

Ray