Santander (Abbey) - Bank charges - wish now to claim under hardship

[dizzy e]

In approx May 2007 I took on Abbey as it then was in a bank charges claim for £1358.50 (plus interest incurred) between August 2001-April 2007 which went to the County Court and was put on hold as a result of OFT Test Case same as everyone else's claims. Obviously following the High Court ruling which went in the banks' favour the County Court claim effectively ended.

 

Whilst at the time I started the claim we were struggling to make ends meet, I did not think we had sufficient grounds to raise hardship nor during the time the court case was active/on hold until it was effectively ended by High Court ruling. But things have spiralled out of control over last few years to the point where we are now in serious debt (and utilising the services of CCCS). I am confident we now meet the grounds for a hardship claim that the Financial Ombudsman wants to see.

 

So my questions are:

(a) if I make a claim for six years of bank charges under the hardship route through the bank itself initially and then subsequently through the Ombudsman scheme as necessary, should I claim for

(i) the six years from June 2005 to today which will be a different figure but probably near enough the same (and maybe I can get away without drawing their attention to the previous claim), or do I use

(ii) the six years that I originally used when claim made via the Court system (eg effectively May 2001-May 2007)? And if I do use same details as Court claim presumably I'll have to explain why I'm using that particular period which obviously highlights that I have tried a claim previously

(b) will it make any difference to hardship claim that although we are permanently at our max overdraft limit on said account and indeed frequently have DDs returned etc because if they were honoured they would take us over our maximum, in the summer of last year our account was changed into a "Zero" account and therefore for last year or so we don't now actually incur any overdraft/returned DD charges even when we go over our overdraft?

© irrespective of which claim period I use (see (a) above), if the fact that we declined WITHOUT PREJUDICE the bank's initial offer of partial settlement in July 2007 comes to light will that be an issue? I can understand that the bank themselves will probably raise that in argument, but if it gets as far as the Ombudsman will the Ombudsman be obliged to refuse the hardship claim because of it? If that's the case then there is no point even starting the claim process.

 

Incidentally, if we did pursue a claim and were successful then the amount we would likely receive would almost exactly equal the amount of our overdraft with them. Without a possible hardship claim we have no means with which to repay the overdraft amount. CCCS have suggested I write to them offering £1 per month as they are a non-priority debt and I can prove in an income/expenditure claim that that is all we can afford as we are struggling to meet our priority debts. I know it sounds a lot like blackmail but can anyone suggest a persuasive argument I could use along the lines of "if you refund our bank charges we can discharge our debt to you (you could do this yourselves directly if you don't trust us to do so), but if you don't then we can only afford £1 a month per CCCS advice".

 

Any help/suggestions gratefully received.

[rebel11]

Hi dizzy

 

Welcome to CAG

 

The guys will be happy to advise as soon as they are available.

[babaton]

hi,

 

i'm in exactly the same situation. after the banks won the oft case we have not proceeded any further, we are now in severe hardship and was looking to see if it could be reopened somehow, or do we need to start again, all the same questions as the original post.

 

any help is greatly appreciated....

[jammymack]

Snap!!

[BASSETT]

I did the same as you, had claim in for bank charges with Santander which was put on hold and subsequently rejected after the test case ruling. I had a loan with them that I now have a CCJ for and am currently paying off (2k approx left) so I wrote to them claiming hardship and requested £3151 of charges be refunded to me so that I could clear my CCJ. This week, I received a cheque from them for £1304 with a short letter stating "refund for payment made to your closed current account". I have no idea what this is for, my Santander current account was closed approx 4 years ago, my decision to move banks. So I`m intending to phone them Monday and ask what this is for, as it could be partial refund of the charges or something else. Anyway the moral of this post is, send off your claim. I didn`t expect anything and was pleasantly surprised to say the least:-D