How to charge for your letters etc.

[The_Badger]

Your court claim may include costs.

 

I think its best to only claim the costs of the letters after you start the court stage. That way you can claim you gave the bank/Credit Card a reasonable opportunity to reach a settlement prior to the court stage.

 

Doing this throws a sharp constrast between your willingness to be completely open and the fact that the bank / CCard co. won't explain in detail their costs.

 

I have been trying to work out how to calculate the cost of my correspondence with my bank / credit card.

 

I decided that the best way was to work out the cost of electricity, consumables, postage and then the wear and tear on the equipment.

 

Electricity: I added together the wattage use of all the parts of my computer to get the total watts per hour.

All electrical appliances have a power rating in either Watts or Amps on them - usually a label on the plug or on the back somewhere.

If its in Amps you multiply that by the volts (240v for most equipment) to get watts.

 

total that up and you have the power usage per hour for your equipment (don't forget lighting - bulbs are rated in watts so its easy)

 

Then look at your electricity bill and get the cost per unit (one unit is a kWh - or 1000W per hour) - your bill will quote it before VAT so multiply it by 1.175 to get the full value.

 

Use this to cost the power per hour of your computer, printer, lighting etc.

 

Consumables:

You can just use my figures as they are based on pretty average costs for paper and envelopes etc.

 

Ink - I figure that my cartridge will do about 1000 pages per cartridge. so I divided the cost of the cartridge by 1000 to get the cost per page.

 

Don't forget you print off three copies of everything - one for the bank, one for the court and then one for your files.

 

Finally the wear and tear.

This was the hardest bit.

I estimated the value of my computer equipment and then decided that if I used it 24/7 it would last about 2 years before being worn out.

So I divided the value of my equipment by 730 (365 days x 2) to get the daily depreciation.

Then divided that by 24hours to get the hourly rate of depreciation / wear and tear.

 

I figure every letter takes at least an hour each.

 

Here is my costings explanation:

 

 

Explanation of Costs.

 

 

Electricity

Power usage:

Lighting: 1 bulb 100W

Printer: 60W

Computer:

CPU: 500W

Monitor: 600W

Peripherals: 180W

Computer total: 1280W

Total Power usage: 1440W

 

Total power usage = 1440W (1.44kW per hour)

Cost of electricity: 11.64pence per kWh

 

Total usage 16.76p per hour.

 

Wear and Tear on Equipment:

Total cost of equipment £2500.00

Expected normal life: 2 years.

Depreciation per day £3.43

Depreciation per hour 14.3p

 

Consumables:

Paper 1.4p per page

Envelopes 0.19p per envelope

Ink 2.3p per page.

 

All letters are printed in triplicate and distributed as follows:

• Defendant copy
  
• Court copy
  
• Claimant’s file copy

Postage:

All letters posted Royal Mail 1st Class Next Day Signed For.

For a letter up to 5 pages £1 per copy - 2 copies (Defendant & Court):

 

Example letter:

2 page letter + updated statement (total 3 pages).

 

Electricity 1 hours x 16.76p 16.76p

Equipment Depeciation: 1 x 14.3p 14.3p

Paper: 9 x 1.4p 12.6p

Ink: 9 x 2.3p 20.7p

Envelopes 2 x 19p 38p

Postage 2 x £1.00 £2.00

Total 302.3p

Total: £3.02

[The_Badger]

There is a potential draw-back to claiming your costs for letters etc:

 

The bank might decide to claim the same rate for the letters they sent saying "you're account is over your overdraft level etc....." and make the charges your claiming back the same level as your charges to them!

 

Before court you can ignore this, but once you get into court the judge might just think thats reasonable... but its unlikely.

 

Your argument against this would have to be: your a private individual and have to devise and write each letter in full and do all your own calculations. Whereas they are a large company sending out letters much more often and thus the cost of a proforma letter generated by a computer would be considerably less. The time taken for them to write a letter to you is probably only 2seconds - as such the wear and tear, electricity etc. is lower and the volume they are producing means they have an economy of scale for the paper, envelopes etc.

 

But you should consider this before deciding to charge the costs of the letters.

 

Good luck

 

The Badger