stew1275 versus RBOS

[stew1275]

Ok we have started.

Letter asking for our money back with interest for charges over the last 6 years (worth a try rather than 5 years) sent on the 30th March 07 as below.

The Royal Bank of Scotland PLC

Customer Relations

Customer Central Support

First Floor

The Forthstone

56 South Gyle Crescent

Edinburgh

EH12 9LE

 

 

29th March 2007

 

 

Request for repayment of charges

 

Dear Sir/Madam,

 

ACCOUNT NUMBER: XXXXXXXXX

 

 

Our request

We are writing to ask you to refund to us the charges which you have levied from our account over the last 6 years.

We now understand that the regime of fees which you have been applying to our account in relation to direct debit refusals, exceeding overdraft limits and so forth are unlawful at Common Law, Statute and recent consumer regulations. If you say that they are not, then will you please demonstrate this by letting us have a full breakdown of the costs to which you have been put by as a result of our breaches, in order to reassure us that your penalties really do reflect your costs.

Additionally, it has now been confirmed that your particularly high level of penalties are considered to be unfair per se by the OFT who reported on the 5th April 2006 and are therefore presumed to be unlawful in the absence of specific proof to the contrary.

 

Your responsibilities

We would draw your attention to the terms of the contract which you agreed to at the time that we opened our account. It is an implied term of that contract that you would conduct yourselves lawfully and in a manner which complies with UK law.

 

We are frankly shocked that you have operated our account in this way as we had always reposed confidence in your integrity and expertise as our fiduciary.

We consider that your repeated representations that your charges are fair and reasonable are deceptive and that they have deceived us into agreeing to pay them.

Your concealment of the true nature of your charges has prevented us from asserting our right until now.

 

What we require

We calculate that you have taken £2460 plus £745.25 which you have charged us in overdraft interest for the sum which you have taken. Total £3205.25 .

We enclose a schedule of the charges which we are claiming with this letter

 

 

 

Our targets to resolve this matter

We hope that you will enter into a sincere dialogue with us about this matter and we are writing this letter to you on the assumption that you will prefer to do this than merely respond with standard letters and leaflets.

 

We will give you 14 days to reply to us accepting, unconditionally, our request in principle and letting us know a date by which I will receive payment.

 

If you do not respond, or you do not respond positively, within this time period, we shall send you a letter before action giving you a further 14 days in which to reflect. We believe that these targets are more than sufficient for a large company such as yours with dedicated staff and departments.

 

After that, there will be no further communication from us and we shall issue a claim at the expiry of the second deadline.

We have received a reply today requesting that since this is a closed account that they require account number, sort code and our names, everything that was in the correspondence we had sent, on receipt they will investigate.

We presume this to be a simple delay tactic, although they have been quick in getting back to us.

Do we submit the information again and state we will stick to our original timetable of 14 days from the original request letter before the final 14 days before action?

Cheers

from a pair of scardy cats in the norht east!

[stew1275]

On looking through some of the other threads the opinion seems to be to go down the FOS route, has this any milage in it and how should this be tackled given that we have requested our charges plus interest from the bank as per previous post.

 

p.s. with reference to the bank asking for account information ie. sort code, account N° and our names - the only info we hadn't provided had been the sort code, do we provide this information and give them a further 14 days to learn to read?

[Bigmac versus]

Hi Stew1275 and yes the FOS have plenty of power to force the banks to settle and have done on many occasions in regards to bank charges, the good points are you need not appear in court and therefore are not subject to possible costs.

[stew1275]

Thanks Bigmac, we will provide RBOS with the further information required along with a suitable letter, not sure how it will go -

 

Do we mention the FOS at this time to push them along or do we accept the 8 week timescale and hope to either settle (yippe) or get a final response without settlement and involve the FOS from that point.

[Bigmac versus]

My personal view is one that if you add into the LBA that you intend to complain through the FOS if you are not happy with their response they may decide to wait the full 8 weeks to respond, on many occasions they respond quicker than this maybe due to imminent legal action threat but you have no responsilbility or duty to inform them of your intentions of going through the FOS.

I would send prelim

then send LBA

If no response from them then i would advise them you are to complain through the FOS as they only have roughly 3 weeks left to respond to your complaint by then anyway.

Hope this helps

[stew1275]

Ok, this is the letter that we intend to send back to the RBOS and will include the original preliminary letter and charges with interest schedule - just in case.

Dear Sir,

ACCOUNT NUMBER:

SORT CODE:

Further to your letter dated the 3rd April 2007 please find attached the completed information sheet along with a further copy of our original letter dated 29th of March 2007.

We note that you have not provided us with a reference number and hope that this is an oversight that you will correct in future correspondence.

We will give you a further 14 days to reply to us accepting, unconditionally, our request in principle and letting us know a date by which I will receive payment.

If you do not respond, or you do not respond positively, within this time period, we shall send you a letter before action giving you a further 14 days in which to reflect. We believe that these targets are more than sufficient for a large company such as yours with dedicated staff and departments.

After that, there will be no further communication from us and we shall issue a claim at the expiry of the second deadline.

Hopefully this will clear up any lack of information that will "delay" their investigation!

[stew1275]

Ok update,

 

Letter back from Sandy Watt thanking us for the information and stating they will look into our claim.

 

We are very disappointed that you have failed to respond satisfactorily to our letter of the 11th April 2007.

We now understand that the regime of 'fees' which you have been applying to our account in relation to direct debit refusals, exceeding overdraft limits and so forth are unlawful at Common Law, Statute and recent Consumer regulations.

 

We would draw your attention to the terms of the contract which you agreed to at the time that we opened our account. It is an implied term of that contract that you would conduct yourselves lawfully and in a manner which complies with UK law.

 

We are frankly shocked that you have operated our account in this way as we had always reposed confidence in your integrity and expertise as our fiduciary.

 

We calculate that you have taken £xxxx plus £xxx which you have charged us in overdraft interest for the sum which you have taken. Total £xxxx.

We are enclosing a copy of the schedule of the charges which we am claiming. We have already sent you copies of this in our original and subsequent letters of the 29th March 2007 and 11th April 2007.

We require repayment in full of this money. If you do not comply fully within 21 days then we shall begin a complaint against you through the Financial Ombudsman Service without further notice.

 

 

This 21 day period will take us into the 8 week timescale for dealing with our complaint - is this taken from the date of our first payment request letter?

[Bigmac versus]

The 8 weeks as per FSA is from you starting your complaint, that would be when you sent the Prelim letter.

[stew1275]

Cheers Bigmac, letter to be sent tomorrow and will fit nicely into the timescale.

[stew1275]

Ok, we sent of the FOS forms since the 8 weeks came and gone last week and guess what -

We got an offer from RBOS is for the charges but without the interest, any ideas - we are happy to take the offer (I think) any views on the interest?

We still have charges to claim back on another account, but feel a lot better to pursue these since receiving this offer and thanks to this forum!

[Bigmac versus]

Well it could harm your court case if they defended saying they offered full payment of charges and the interest you pursue is judicial, however you are not going to court you are going through the FOS so the choice is yours i know they can make the banks settle including the interest.

You could take the payment offered as partial settlement and advise them you are to claim the interest via the FOS.

[stew1275]

The FOS have given a neutral answer, if we want the interest we have to show how this was calculated out and it may be less than we have stated although I doubt it as we used the calculator.

If we leave the interest then we lose out on £745.

It's like deal or no deal!

[stevokenevo]

i think what the FOS are saying is you have to justify the rate of interest you are claiming, i have seen other cases on here, were the FOS take the view if you are paid out at any rate above 8% it could be seen as undue enrichment.

They are not saying you are not entitled to it, but if you think you are, you will have to explain why clearly and convincingly(if thats a real word?)

 

Good Luck

[Bigmac versus]

Spot on stevokenevo just as i read it, you want the interest then request it showing your calculations and the rate you used it may delay the outcome but as you say its a lot of money.

[stew1275]

Thanks guys, thats helpful. I'm of the opinion to go for the interest but my partner is scared we wont get a better offer.

I think before the bank have come up with this offer so quickly that they are merely dangling a carrot. I don't like carrots, but my partner does!

I will look at how to calculate the interest and take it from there.

[stew1275]

Having just had a look at Martin Lewis's site again, anybody requiring help with the FOS forms can find a guide on there on filling in and also that you should indeed get that interest!

I think we will reply to the RBOS accepting the offer as a partial settlement and let them know that we shall continue with the FOS route.

Is there any straight forward way of showing how the interest is calculated?

We provided the calculation using ML's calculator from the start, is this enough?

[Bigmac versus]

Use the spreadsheets in here and if they disagree with your calculations i would be surprised.

[stew1275]

Just listed out the charge amount and date, etc onto the simple spreadsheet and get a £45 increase in interest compared to ML's calculator.

Presumably I can still forward this to the FOS and state the 8% interest rate in an accompanying letter as I note that when printed there isn't anything stating the rate, should this be added to the spreadsheet somewhere?

and - do I send this to the RBOS with a letter accepting the offer in part payment stating that the FOS are currently involved?

 

Thanks again for the advice!

[greendykes]

Hi Stew

Read your thread with interest as we are at the same stage. I calculated my interest using contractural so it is even more..I will have to explain this to the FO..still waiting for update from them. So will keep an eye on your thread..good luck.

[stew1275]

Hi greendykes,

Sent this letter to the FOS with a copy of the RBOS offer letter -

We thank you for your letter of the 12th of June 2007.

We have since received further correspondence from The Royal Bank of Scotland offering us as a goodwill gesture £2460.00 but without the addition of interest of £745.25 calculated at 8% per annum (non-compounded).

We can accept this offer as payment of the money removed from our account but not as a final settlement.

We have suffered years of stress, anxiety and financial difficulty caused by the continual charging to our account. As we were totally at the hands of the RBOS, we had no control over the loss of this money and therefore carry the costs to the next month where further charges are incurred and so on.

We feel that the RBOS have seized these charges unlawful at Common Law, Statute and recent consumer regulations, and failed in its customer duty by removing them from our account and thus depriving us of the use of the money.

Please find attached a schedule of charges including interest from the date of offence.

Not sure if this has any power but it is what we feel about the situation, it's a bit tricky to explain why we are entitled to get the interest and I'm not sure we have in this letter.

We shall see where this goes with the FOS!

Not sure if we should send a letter to the RBOS yet accepting the offer as part payment or allow the FOS to pursue in the meantime.

Presumably we would have to forward a copy of that letter to the FOS if we do.

The RBOS have left us with 8 weeks to accept the offer so we have 6 week left (if this has any importance of course).

[stevokenevo]

ok, this is taken from my statement of claim (through courts). you should be able to use a similair argument if not the same, with the FOS

 

The claimant claims compound interest on the amounts claimed - using the rate and method specified in the said contract, and applied by the defendant to monies it is owed. The claimant’s grounds for seeking to be compensated for the defendant’s unauthorised use of the claimant’s monies in the terms provided for in the contract, follow the principle advocated by the OFT - in its published guide to The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 - that “fairness and balance require that both parties to a contract are equally bound by it, and equally liable to pay compensation for failure to abide by it.”

 

[stew1275]

I'm sure many people will appreciate this, may take a wee while to take it in though - but very helpful.

 

Cheers stevokenevo!

[greendykes]

Thanks Stew..for the letter and advice

 

Lets hold hands together and see what happens:)

 

I will keep you updated of our progress

[stew1275]

Thats ok greendykes.

 

It's all trial and error, hopefully not to many errors though!

 

I think if we have problems taking in some of the jargon used in many of the templates/letters and threads on this forum then we are probably better with the FOS.

[stew1275]

Had a letter back today from the FOS.

 

Apparently the bank have told them that they have deposited the money into our account without the interest and admitting no liability.

 

1. We sent nothing back to the RBOS accepting their offer and forwarded this onto the FOS with the letter as posted earlier in this thread.

2. As far as we can see there has been no payments into the accounts that we have left with the RBOS and the original account had been closed ages ago, so where would this money have gone?

 

The FOS are taking this as dealt with unless we get back to them, we were continuing as the RBOS aren't offering the interest.

 

Also we had a trust deed which we were released from 2/3 years ago, will this have a bearing on things even if the RBOS weren't involved?

I have seen another thread where the payment went to the TD.