Any one taken on HFC??

[GASS]

Hi

 

I have succesfully tackled RBS and won earlier this year and am just about ready for taking on the others.

 

One that I have is 2 accounts with HFC, just prepared the Subject Access Request, but what I would like to know is:

 

Has anyone also taken them on and is there any advice you can offer when dealing with them?

 

Onwards and upwards

Cheers

[Parkvale]

Here is someone else who is claiming against HFC.http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/other-institutions/91513-russjo-hfc.html

[Russjo]

Wow :o that's the first time I've seen my name in lights . Not sure if you've read my thread yet, but I too have two claims against HFC. It started with one account which they then closed and restarted on a new agreement. They respond very quickly to letters and to the SAR, I was starting to think they were bored up there :D they responded to the last letter in a matter of 2-3 days. The one thing I would suggest is that you go through the transaction details in fine detail. The account I'm claiming on at the moment only had £75 worth of charges, but there are £120 worth of discrepancies. They offered me £37.50 after the first letter, doubled that on the LBA but are denying that there are any problems with their accounting. They've got until next Tuesday. I've subscribed to your thread and will keep an eye open for you . I'm still reasonably new to all this myself but if I can help in any way I sure will

[GASS]

Hi

 

Thanks for taking the trouble to reply to this, I sent of the SAR on 13 June and I have received in teh post this morning a list of all transactions on both my accounts.

On one account the charges that have been applied have been removed again within a month, but the funny thing is the balance on the account did not rise with the charges but remained the same. Also on looking at both of the accounts and doing my own sums with excel spreadsheet and own fingers on calculator the amounts don't add up, witin 3 transactions there was a £10.00 difference and yep it was in their favour.

 

Is this the normal type of thing with HFC? Also I don't know if I was charged PPI on these 2 accounts, as the interest is added on intermittently throught out the transaction listing and they did not send copies of contract, mind you I was very specific in what I asked for so maybe I should also go back and ask for the contracts, they did however return my cheque for the SAR.

 

I can see fun times ahead, and I'm not the best (in fact not ashamed to admit it) with figures and interests, they just don't tick my boat so any help would be great.

 

Thanks muchly

[phatram]

Took on marbles (HFC) and found them to be very helpful and they paid up without too much hassle.

[Russjo]

Hey guess what, I've had exactly the same problem. After much tooing and froing, I managed to establish that when they show an admin fee on the account, the account doesn't increase, but they deduct a bit from the payments. I had £75 worth of charges and they took back over £100 in payments towards admin charges. Also, they took £100 worth of payments and the balance only decreased by £16. In total I worked it out that they owed me £194, of which £120 is their mistakes. They offered £37.50 after the first letter, £75 after the second letter and I haven't heard anything since. So it is worth treble checking all transactions on HFC accounts, because they can't add up

[GASS]

I would not know how to go about wording the letter to them, luckily on the first account I have looked at by my quick calculations we should only owe them £3.50 (ish) but they have our outstanding balance showing as £102.00, I must admit on first glance it looks like they have refunded the charges, but when you think about it the outstanding balance states they have not refunded them.

 

The second account I have yet to look at this one we paid off in the middle of last year so should get some money back on this one.

 

I don't even know if they have added PPI to the 2 accounts - so would this also be worth looking at? Something else to get to grips with.

 

Any suggestions on wording letters would be great.

[Russjo]

On the first account, what to do you mean by they look like they have refunded the charges? What type of letter are you planning to send and what letters have you sent so far?

[GASS]

With the first account they have charged Admin charges £15.00 and then refunded them later on in the account, Admin Waiver which I assume is refunding the money back to the account, though when they have added charges and waived them the balance of the account has not rissen or fallen.

I suppose with this account I need to query the way they have managed it, as I make my balances different each time a payment is made, i.e. £10.00 from £358.43 HFC balance is £353.10 ! I make that £347.55, in effect have only paid £5.33, so where is the other £5.55 ? bearing in mind they have taken interest on top of that as well ? There fore I make this account paid apart from £3 odd, but HFC still have an outstanding balance of £102. Should I be claiming interest back on this outstanding balance, if so how do I do that ? Sorry to be so ignorant, but cannot deal with interest and the likes.

 

The second account we have with HFC has run a lot better apart from the fact there are £60.00 charges and we have over paid by £11.00 on the account.

 

So in effect I need to claim the charges back and the £11.00, so should be able to use letters that I used with RBS.

[Russjo]

Okay, what I managed to find out through my experience is that every time you make a payment, they take a proportion to reduce the balance and the remainder goes towards Admin Fees. Same thing happened with me, they would apply an Admin Fee of £15 and the balance didn't move. But every payment you make doesn't reduce the balance by the amount paid and the remaining figure is applied to Admin Fees, therefore, I would say (IMO) you should claim back all the amounts that they have taken on each payment. They had charged us £75 in Admin Fees, but when I added up all the money they had taken it added up to £105 therefore, they had taken £30 too much towards the admin fees.

 

As for the interest, I think you need to use one of the Advanced spreadsheets to calculate this. Personally I found the whole issue very complicated and decided to exclude interest, but that is a very personal decision. You're not ignorant at all, like I said, I've had enough trouble understanding the basics of this claim, let alone baffling myself with interest. They have probably charged you interest on the admin fees, so it's up to you whether you proceed including this.

 

I too have a second account with HFC which again like yours, is more straight forward, but to be quite honest, I've got so many on the go at the moment, I'm going to try to settle some before proceeding with this one, and time is on my side with that one as the account didn't start until 2002.

 

The letters to use are exactly the same as the bank charges, but because of the miscalculations, I have needed to doctor them a bit, other than that, away you go.

 

Good Luck and if you need any more help, just shout. I've just filed my claim with them, so I'll be able to give you some idea as to how they are handling it

Jo

[GASS]

Right off and running now, sent letter with schedule of charges, explained wanted them back and also queried the way the first account was handled. Suprised to have a received a letter back within 5 days basically saying tough that is what we signed up for when we took out the agreement, they have even sent a copy of the T&C with the text highlighted.

Absolutely no comment on why the 2 accounts have been run differently.

So looks like it is going to be a battle will get the other letter drawn up and sent this week.

 

have also started on Capital One as they have been charging us left right and centre, for late payments, even if it was one or two days late getting to their accounts, have to laugh though, they have sent a break down of the actions they have taken to contact us, they had to send a 6 page document detailing the acronyms they use in their recording system. They also claim to have sent us Text messages, well I for one have not signed up for that and have not had any text messages.

 

Russjo - just wondered how you were getting on with them?

 

GASS

[GASS]

Am just about to reply to HFC letter, when reading it again they have stated that they are not legally required to proivde a full breakdown of their costs to show how their charges reflect their costs. Is this correct?

 

Russjo how are you getting on with them?

[Curlyben]

Yep that is indeed correct they aren't LEGALLY required until you get to court

[GASS]

Okay thanks,

 

One other thing I have just notice on their lovely letter, is they have stated after their bumpf about not accepting the OFT published findings is

"HFC Bank has carefully considered the OFT's publication but does not accept the principlie that its finding apply to your type of account"

 

I was under the impression that a default charge related to writing letters, telephone calls, dealing with unpaid cheques, direct debits or other items. This is also stated in their T&C as reasonable administration fees.

 

Do I still push on with this claim?

 

[Curlyben]

They are hardly going to say that they agree with the OFT's findings are they ??

The same principles of Bank reclaiming and the UTCCR apply equally to any financial institution.

 

Continue with your claim and once it gets to court ensure you file for full disclosure.

[GASS]

Thank you Curlyben

 

Onwards and upwards....

[Russjo]

Hi GASS,

My claim was going through the courts, but as they are a subsidiary of HSBC and I was using the UTCCR in my claim, the court has now stayed my claim until the outcome of the test case. To be honest, I haven't got the time or finances at the moment to try and get the stay lifted. I will shortly start my second claim against them and see what happens and see that into court as well if necessary. What makes me laugh, is that they've managed to get it stayed, but it wasn't a current account and therefore, really it should have continued. Plus it wasn't all charges, they made a number of muck up's on the administration of the account, but I'll wait to see how it all pans out. Good luck with yours

Jo

[GASS]

It's quite a while since I did anything with this post, and indeed with HFC,

 

Having picked up the file I noted that nothing has happened at all, not a bean from HFC, not made any payments to them either since I queried the accounts and how they had run.

 

Now my question is this, do I re start and continue with the claim where I left off, OR do I leave it and see what happens.

 

Just wondered how anyone else got on with HFC, Russjo, you were going through with a claim, what happened with it?

 

GASS

[GASS]

Bump