Anyone had experience of a company/solicitor doing the work of reclaiming? (merged)

rizlathecat · 9 September 2007 at 6:46PM

:mad: Hi, we appointed Robertson Holbrook to act for us in the recovery of up to £2,000 in charges that Lloyds TSB have stolen from us in the past six years, I have included a letter we sent today 9th Sept 2007 just to give you all a general idea of what we, as an ordinary family are having inflicted on us by the pirates we bank with and the seemingly fly-by-night company we mistakenly appointed to act for us....happy reading?not.....
Dear Robertson Holbrook,
We write to remind you that we have a claim against our bank, which you acknowleged reciept of on 17/01/2007. We are disappointed with your lack of communication, which unfortunately betrays a lack of organisation on your part. On average, since we appointed your company to recover our money, we have been charged £180-£200 per month, making an average figure of £1,620 this year alone.
We now find ourselves in the position of having to enquire as to what your company is doing about this matter? The only communication we have had with Robertson Holbrook is ONE letter, dated 17th Jan 07, and a phone conversation, which we had to persist with as we were put on hold and cut off TWICE, making it look like you didn't want to talk to us. Nevertheless, we weren't deterred by this, so we rang back until we got to speak to someone. We were then told that you were waiting for Lloyds TSB to provide our statements, and that we would recieve a letter from yourselves in the near future, however, that was MONTHS AGO!!! Yet we are STILL WAITING to hear from you. This is an abysmal way to conduct a so called customer orientated business, and we regret that we appointed you to represent us, and if we had dealt with this ourselves we would have been refunded by now. We don't expect that this email we are sending you today will recieve any attention, let alone an answer from you, and this is highly disappointing
as we are constantly in the red, our bank is stinging us worse than ever, and we cannot foresee an
end to it. We have included an excerpt from the "Which," website just to remind you of your duty
to conduct yourselves on our behalf against our bank, and get our money back for us:
*******************************
If you don't have an arranged overdraft facility and you dip into the red, or if you go over an agreed overdraft limit, you're using what banks call an 'unauthorised overdraft'. A Which? survey in 2006 found that one in four of us had used an unauthorised overdraft in the previous year.

While it might be said that banks provide consumers with a certain flexibility by allowing unauthorised overdrafts, they're also raking in the cash – to the tune of an astonishing £4.7billion a year (as reported in Which? magazine, June 2006).

That's because they slap massive charges and interest rates on accounts that are in the red – even if the amount of the unauthorised overdraft is just a few pounds and is cleared quickly.

We think these bank charges are unfair and breach consumer contract regulations.

The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations 1999 state that charges can’t be disproportionate to the costs incurred by the bank. These charges cannot be used as a deterrent or a profit stream by the bank.
********************************
Now that we have made our position clear to you, we would like to present you with a clear opportunity to COMMUNICATE with us, our address, phone numbers and e-mail address are at the top of this mail to you, therefore, you have no excuse not to get in touch with us. Please do not ignore us any more, we are starting to tire of this long drawn out matter, and your complete ignorance of customer relations. After all, we are part of a large community of ordinary people who provide your profits by getting ripped off by our banks, and we think that we deserve better, and would like to let you know that the clock is now ticking, waiting for a response from you, and if no such response is recieved we will require that you provide us with all the papers and information re; our case, that you have so that we can either proceed ourselves or find a reputable organization to do it for us.
Some background information about us for your consideration, I am Mr xxxx xxxxxxxn, I am carer to my wife who is disabled, we have 4 children aged 12,5,3,2. My wife xxxx is on disability benefits, and today we checked our accounts via internet banking only to find that our bank has sent us £240 into the red by CHARGING us, and now that we are this far into unauthorised overdraft they will be CHARGING us again. This cannot continue, they are taking all the money that is meant to feed our children and run our household. What we are saying to you is that WE CANNOT SUSTAIN IT, and we have decided that we are going to publicise this grand theft from us, and if needs be, we will also publicise your company and your total failure in dealing with our case as it's now 9 MONTHS since you acknowledged reciept of our Form of Authority and we are still completely in the dark. We are not going to let this continue, and I will be on the phone to you tomorrow 10th Sept, with a printed copy of this email to read to you as I'd like to make sure that you take notice this time, instead of ignoring us like you have so far.

Regards,........................,.............9th Sept 2007.

I'd just like to know if anyone else has had any experience of this seemingly fly-by-night company, as we are not at all impressed. Lloyds TSB are crippling us financially with their extortionate charges, and I'm questioning the legality of this large scale theft from ordinary people like us.:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

Edinburghlass_2 · 9 September 2007 at 10:58PM

Rizlathecat, instead of asking/expecting RH to continue with your claim cancel your agreement with them now and start the claim yourself. Make sure you let Lloyds know that RH will no longer be acting on your behalf. As you have internet banking you with Lloyds you can in fact download your statements and follow Martin's step by step guide by sending out the first letter with a list of your charges. You'll find a great deal of help in the Reclaim Help thread which is linked in my signature.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/bank-charges

However, as said in the above posts, there is no such thing as "no win, no fee, so I would expect you will hear from RH with a cancellation charge.

Edinburghlass_2 · 9 September 2007 at 11:01PM

sammy_a_new_moneysaver wrote: »

Thank you Stokey 125 and Edinburgh lass for your advice.
I have myself checked on the claimsregulation.gov.uk website and bank-smart are indeed registered with them under a name of symmetric systems Ltd I confirmed wit with their address bank-smart is their trading name. I have made a formal complain to bank-smart but the email keeps bouncing back saying mailbox undeliverable.
So I have then made a complaint to claimsregualtion.gov.uk. As far as I can see on their website the maximum I should be charged is documents rec'd £45. as Abbey confirmed they had not har correspondence from them. Not the £150 plus Vat of processing as there was nothing to process??
Any further advice is greatly appreciated and needed. Do I pay or not? As invoice states charges will be added if payment not rec'd within 14 days.
Kind regards to you all.

I read the link about their cancellation charge and found it difficult to follow regarding the £45 charge so first of all I would write back and ask why their invoice is for the amount they state.

rizlathecat · 9 September 2007 at 11:05PM

Thanks very much...I'll get onto that very soon, and to be honest, I didn't know it was that simple when we appointed RH, but now I do and I'm glad I joined this forum so thankyou very much..

Edinburghlass_2 · 9 September 2007 at 11:06PM

As a representative from RH joined MSE perhaps they might like to comment?

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=5658675&postcount=14

rizlathecat · 9 September 2007 at 11:20PM

They're not good at communication mate, so I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.....I dunno, maybe they're deaf, blind and dyslexic...That would explain the communication problem I suppose!!!

snoopdawgydog · 10 September 2007 at 6:45PM

The no win no fee company that will charge you if you have insignificant amounts to claim, and will take more than 10% of your money, they take your statutory interest too. If you have been unfortunate enough like me to put your claim through them, and if they want to charge you for anything - DON'T PAY THEM. Don't fall in to their money making trap, and if you have, you may have given someone the right to hold and look at your statements, but that doesn't give them the right to be paid.There are many ways to write letters to get your money back, if you're prepared to look for it. That is surely better than giving up potential thousands to the likes of these.

Stokey125 · 10 September 2007 at 7:00PM

snoopdawgydog wrote: »

The no win no fee company that will charge you if you have insignificant amounts to claim, and will take more than 10% of your money, they take your statutory interest too. If you have been unfortunate enough like me to put your claim through them, and if they want to charge you for anything - DON'T PAY THEM. Don't fall in to their money making trap, and if you have, you may have given someone the right to hold and look at your statements, but that doesn't give them the right to be paid.There are many ways to write letters to get your money back, if you're prepared to look for it. That is surely better than giving up potential thousands to the likes of these.

If you have had a bad experience with any of these claim handling companies then you should go to https://www.claimsregulation.gov.uk and make a complaint about them.

rizlathecat · 10 September 2007 at 8:25PM

Whoever you use to reclaim your bank charges make sure it's not Robertson Holbrook, they are useless.

Robbiet · 11 September 2007 at 10:05PM

I have recently been cold called by https://www.bcrsonline.com who claim to be a company that can help you get your bank charges back on a no win no fee basis, rather than a %age basis like most other providers.

They claim to be owned by Tom Tom Communications but i can not see any mention of them on the Tom Tom website. It does seem odd to me that Tom Tom would get involved in this.

Has anyone else been contacted by them or does anyone know if they are reputable?

Its sounds too good to be true...is it?

Rob

Anyone had experience of a company/solicitor doing the work of reclaiming? (merged)

Comments

Categories

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free