Bank Charges Financial Hardship Disussion

chicqa

bekki0405 wrote: »

They have 8 weeks from the time you challenged the legal hold due to financial hardship. I actually waited 8 weeks to the day for Halifax to give me a response, despite calling twice a week every week.
Which bank is it?

Hiya,
Thanks for getting back to me, it's Alliance & Leicester, It's been about 3 weeks so far. I hope they come through...

Chicqa

Ralphy101

Just to keep you updated with mine.

My complaint got raised to a stage 2 complaint, after nationwide declined my hardship case.

I have since chased them today 3 days after the upscale, and the chap i spoke to states he contacted the fees department who have stated they have 56 days ( 8 weeks) to respond.

Is this correct!?

Apparntely i cannot go to the FOS until this complaint has been closed. Is this to correct?!

It's making me very angry!

natweststaffmember

Ralphy101 wrote: »

Just to keep you updated with mine.

My complaint got raised to a stage 2 complaint, after nationwide declined my hardship case.

I have since chased them today 3 days after the upscale, and the chap i spoke to states he contacted the fees department who have stated they have 56 days ( 8 weeks) to respond.

Is this correct!?

Apparntely i cannot go to the FOS until this complaint has been closed. Is this to correct?!

It's making me very angry!

FSA timescale on a clean complaint where a final response has been given is 12 weeks. If you don't have a final response it may take longer.
To clarify, do you have priority debt arrears(mortgage/rent, council tax, utilities)?
Are there any payment plans in place to pay those arrears if they exist?

natweststaffmember

norwichkaren wrote: »

I am so going to scream in a minute! I am being driven mad with Halifax Bank and their stupid delaty tactics they keep playing!!! I have now been told that I need to call the Money Matters team who are a debt management team to go through my personal circumstances thoroughly with them before the Complaints team will assess my harship claim any further. They have already had an inc/exp form from me which was 3 pages long and very detailed already AND they have already accepted my hardship, but now I need to call them for an hours phone call to discuss it again? How is that helping someone in financial hardship?

I have lodged my case with the Info commissioners office today as their 40 days is up and I have filed a case with the BOS. Should I also go down the route of an online court case do you think?

karen, from the information you posted on here, I don't think you are in financial hardship as the waiver is interpreted in practice, however, I am gobsmacked by the way they are refusing to provide details that they legally have to do regardless of whether the account is open or closed.

natweststaffmember

levetti wrote: »

I am in the same position with Halifax Bank. I received a third letter (identical to the previous 2) stating that their money management team will contact me to discuss ways on how to manage my money. I am unemployed, with no partner, trying to survive solely on benefits and have a 17 yr old son in full time education who I obviously have to support financially as well. How can a money management team say I'm not in financial hardship?

I have called the FOS this morning and they are going to write to Halifax on my behalf to say they are dealing with my claim.

Will sending a copy of utility arrears, council tax arrears and bailiff letters help convince the bank that I am experiencing difficulties?

I would add an income and expenditure form(example below)
http://www.moneyadvicetrust.org/content.asp?ssid=38

independenttelford

Looks like a lot of banks use dirty tricks (or delaying tactics if you like). We like many others put in for a hardship payment from the abbey way back in feb 2009 , they claimed they didn't recieve our I & E documents , complete with all our documentary proof. This was despite that we had sent it recorded delivery. We have phoned them several times over the months and they keep moving the proverbial goalposts , first they said we would get a definate answer within 2 weeks , now they say there is no timescale on it???? But everytime we phone they always say that they have staff who goes into meetings to discuss certain cases and that they would push ours into that meeting and phone us later that day. Now this has happened on numerous occassions and we are no further forward. Our case was due to go to court in July 2007 and we are constantly fed up of being decieved by these people who treat us no more than idiots. When they phone us back later today i am going to give them 24 hours for a decision to be made (unless of course they make a decision today , but im not holding my breath) , then we will contact the FSA with every date and time of every phone call and every discusion and see where we go from there. Because we can't be the only one's that this is happening to and enough is enough , because they don't need to worry where there next meal or mortgage payment is coming from , do they? And they don't care about the damages they are doing to people , these banks monopolise our money , they make sure they get every penny of the bank charges and leaves us the consumer with a load of unpaid bills. In our case the Abbey were guilty of taking direct debits out early (if it had been on the date it should have been , we wouldn't have had bank charges) , they were also guilty of clearing cheque's we had written within 48 hours , yet it is supposed to be 3-5 working days.

Ralphy101

natweststaffmember wrote: »

FSA timescale on a clean complaint where a final response has been given is 12 weeks. If you don't have a final response it may take longer.
To clarify, do you have priority debt arrears(mortgage/rent, council tax, utilities)?
Are there any payment plans in place to pay those arrears if they exist?

Hi Natwest,

Yes as already advised i am £500 in C/T arrears, due to me and my ex partner breaking up. In addition i have financial commitments with her.

How long should i wait, 8 weeks or 3?

norwichkaren

Well - I have an update on my case as I have been bugging them all day long.

I thought I would use my initiave and call the money management team the bank are referring me to to speed things up, which got me through to a nice lady who was very helpful. She said what they do is assess my financial situation and run through all my details and see if they can help me before the bank pays me out.

She looked at my details and said she couldnt help me at this stage as she needs to wait for my files to be sent across to her team from my caseworker and this can take a week. But she said she would call my caseworker and see if she can get my details sooner so she can help me out today.

She just called me back now and said she and her team are going to be unable to help me as I have an outstanding debt on my HBOS Preference account and whilst there is a debt on it it is with the Collections team. If the collections are team are involved apparently the money management team are unable to get involved so she would need to pass the case back to my caseworker and progress it.

So I just called my caseworker again now, who was actually really nice and the first time I have ever been allowed to speak to him direct, and he said he will wait until he gets the email from the lady in the money management team and then reopen my claim again. He can see I have been accepted for hardship so he says he may be able to get an offer out to me now....BUT....he said as it is company policy he will still not be able to assess my claim on the account that is closed.

I mentioned I had logged a case with the FOS and the ICO and he said that they would instruct the bank on my closed account and until this happens he can only consider my open account.

This is so annoying tho as the closed account has around 3k to 4k of charges on it. The open account only has a few hundred.

Its progress...but not how I wanted it to happen!

mdes

we got a letter back from the a&l telling us that we were not in hardship and that i had enough income to meet my outgoings however we dont as i explained on the inc/exp form we have rent arrears of over 2k and to make ends meet each week we cant pay the rent as it is the only bill i pay by cash to my landlord?
what should we do next????

Ralphy101

mdes wrote: »

we got a letter back from the a&l telling us that we were not in hardship and that i had enough income to meet my outgoings however we dont as i explained on the inc/exp form we have rent arrears of over 2k and to make ends meet each week we cant pay the rent as it is the only bill i pay by cash to my landlord?
what should we do next????

Write back to them to disagree and state you are in hardship.
Include information/proof of your £2k Debt. And ask for them to reconsider their stance given the new information that has come to light.