Bank Charges Financial Hardship Disussion

zpacey

Someone please point me to the right direction, I applied for financial hardship with alliance and leicester and after being sent the income and expenditure form and filling it and sending it back I have today received a letter from them saying that they will not pay out and I have to wait for the test case.
I have priory debts including rent arrears of £1500, gas and electric bill £800.00, water bil £115.00 and on top of that I also told them that I lost my husband three years ago through cancer he was the main bread winner and I'm now a full time student at university and have two children aged 3 and 5years old. I'm left with nothing and haven't paid any of my loans and credit cards for nearly 2 years now.

I sent them my husbands death cert as well, now if that isn't enough to show am on financial hardship what is? Please someone help me out as am at my ends wit.

esmerellda

Hi zpacey, will need a bit more information from you and a copy of the letter you sent to A&L to reclaim charges and your IE sheet showing your income and expenditure (sorry i know it sounds like a lot but its hard to help properly without all the relevant information) and we can write back and appeal and elevate the case to the financial ombudsman (quicker to appeal to the bank first tbh)

A&L have to, as per 19th march letter to them from the FSA, detail exactly why they have assessed you as being not in hardship, so if there is any further information on the letter let us know.

Also they have to take into account when the charges were incurred, if in the period of hardship or if they contributed to creating hardship (so really charges over past 3 years could be what they are looking at).

completely understand if you wouldnt want to share the information in as much detail and will help as much as i can without, just much simpler to be able to advise. If you prefer you can PM me.

sylv1

Hello,

Posted about my fianancial hardship goodwill payout from Barclays last week, and said I was waiting to hear about OH's account...had a letter this morning asking him to complete a budget sheet, but am confused as they accepted hardship for my personal account and the joint account, but are now asking for more details on his personal account....I will fill in the form but just wondered if it is worth quoting the reference number of the joint account claim and asking Barclays why they have accepted hardship on the joint account but not on his personal account.?
Thanks for all the help on here and anyone just starting out, keep going, it is such a lovely feeling to see an entry on the account stating "goodwill gesture"

Natski

lucror wrote: »

Hi,

I recently sent letter 1 from this site to HSBC regarding bank charges, I claimed financial hardship as I believe I currently have a case for hardship.

I've today received a letter back, saying the usual regarding the test case, and that to be considered under hardship I should complete a form and telephone a telephone number having the results to hand.

Is this normal, I don't really feel comfortable discussing the complaint over the phone and would much rather have the paper trail of traditional postal mail for my records, a telephone discussion can quickly turn into mistakes being made and me agreeing to something that I might not had I been given the time to think.

It specifically states on the form though that it isn't to be sent back to HSBC and is purely for my records.

Is this something that can be continued via post, despite HSBC's requests to continue via telephone?

Thanks in advance.
L

Hi Lucror,

I'm going through the same process at the moment and felt the same as you - I wanted a paper trail, as HSBC are crafty so and sos and I don't trust them. I ignored their telephone call request and just sent my form back, recorded delivery, to the manager at my local branch, which they then forwarded to the relevant department. I've since received a half-baked reply (I won't go into it here), but they told me to direct any further correspondence to this address, so I would advise posting your I&E form (keep a photocopy) directly to them (recorded delivery, of course):
HSBC
Sheffield Collections
5th Floor
City Plaza
2 Pinfold Street
Sheffield
S1 2GU

Hope this helps, and good luck!

N :cool:

natweststaffmember

Sillybrit wrote: »

It doesn't sound like this is Barclay's final response - it it does say it is, go straight to the FoS with your hardship complaint. Otherwise, write back to Barclays and ask that they reconsider your hardship status. They should send you some income and expenditure forms. I recently won £630 from them for hardship, so don't give up, it can be done.

Without a final response then you are looking at at least 12 weeks and I think more without it. My advice is substitute "default fees" with "unauthorised overdraft charges"

natweststaffmember

Natski wrote: »

Hi Lucror,

I'm going through the same process at the moment and felt the same as you - I wanted a paper trail, as HSBC are crafty so and sos and I don't trust them. I ignored their telephone call request and just sent my form back, recorded delivery, to the manager at my local branch, which they then forwarded to the relevant department. I've since received a half-baked reply (I won't go into it here), but they told me to direct any further correspondence to this address, so I would advise posting your I&E form (keep a photocopy) directly to them (recorded delivery, of course):
HSBC
Sheffield Collections
5th Floor
City Plaza
2 Pinfold Street
Sheffield
S1 2GU

Hope this helps, and good luck!

N :cool:

Have you received a response yet?

and be careful cos HSBC can say that they complied with the waiver on Financial hardship

"6.
Where the firm does not have sufficient evidence to assess whether or not the complainant is in fact in financial difficulty, the firm will seek such further relevant information as is reasonably required to make that assessment. In the event that the firm reasonably requires relevant information to be provided by the complainant and the complainant does not provide the requested information within a reasonable period of time, the firm shall not be obliged to treat such a complainant as being in financial difficulty."

natweststaffmember

sylv1 wrote: »

Hello,

Posted about my fianancial hardship goodwill payout from Barclays last week, and said I was waiting to hear about OH's account...had a letter this morning asking him to complete a budget sheet, but am confused as they accepted hardship for my personal account and the joint account, but are now asking for more details on his personal account....I will fill in the form but just wondered if it is worth quoting the reference number of the joint account claim and asking Barclays why they have accepted hardship on the joint account but not on his personal account.?
Thanks for all the help on here and anyone just starting out, keep going, it is such a lovely feeling to see an entry on the account stating "goodwill gesture"

I would complete it. I suspect that the banks' have got to keep Income and Expenditure forms on all hardship cases to prove that they have assessed customers for financial hardship.

zpacey

zpacey wrote: »

Someone please point me to the right direction, I applied for financial hardship with alliance and leicester and after being sent the income and expenditure form and filling it and sending it back I have today received a letter from them saying that they will not pay out and I have to wait for the test case.
I have priory debts including rent arrears of £1500, gas and electric bill £800.00, water bil £115.00 and on top of that I also told them that I lost my husband three years ago through cancer he was the main bread winner and I'm now a full time student at university and have two children aged 3 and 5years old. I'm left with nothing and haven't paid any of my loans and credit cards for nearly 2 years now.

I sent them my husbands death cert as well, now if that isn't enough to show am on financial hardship what is? Please someone help me out as am at my ends wit.

UPDATE:
Just spoken to someone from A&L and told them I wasn't happy with the response I got, I told them they need to pin point why I dont qualify for hardship as they just didn't give me any reason on the letter they sent, she took all my details and said she had reopened my file and that I should receive another response once they had re-evaluated my circumstances, I told her that I was going to give them 7 days to reply an am following the conversation today with a letter and if I didn't hear from them within those 7 days I would forward my complaint to FOS, she seemed nice and put all that down, so fingers x this time I get a favourable response. I've just finished writing the letter using the template here and putting it in the post today.

natweststaffmember

zpacey wrote: »

UPDATE:
Just spoken to someone from A&L and told them I wasn't happy with the response I got, I told them they need to pin point why I dont qualify for hardship as they just didn't give me any reason on the letter they sent, she took all my details and said she had reopened my file and that I should receive another response once they had re-evaluated my circumstances, I told her that I was going to give them 7 days to reply an am following the conversation today with a letter and if I didn't hear from them within those 7 days I would forward my complaint to FOS, she seemed nice and put all that down, so fingers x this time I get a favourable response. I've just finished writing the letter using the template here and putting it in the post today.

Once you get a response we will work on something for the FOS. Please do not do a templated complaint to the FOS cos it will waste your time and will take longer than 12 weeks(which is timescale on a clean complaint).
You need an income and expenditure form completed(have you got that?)
You need copies of all correspondence.
You need list of charges back to July 2001(if you have them).
Their Final Response letter(awaiting that one)
Plus you need to have an argument based on that Final Response.

Will have a look back cos I think amethyst asked about priority debt arrears(mortgage/rent, council tax, utilities)? Have you got those?
From those arrears are there any repayment plans in place?

natweststaffmember

ignore priority debt arrears bit as I read back to your original post.