Bank Charges Financial Hardship Disussion

natweststaffmember

mojoparrot wrote: »

Ive looked at the non priority and yes I have ppi on around 9 loans/cards that I have. Thats another story though. Tried to get some back at the beginning of the year when I started to get in trouble. Used some of the letters from the site but no go. Then in desperation took out some claims with a well known company who need paying up front. Was told that everything would be sorted by xmas by the rep who was my financial advisor. What a joke nothing has happened in almost 10 months apart from the rep pocketing £2800 from my dad. I have complained but the advisor clearly lied when the investegaion was underway and told me he never gave timescales. He also advised that I take out an IVA when I told him I was struggling and when I eventually contacted the solicitor he had passed my claims onto they told me that I would have broken the agreement had I done this and they would charge me for that!!
In hindsight I see that this advisor - who may I add is a fine upstanding member of his community and church - just took me for a mug and wanted the referral fee for anything at all I would sign up to conflicting or not.
If I ever do get out of this mess I will certainly never ever take on debt again. All the stress has lead me to be clinically depressed and sometimes I cant see a way out. All self inflicted I know. Really dont have the energy to take anything any further, thanks for your advice anyway.

I'm not letting you give up that easily either. Can you clarify if the company has your claim or does not have your claim?
Have they basically stated they are no longer pursuing the claim for you?
If yes, then we start the process and do it for yourself. When one door closes another one is going to open and I guess there are two questions.
1) What is the claims company claiming for? If it's the PPI then we take on the charges or vice versa.
2) if they have basically stated they are discontinuing any work for you then it's time you did the work. The PPI forum has some great posters who can help.

antilloyds

natweststaffmember wrote: »

Do you have priority debt arrears(mortgage or rent, council tax, utilities)?

yes i pay for rent and council tax.

natweststaffmember

antilloyds wrote: »

yes i pay for rent and council tax.

you pay or you are behind? Are any of the arrears being paid off?

~Chameleon~

First of all, apologies for jumping in with a question that may already have been answered in this very long thread but I really don't have the time to read through it all before I need to go and meet somebody to help them reclaim charges under hardship this morning.

It's a fairly simple question that I hope someone will know the answer to. When claiming under hardship rules is the bank allowed to take DLA into consideration as "disposable income"?

The person in question is in receipt of Income Support and DLA. Due to mental difficulties he's got into a mess with the bank resulting in £100s, if not £1000s, charges been levied to his account and has been left with no money to live on as benefits going into this account are swallowed up every month by more and more charges being added.

Some months ago he tried to appeal to the bank's better nature (ha!) to refund at least some of these charges and the CS agent went through a list if income/expenses over the phone and then said sorry but he has too much surplus income to be classes as a hardship case!!!

I feel this is grossly unfair as he couldn't even remember half of his outgoings off the top of his head like that and completely forgot to tell her the expenses involved due to his disability. He's since phoned and requested the forms to be filled in which I'm going to help with today. The bank in question is HSBC if that makes a difference?

natweststaffmember

~Chameleon~ wrote: »

First of all, apologies for jumping in with a question that may already have been answered in this very long thread but I really don't have the time to read through it all before I need to go and meet somebody to help them reclaim charges under hardship this morning.

It's a fairly simple question that I hope someone will know the answer to. When claiming under hardship rules is the bank allowed to take DLA into consideration as "disposable income"?

The person in question is in receipt of Income Support and DLA. Due to mental difficulties he's got into a mess with the bank resulting in £100s, if not £1000s, charges been levied to his account and has been left with no money to live on as benefits going into this account are swallowed up every month by more and more charges being added.

Some months ago he tried to appeal to the bank's better nature (ha!) to refund at least some of these charges and the CS agent went through a list if income/expenses over the phone and then said sorry but he has too much surplus income to be classes as a hardship case!!!

I feel this is grossly unfair as he couldn't even remember half of his outgoings off the top of his head like that and completely forgot to tell her the expenses involved due to his disability. He's since phoned and requested the forms to be filled in which I'm going to help with today. The bank in question is HSBC if that makes a difference?

The answer is ALL income and expenditure is taken into consideration including household income and expenditure and a decision made on that basis.

jamesc00999999999

i claimed hardship they owe me about 5000 grand with abbey and within a week they put 275 in my account so i sent another letter saying this was a partial payment and about a month later i got the same amount again for the same previous 12 months i think they have messed up lol so im sending the same letter again:money:

mum2009_2

I wrote to lloydstsb with a case of being in hardship as I am a single mother with two young children to support and I am having trouble paying my bills, someone from a division of lloyds phone me to ask me questions and agreed I am in hardship but as Like so many on here I had the same response that I will have to wait until the house of lords had reached a disision before they would consider paying back my charges. They never even wrote to me to ask if I wanted them to supply me with a unplanned over draft they just done it which I pointed out to them but their answer was still the same, you will have to wait for our disision as this case is on hold. So much for banks having to help with hardship cases.

MrsCabbage

Hi

I started with my bank charges claim against Abbey 3 years ago in December. We got all the way to court my husbands claim (August 2007), mine (September 2007) and at the time Abbey were not defending their cases but offering payments at the last minute. Lo and behold when I went to court they sent a barrister to defend. As it happens on that very day (August 2007) directions had come from the district judge that all bank charges cases had to be stayed pending the outcome of the OFT Test Case. The same applied when I went to defend my claim, although a different barrister, this one was not prepared and the judge awarded me £50 costs against Abbey (nice lady). We are owed some £5,000 between us (2 single and 1 joint account).

My claim has been on hold since then and during that time I opened a basic account with Nat West. My husband is a self employed contractor in the construction industry and this has been our downfall. Our Abbey mess started when I was on maternity leave (half pay) and my husband got laid off. Luckily with some help form my parents we managed to survive (just), but the charges were astronimical sometimes £400 per month.

I went into Abbey to see what help we could get and even broke down in the office and the woman just looked at me like I had 2 heads and suggested my husband get a bar job or something in Asda!

Anyway work picked up and we were fine. We had incurred a few charges here and there with Nat West but they were nothing to be concerned about (husbands wages went in late so a couple of dd's were missed). I did write to them and ask for them to be refunded and was told that nothing was being dealt with untiil the Test Case hearing was over.

Nat West even upgraded our Step account to an Advantage Gold. Well after working for the same employer for almost 20 years I got made redundant in March. I got an alright payout and we paid some debts off with what I got and also paid the mortgage 3 months in advance so that I knew we would be ok should work not come my way. My husband was still working but on a flat wage. We never got Working Tax Credits as both our wages on their own exceeded the minimum amount and the Child Benefit pays for our car and insurance and the tax credits were spent on lunch moneys and travelling. My part time wage just covered our mortgage and my husbands wage covered other bills and food. Our weekly food shopping bill is usually about £120-£150 as there are 5 of us.

I was claiming JSA but I got another part time job after 3 months. On the day that I got a call to start my husband got a call to say the firm he was working for had gone into liquidation. He has had 6 days work since 15 June. I have had to leave work at the end of October to become a full time carer for my mother and as you can imagine things are very hard. We are now totally struggling to manage on the benefits that we get and the Support for Mortgage Interest with our benefit claim does not kick in until 30 January so we still have to find the monthly mortgage payment of £1000 until then.

I have read some of the threads and it appears that people are having great difficulty in claiming hardship.

Would anyone advise if this is something that I would be able to do.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

natweststaffmember

MrsCabbage wrote: »

Hi

I started with my bank charges claim against Abbey 3 years ago in December. We got all the way to court my husbands claim (August 2007), mine (September 2007) and at the time Abbey were not defending their cases but offering payments at the last minute. Lo and behold when I went to court they sent a barrister to defend. As it happens on that very day (August 2007) directions had come from the district judge that all bank charges cases had to be stayed pending the outcome of the OFT Test Case. The same applied when I went to defend my claim, although a different barrister, this one was not prepared and the judge awarded me £50 costs against Abbey (nice lady). We are owed some £5,000 between us (2 single and 1 joint account).

My claim has been on hold since then and during that time I opened a basic account with Nat West. My husband is a self employed contractor in the construction industry and this has been our downfall. Our Abbey mess started when I was on maternity leave (half pay) and my husband got laid off. Luckily with some help form my parents we managed to survive (just), but the charges were astronimical sometimes £400 per month.

I went into Abbey to see what help we could get and even broke down in the office and the woman just looked at me like I had 2 heads and suggested my husband get a bar job or something in Asda!

Anyway work picked up and we were fine. We had incurred a few charges here and there with Nat West but they were nothing to be concerned about (husbands wages went in late so a couple of dd's were missed). I did write to them and ask for them to be refunded and was told that nothing was being dealt with untiil the Test Case hearing was over.

Nat West even upgraded our Step account to an Advantage Gold. Well after working for the same employer for almost 20 years I got made redundant in March. I got an alright payout and we paid some debts off with what I got and also paid the mortgage 3 months in advance so that I knew we would be ok should work not come my way. My husband was still working but on a flat wage. We never got Working Tax Credits as both our wages on their own exceeded the minimum amount and the Child Benefit pays for our car and insurance and the tax credits were spent on lunch moneys and travelling. My part time wage just covered our mortgage and my husbands wage covered other bills and food. Our weekly food shopping bill is usually about £120-£150 as there are 5 of us.

I was claiming JSA but I got another part time job after 3 months. On the day that I got a call to start my husband got a call to say the firm he was working for had gone into liquidation. He has had 6 days work since 15 June. I have had to leave work at the end of October to become a full time carer for my mother and as you can imagine things are very hard. We are now totally struggling to manage on the benefits that we get and the Support for Mortgage Interest with our benefit claim does not kick in until 30 January so we still have to find the monthly mortgage payment of £1000 until then.

I have read some of the threads and it appears that people are having great difficulty in claiming hardship.

Would anyone advise if this is something that I would be able to do.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Which is your main account?
Do you have any priority debt arrears(mortgage or rent, council tax, utilities)?

natweststaffmember

mum2009 wrote: »

I wrote to lloydstsb with a case of being in hardship as I am a single mother with two young children to support and I am having trouble paying my bills, someone from a division of lloyds phone me to ask me questions and agreed I am in hardship but as Like so many on here I had the same response that I will have to wait until the house of lords had reached a disision before they would consider paying back my charges. They never even wrote to me to ask if I wanted them to supply me with a unplanned over draft they just done it which I pointed out to them but their answer was still the same, you will have to wait for our disision as this case is on hold. So much for banks having to help with hardship cases.

Do you have priority debt arrears(mortgage or rent, council tax, utilities)?