Bank Charges Financial Hardship Disussion

flugella

Hi all

Had a letter from Halifax today acknowledging that I am in hardship but that all they can do is offer me advice and not repay the charges! What do I do now - go to the FOS?

heidi32

hi, just wondering if anyone can give me some advice. i put in a claim for reclaiming charges in early 2007, my claim has been on hold now for nearly 2 years and now i find myself in hardship so am going down that route. the thing is in the time my case has been on hold, i have had lots more bank charges on my account and am wondering if i can add these charges to my claim aswell????? i had origionally claimed for 6 years dating back to 2001, but if i include the last 2 years of charges it will be 8 years in total dont know if this is a possability???? any advice????

gemma.f

Bank: HSBC
Amount Claimed: £726 + £57.72 interest = £783.72
Amount offered: £800
Date I started claim: 24/04/09
Offer Date: 06/06/09

I sent a financial hardship letter to HSBC asking for my bank charges to be repaid. within a few days I received a letter from them saying that bank charges were on hold, but they enclosed a leaflet, which had an income & expenditure form hidden away at the back of it! They said if I was struggling I could ring their Credit Solutions Dept with my income & expenditure details. It didnt get arounf to doing this until 14/05/09 and then HSBC said they would get someone to ring me back to to see what they could do for me. I waited for 3 weeks & then rang them back on 04/06/09 to see what was happening with my claim. The person I spoke to said I just need to wait & they will get back to me. I asked if I could contact the Team dealing with it direct & they said no, but I said I wanted to call them myself, so in the end he gave me what I thought was their no. It werent a no for HSBC, it was actually the Financial Ombudsmen. I explained to him what had happened & he sent a letter to HSBC that day (04/06/09) giving them 8 weeks to respond. I received a phonecall from a nice lady at HSBC on Saturday 06/06/09 offering me £800! That was more than I had even asked for, since I already had £1700 charges repaid in 2007! She said that If I am still in Financial Hardship in 2 months I can reapply again!!! They also offered me the choice of having the cash, or them paying my bills for me. RESULT!

natweststaffmember

heidi32 wrote: »

hi, just wondering if anyone can give me some advice. i put in a claim for reclaiming charges in early 2007, my claim has been on hold now for nearly 2 years and now i find myself in hardship so am going down that route. the thing is in the time my case has been on hold, i have had lots more bank charges on my account and am wondering if i can add these charges to my claim aswell????? i had origionally claimed for 6 years dating back to 2001, but if i include the last 2 years of charges it will be 8 years in total dont know if this is a possability???? any advice????

Add the last two years worth onto the claim since the FSA Waiver has meant limitations cannot be used to refuse to pay out.

natweststaffmember

flugella wrote: »

Hi all

Had a letter from Halifax today acknowledging that I am in hardship but that all they can do is offer me advice and not repay the charges! What do I do now - go to the FOS?

Do you have any priority debt arrears(mortgage/rent, utilities, council tax)? Did you complete and income and expenditure form with them?

natweststaffmember

rallyfan wrote: »

Hi all, this is my 1st post, but I have been using the sites letters in respect of £3.7k reclaimation, against the Halifax.;)

Basically they now state that the Hardship case will not be dealt (this is our final response) with :mad:and "if not satisfied" I should report to the FOS - should I head down the FOS route ?? Thanks. RF.

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

natweststaffmember

nick_n_lisa wrote: »

We started a claim to Halifax in March this year for charges dating back to March 2003 (6years). This is now currently in the hands of the FOS.

Having read the last couple of posts, it appears that we should have claimed from 27/07/01.

Should we make a revised claim? The difference would be about £900 before any interest.

Make the Ombudsman aware that you have made an error on the amount which is now, x amount and not the y amount you asked them about.

rallyfan

natweststaffmember wrote: »

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

Yes, in loads of trouble with Mortgage, some heating arrears on an old account which is in the hands of debt collectors (moderated by Payplan), our main unsecured creditors are being dealt with via Payplan too with a debt management plan.

My wife was made redundant in Jan and I have been on half pay since Feb, due to long term illness (probably starting back next week).

LJ1911

We are currently claiming bank charges back from Bank of Scotland (I take it this will be the same as Halifax). Anyway we got a very long winded 3 page letter from them basically saying they appreciate we are in financial hardship but they will not deal with our case until after the test case. In the meantime we would be contacted by money management who would offer us advice. Well I waited a week and still no call or letter from money management so I contacted the person dealing with our case in customer relations. He advised that he could do no more until I spoke with money management and it would be them that decide what was to happen with our case. He then gave me the number (0845 6039079).

I called this number and spoke with a very nice lady who went through my income and expenditure and she said it looked as though we were trying to get the best deals and keep up with payments etc. Therefore she said we would be contacted by CRs within 14 days with good will offer and they would suppress the charges for 3 months.

We are still waiting on reply from CRs but I have been calling every other day just to check on progress. I am not sure what the good will gesture will be as our claim is for nearly £3000 but it doesn't look like we will get anything near this.

Hope this helps as the letter they send out appears to be a final response but it appears to be money management that decides whether they will proceed or not. I think it is still CR that decides on the amount though.

Essess_2

rallyfan wrote: »

Hi all, this is my 1st post, but I have been using the sites letters in respect of £3.7k reclaimation, against the Halifax.;)

Basically they now state that the Hardship case will not be dealt (this is our final response) with :mad:and "if not satisfied" I should report to the FOS - should I head down the FOS route ?? Thanks. RF.

Hi Rallyfan
I have never posted on here either but have used the template letters to try to claim just over £3000 from HSBC.
I duly completed the I & E form and contacted them by phone as well as by letter.
Received a phone call today from HSBC who say that they have found that we are not in hardship because our income is £5 over the top of their "cut off" point for Hardship claims!
I told the man that because we had had over £500 in charges within 12 months then that was to be seen as indicative of Hardship. He said he hadnt heard of that and where had I heard that etc and could I hold while he checked with "the Team"...coming back to say No, that just means that if you've had £500 worth of charges it can be "assessed" for hardship!..and says NO because we are £5 over the top!
Amazing really when we went into the local branch for help with our finances and were told that it wasnt possible for us to cut back on anything as they could see we were just surviving as it was, and THEY advised us to go down this route!
Any ideas what to do now?
Thankyou:o