Bank Charges Financial Hardship Disussion

coxthorpe

we got a letter refusing our hardship claim as they said we had misrepresented our income (we hadnt) so we rang natwest yesterday to discuss and they caled back to say we had been accepted!!!
we will get an offer letter in the post aparrently - our claim was for £2800 inc interest - any ideas what we can exprect the offer to be?

mandij30

gemma.f wrote: »

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!

Hey Gemma, congrats on your success with HSBC.
Today I recieved the same as you did, a letter stating that until the test case was resolved, evrything is on hold. I also recieved the lil booklet with the expenditure form inside just as you recieved. And the telephone number to discuss help.
Now what do you advise me to do next ?? seeing as you have had success with them. All help is appreciated

Thanks
Mandi Xx

bells_on_it

Hi, I've just gone under collective consultation and will be made redundant within the next 9 months - my company has been bought and the headoffice where i work is migrating from Bristol to Manchester so redundancy is certain for me. All I am waiting for now is when. It could be either September or February and I will be having my 1:1's in the coming weeks.
When can i put in a claim for financial hardship?

mandij30

Ok update.....

After spending about an hr on the phone to HSBC today, they have said that I am not classed as in financial hardship because I have a monthly surplus of £56 disposible income. How they worked that out I'l never know because they are putting bank charges on every month for £125 so I'm down - £65 every month. I got no where with them and they said I couldn't claim the charges back.

There only stupid advice is to make cutbacks on my non essential outgoings. I'm already spending the minimum I can grrrrrrrrr
Where do I go from here ?? I'm seriously thinking about changing bank providers, I have banked successfully with HSBC for 12 yrs, and I feel that they have really let me down.

Il transfer all my banking to another bank and HSBC can go whistle for my Overdraft and bank charges. I have totally lost faith in them now.

Any advice anyone ???

Essess_2

mandij30 wrote: »

Ok update.....

After spending about an hr on the phone to HSBC today, they have said that I am not classed as in financial hardship because I have a monthly surplus of £56 disposible income. How they worked that out I'l never know because they are putting bank charges on every month for £125 so I'm down - £65 every month. I got no where with them and they said I couldn't claim the charges back.

There only stupid advice is to make cutbacks on my non essential outgoings. I'm already spending the minimum I can grrrrrrrrr
Where do I go from here ?? I'm seriously thinking about changing bank providers, I have banked successfully with HSBC for 12 yrs, and I feel that they have really let me
Il transfer all my banking to another bank and HSBC can go whistle for my Overdraft and bank charges. I have totally lost faith in them now.

Any advice anyone ???

Hi mandij30
We are in exactly the same boat as you with HSBC. I was on the phone to them yesterday and got the same message but it was because they said we were not in hardship because of £5! According to them we spent £5 too much on "entertainment"! I checked the income and expenditure form copy and under entertainment it said NIL! we cant afford entertainment as we are in Hardship!
I am writing to them again pointing it out. I also told them that because we had over £500 of charges in the last 12 months then that was indicative of being in hardship...he then asked where I had heard that as he hadnt heard it before..so i told him and he went away to check and came back to say no that means that we can be assessed for hardship, nothing more, and they have found us not to be so.
Mad!

rod1

emilyemily wrote: »

wrote to lloyds tsb claiming financial hardship, listing all my expenses, back up info, letters etc and my reasons being:
signed off from work since last year due to illness and living on benefits
lloyds overdraft over £2000 with bouncing payments
unable to make my lloyds loan payments - although I asked them for help they have refused and are proceeding with court action
gas, electric, water final demands or with debt collection agencies
unable to meet even basic living costs eg food as full housing benefit still does not cover my full rent (thats london rent for you)

Are far as I can tell that meets more than enough criteria.

Lloyds wrote back stating there is not enough evidence of hardship.

What does it take?? They are hands-down the worst bank around, if only I could get out of their clutches!

This might not help you but we were in the same situation ,could you open up a basic account elsewhere or pay your wages into a family members account. I did this and at least Lloyds can t take most of your money in charges.I agreed to pay £50 a month to clear our overdrafts £2676. i hope this might be useful .they do not care a !!!!!!.:mad:

rallyfan

rod1 wrote: »

This might not help you but we were in the same situation ,could you open up a basic account elsewhere or pay your wages into a family members account. I did this and at least Lloyds can t take most of your money in charges.I agreed to pay £50 a month to clear our overdrafts £2676. i hope this might be useful .they do not care a !!!!!!.:mad:

I went with Payplan for my debt management advice/plan - the first thing I did was change all my direct debits and pay credits to another (New) bank, basically started afresh with them - I left my £1,400 Overdraft with the halifax, they effectively closed that A/C down (now in view only mode on the Net) and Payplan now pay in about £12 @ month nom9inal payment to eventually clear it....................make sure your pay etc has gone in the NEW account before yo start with the new Direct Debits etc.....I think Martyn Lewis advises opening the "Umbrella" account before reclaiming charges as previuosly banks would close you down with not being able to get your pay etc, if they got wind you were claiming, though I don't think they are so bad now ????:rolleyes:

kittybanfield

I have started a bank charges reclaim from Nat West under the financial hardship clause as i lost my job in March of this year, the response i have had has been very dissapointing and unacceptable, even tho my financial statement clearly shows that i cannot reach my outgoings Nat west have said that i am not in financial harship and too take it up with the FOS which i did immeadiately.

The response time for simple requests such as more information from me took up to 19days they refused to contact me by phone or email to speed things up, i really feel they are just dragging there feet.:mad:

This is putting the whole family under stress as we are really struggling it seems that they really do no want too help with our situation, does anyone have any advice or experience of similar things?

natweststaffmember

rallyfan wrote: »

natweststaffmember wrote: »

I'm going by what I read on the sites home page, which mentioned either apply to the Small Claims Court for the amount claimed or submit to the FOS for investigation

Apologies if it says that but since the OFT test case the bank doesn't really care that much. The courts will stay any claim and the FOS figures themselves on hardship show that their waiver isn't working as it was intended. The FOS since they specifically introduced financial hardship has seen a payout figure increase by 3 whole percent. It's hardly gonna trouble the banks really. If the FOS or rather the FSA are going to have a waiver in place then they need to really nail down some proper way of determining a financial hardship case. The £500 worth of charges a year is quite frankly a nonsensical approach as it would mean someone have two charges per month to get to the £500 mark with two months in hand for good behaviour.

natweststaffmember

coxthorpe wrote: »

we got a letter refusing our hardship claim as they said we had misrepresented our income (we hadnt) so we rang natwest yesterday to discuss and they caled back to say we had been accepted!!!
we will get an offer letter in the post aparrently - our claim was for £2800 inc interest - any ideas what we can exprect the offer to be?

Less than you expect but it should be sufficient to clear your priority debt arrears.