Bank Charges - illegal?

Matlow

dchurch24 wrote:

How much notice did you give them before you said you would start court proceedings?

Ten days,guess I should do the summons,

carlih1

Dave

the letter in on the halifax section of bag

Carli

Narva

Hello can someone please point me in the direction of a letter to send my credit card company, they have slapped a 25.00 late fees on my bill, i have rang them, and they have refused to talk to me ref refunding the charges as soon as i mentioned that under the consumer act they could not enforce it, if i refused to pay. I need to send a letter please, see if they take notice of that.

has any one had any luck with HSBC?? i worked out i am owed £1,416 back in charges. I have given 14 days notice if not i will start legal proceducing. This does fill me with fear, as i have never done any thing like this before, and not in the postion to loose the court fees.

westernpromise

dchurch24 wrote:

Hi thanks for that - there is a list, but it seems to be just American banks.

I am downloading the trial now to find out.

Can you do 'time-line' type things - so you can see when things are due to come out of your account etc...?

This, I promise will be the last question about M$ Money.

Yep, you can do all that. Rumour has it that Money 2004 is better than Money 2005 - the latter was a bit more of a web browser and less of a money management tool.

Nationwide and Barclays, and I think also A & L, plug straight into Money. You just hit 'update' and it pulls all your data down for you. Amex creates a download file you have to manually import.

Try googling for a UK trial version. They do exist, or they did.

dixie_dean_2

Hi

I have started proceedings against Lloyds and when I check on the status of the claim it says "start" in one of the boxes. What should happen next and how long might it take? I would be very greatful if someone could PM me any info as I'm unable to check the forum regularly at the moment.

Thanks in advance.

dchurch24

Microsoft wrote:

The US, UK, French and International versions are no longer available. It is now not possible to try these before you buy. You will need to check your country return policies and purchase a version if you wish to see it. If you don't like it, you may have to return the software through the retailer's mechanism or direct to Microsoft.

Oh well - it looks like I'm going to have to buy a copy to find out if it does what I need it to do (namely, Egg, FD, Abbey and ING : )

MPH80

dchurch24 wrote:

Oh well - it looks like I'm going to have to buy a copy to find out if it does what I need it to do (namely, Egg, FD, Abbey and ING : )

Hi there,

Just to talk you though this. The ONLY bank in the Uk which integrates directly with M$ Money is Nationwide. It is the only bank to fully support was MS term 'background banking' and even then - it only allows you to download statements without actually logging on to the websites.

A number of other banks will allow you to download statements in a number of formats - the most popular being QIF (Quicken Interchange Format) which Money supports.

The easiest way to use Money is to enter the transactions yourself as and when you make them and then use the statements from the banks to reconcile the data against it. I use Money more as a budgetting tool and checker than to monitor my accounts and instead just make sure that the balance I expect to see when I log on (according to money) is the same as the one I do see. I haven't had any problems yet with fraudulent transactions - although I can tell you that two transactions from earlier this month have yet to show up on my AmEx card.

M.

barriejohn69

Not sure if this has been discussed but I have had Direct Debits due to come out on a Monday and the money taken out on the Saturday. This resulted in me being £1 overdrawn so I went into the bank on the Saturday and deposited some cash. However I was still charged £38 even though the Direct Debit was not due till the Monday. Im waiting on CS getting back to me as they have refused to refund this before. Whats my best option?

westernpromise

MPH80 wrote:

Hi there,

Just to talk you though this. The ONLY bank in the Uk which integrates directly with M$ Money is Nationwide. It is the only bank to fully support was MS term 'background banking' and even then - it only allows you to download statements without actually logging on to the websites.

A number of other banks will allow you to download statements in a number of formats - the most popular being QIF (Quicken Interchange Format) which Money supports.

This is true as far as it goes, but Barclays also supports Money. It does so in a differerent way. With Nationwide you just open up Money and connect to online services, and it pulls in and reconciles all your statements automatically. It recognises individual cheques and can figure out that your entry 'pay Amex' = the bank's entry 'direct debit American Express'.

With Barclays it sorta works the other way around: you go to their website and it hit dowload and after a pause you get the message "that's all done". When you go back to Money, you find it has been.

It's a bit of a b1tch that there's no UK trial version available - in that case, the best thing might be to get hold of a second-hand one off eBay, try it out, and resell it if you're not impressed.

It does require a substantial initial effort to set it up, but I find it hugely useful.

I used to do all this on spreadsheets but they don't lend themselves to juggling a lot of credit cards.

Curry_Queen

I'm interested to hear that there's actually a UK version of Money as I've always used the US versions (currently using Money 2002) and manually reconcile all my online statements, having the programme open alongside the web page. It's far easier to spot any erroneous charges this way as you go through each transaction individually, whereas you could miss them if you downloaded it straight into Money.

I always work a month ahead of myself too, so when I go through the bills and payments section where all my DD's, BGC's etc are stored, I will send them off to their relevant accounts as though they've already been received/paid, and then I can see exactly how much disposable cash I have left for the rest of the month. It's much easier to budget for any upcoming major expenses this way as I can allocate a regular amount to put aside in preparation and also plan my savings before I've spent it all

It takes a little time to set it all up, but now is the right time for anyone thinking of using this system as we're coming up to the end of the financial year, so there's time to get everything up and running for the new one in April and familiarise yourself with the programme as it has so many functions for budgeting, cashflow forecasts, financial reports etc. Once it's actually running though, it takes me literally a few minutes a day to maintain and input the day's transactions and about an hour once a month to reconcile and sort out the following month's budgets. If you want to be in full control of your finances this is one of the easiest ways to do it.