Halifax - Grrrrrrr

fuzzipeg

Please bear with me, 'cos this is a long winded one...

Got married, set up personal and joint accounts with the Co-Op bank (who are lovely, can't say enough nice things about them). Mr Fuzz changed his paycheques etc. over to this new account in June '07. In July '07 we wrote to the local branch of Halifax requesting that the account be closed and the remaining money (about £8) be either transferred to the Co-op account or sent out as a cheque.

In August we were in the process of buying our first house together and in September we moved. To be honest, we forgot all about the Halifax and the £8 they owed him. I accept that we should have been more alert on this but, I think understandably (?), it slipped through the net.

In April this year, MiL reports that the Halifax are repeatedly 'phoning requesting to speak to Mr Fuzz. We write to the Halifax, requesting they cease, particularly as we no longer have accounts with them. The 'phonecalls continued.

In May they write to us at the new address with a statement showing that Mr Fuzz owes more than £100. It transpires that they didn't close the account and that a yearly DD went out in Feb for £20, taking him £12 overdrawn. Charges and interest had then spiraled this.

We have been in dialogue with the complaints people since then, who are adament we now owe £250+ (all bar £12 in charges, please bear in mind). Simultaneously, they have passed the debt onto a debt collection agency.

My anger lies at the fact they allowed a dormant account, clearly not in use, with no agreed overdraft and snowballed £12 by 2000%. Clearly disproportionate I would think?

Part of me says, "s0d it all, take us to court, it's all bank charges anyway". What do you lot reckon?

Cheers, F

hollydays

If it was me and i was told someone was trying to contact me-I would ring them,not write to them telling them to stop ringing me-it looks a bit dodgy.

Why on earth didn't you do the obvious-SPEAK to them?

berniesmaster

wow, i think i would be really angry bout that one aswell!!

fuzzipeg

The reason we wrote initially, requesting they stop calling the MiL was that, as far as we were concerned, Mr Fuzz had no account with them (for more than six months), so it must have been a sales call. MiL was getting upset with the calls, so we wrote to ask officially for them to stop.

Once we realised, belatedly, what it was about, we thought it was better to have written chapter and verse correspondence, rather than degenerating into a "he said, she said" nightmare.

You reckon we should call them now then?

Cheers, F

hollydays

Sorry,when I thought about it after,I did realise this was probably the reason.

hollydays

I am not sure what you should do now.
Hope someone else can answer this for you.
Only things that come to mind are,you should have sent the letter recorded delivery (in hindsight,but i wouldn't have thought to do this),or it would have just been easier to go into a branch to do it. Problem is they are saying they haven't received the letter,what about speaking to the Citizens advice bureau,or the banking ombudsman.Or even going into a branch and making an appointment to speak to a Manager face to face?

peachyprice

Did you keep a copy of the letter you sent to Halifax originally asking them to close the account? In hindsight this should have been sent recorded, but how were you to know this would all go t1ts up.

I guess it all comes down to how important a squeaky clean credit file is to you and whether you want to keep it like that.

I would be inclined to let them take it to court and enter a defence. However, as you didn't send the letter recorded it could be hard to prove that you ever sent it. You could raise the point that had they contacted you as soon as the unauthorised DD went out you only would have had £12 charges, and would probably have paid up and closed the account. You could also argue that they have deliberately not told you in order to keep adding charges to the account. Whether you would win in court is a bit of a gamble with no hard evidence.

However, as the account went into dispute in May they should have stopped adding further charges, and cannot pass it to a DCA , when you recieve a letter from the DCA and tell them the account is in dispute they will pass it straight back to Halifax.

fuzzipeg

The weird thing is, that early on in all this, they sent us a letter asking for permission to speak to the CAB on Mr Fuzz's behalf. We wrote a categoric "no" back, because this was before they'd even explained why they wanted to speak to him or that the debt existed.

I thought it was bang out of order that a multi-national bank was trying to hoodwink people into allowing them to speak to the CAB for them - thought the CAB was for citizens?!

This weekend I'll write back to the Halifax, saying we're slightly surprised that this has been passed on while we're still in dispute, and write to the debt collection people saying that we're in dispute so they need to hang on. This should buy us a few days to get to the CAB or something. I think they mentioned we could appeal to the Banking Ombudsman, so I'll investigate that too.

With all the stuff going on with bank charges etc. at the moment, surely they can't force us to pay more than £200 in charges for an original £12 overdraft, which was partly their fault anyway!? Can they?

Cheers, F

fuzzipeg

Thanks Peachey, our credit record is otherwise fine, and we have the mortgage we need and have a very good reputation at the Co-op should we need a loan in the future, so I'm tempted to let this one ride - besides, my understanding is that if we pay now, it's an admission of guilt and we won't be able to get the defaults removed from his credit file.

The other weird thing is that we weren't getting bank statements forwarded from the old address (we've paid for a redirect for the last year) which also contributed to our belief that the account was closed. It was when they started sending nasty letters that the bank statements suddenly started turning up again, correctly addressed.

MarkyMarkD

I'm not sure of the timeline as you haven't made it clear. But it sounds like you got married, moved house, and failed to notify Halifax of the new address or telephone number - hence the statements going astray and the phone calls to the MiL's house.

It is scarcely Halifax's fault for failing to get in touch if you didn't provide them with the correct details. Presumably you started getting statements again once you had - effectively - notified them of the change of address by writing to them from your current address.

The initial transaction which caused all of this problem was a DD which you'd failed to cancel with the supplier involved. That wasn't Halifax's fault either - given that they apparently never received the "close my account" letter, and certainly never acknowledged it, there was nothing wrong with them paying the DD.

I think you'll get a lot further by explaining that you wrote to close the account - but they didn't reply - and that you accidentally failed to cancel the DD and accept a bit of blame for that. And then seek to get them to refund some charges out of goodwill.

Your assumption that the Halifax calls were sales - and failing to contact them instead - is honestly pathetic. Companies like Halifax don't go making repeated sales calls to a wrong number without good reason. If the MiL had simply provided them with the correct phone number, this would all have been resolved a long time ago.

andyrules

Personally, ime I would strongly suspect that it is Halifax admin error, however, this doesn't help you now.

I think you have to act quickly in view of the debt agency involvement. Sounds like a good move to contact them and agency to make it clear you are taking action and not avoiding contact.

I'm not sure why the Halifax rang the CAB? Have you been for advice, sorry if I've missed that. The CAB would offer you advice now anyway, and I would want to know how significant the debt agency referral is and what you can do. Keep the ombudsman in mind, but hopefully, if CAB give you a process to follow it may not get there.

it does look as if the Halifax have committed a series of errors, the failure to close your account, not indicating that their calls were something other than marketing, and lack of bank statements.

Just a thought - years ago i had similar with them -they failed to pay my endowment, which resulted in us being uninsured - they even ignored hand delivered (in desperation!) letters. A strong letter to head Office resulted in swift apology and standing orders honoured. But then that was in the days before complaints departments;)