Help what should i do? Unfair charges/default/Horrible FOS person

Serendipity_phoenix

Sorry if this is a bit long, but I need to try and explain the situation....

When my hubby and I got married (Aug 06) I contacted the council as I had been claiming housing benefit/council tax benefit/child tax credit, as a single mum, hubby wasn't earning much, so we thought we may still be entitled to a little help,

instead of reassessing, HB and tax office, stop the payments and view you as a totally new case - this is where the problems began.

we needed to find a £650 p.c.m rent and living expenses on about £700 a month - you cant do it,

due to the stress (we had personal problems as well, i had left an abusive relationship in 2005 and when my ex found out I had married he kicked off big time)

hubby when on sick leave (end of Sep 06), I updated the details with HB/tax office again and guess what, they view that as a new claim too, HB inform us they are very behind with claims and it will be at least 8 weeks before our claim is looked at. (in the end it took 7 months)

This leaves us on SSP and child benefit (child tax being worked out) total of about £100 a week.

We start to use our over draft (carefully) and a Flexi loan of £1000 from HSBC to pay our rent, buy food, pay bills and get our 6yr old son to school, with rent of £650 this doesn't last long!

We go into HSBC to explain the situation, and they tell me my credit rating is to good to offer help! and just try to repay the OD!

Soon we are at the stage we cant even afford food! but HSBS send us a letter saying we have gone over our over draft, but it is ok, the fee for telling us that £125! this happens again and again.

We get some housing benefit (the period when my hubby was working) paid in, HSBC take it and swallow it up in charges, I go into then and explain that was our rent money, they say tuff, They start to hound us 24/7 letters, phone calls etc, when we go into the branch, they say there is nothing we can do!

We open an account else where (June 07) and move all dealings there, by this time hubby is on long term sick (incapacity not SSP) so new claim for HB put in again!

We go to HSBC to try and work out a repayment plan, overdraft is £1300 (£300 over agreement) and flexi loan £1000, we want to make the £40 repayment to the flexi loan each month, but cant pay it in to the over drawn account as it is eaten up in the OD, then HSBC charge us for trying to take the money, not paying the loan, and the OD meaning £100 in fees each month and no repayment, they say they cannot take the repayment in any other way, it has to come out of the OD account, we have the staff and manager saying how stupid it is, but cant change it!

We then get notice on our home (Aug 07), we have to sell everything to afford to move, by this time our HSBC account has been handed to head office, so they cant even deal with it in branch, we explain we have lost our home, they don't care, and phone 8am to 11pm demanding money, still the charges come in. Again and again I explained the situation and ask for help.

We hear of the unfair charges case and write to HSBC, they offer us about £1000, they owe us £2800(without interest), we say we don't want to make money, just to clear the accounts, and ask them to consider £2300 to close the accounts and that be the end of it, they say no.

Then it goes to court nationally, so HSBC write telling us we will have to repay the full amount when the court case is over, and slap two defaults on me, meaning i now cant even get a mobile phone or normal bank account.

We take it too the financial ombudsman service, and send everything in, now over a year later, we get a pr1ck of a man dealing with our case, he talks to me like i'm a idiot, and doesn't want to listen to the problems we have had, he started the call with "i am using my house phone so this is my own penny's, so cant talk long".

He has now come back with an offer that HSBC is giving us £2377, leaving us to repay £365, of course I jumped at the chance, saying why hadnt they offered this sooner,
but this leaves us with the problem of the defaults, I asked if we went for the offer if HSBC would remove the defaults, he will not even consider asking them.

I have been advised that if the defaults are just marked as settled, then we will still suffer with the credit rating for quite some time, however if they are removed it is different.

This is the only debt i have ever had, i dont do credit, i have no credit cards, but i cant even get a normal bank account, which makes running my accounts so hard.

In the FOS letter the guy is clearly on HSBC's side, he has not taken in to account our circumstances at the time, he writes things like " I am of the view that had there been sufficient funds in your current account that you would not have incurred charges" (well wouldn't that be the case with all of us, trying to reclaim charges!!!???) and "Had you (made an arrangement to repay these loans) i am satisfied that they would not have gone into default and for that reason i am not prepared to recommend that HSBC clears your credit file.

He is stuck on the fact we moved our account to another bank, even though this was the only way we could buy food,(due to HSBC taking whatever was paid in) and it is only a basic account.

He has missed the fact we tried and tried to arrange some thing with HSBC. (once we moved and contacted the FOS (Oct 07) we didnt contact HSBC, due to so much other stuff going on, i.e court cases with my ex, i am only 4 months out of hospital after a suicide attempt)

Now because of xmas, my letter accepting the offer but asking again about the defaults hasnt got to him, HSBC have enlisted a debt agency to hound us, and he is out of the office till the 9th.

Is there any advice any one could give me, about the defaults mainly, i dont mind paying the £365, it will be hard, but just to end it, worth it.

Help!

natweststaffmember

I am going to post on here to remind me to look more properly at this shortly.
I think they may well be right but I think there may be something that can be done if the amount you were defaulted on and the amount refunded is higher.

Serendipity_phoenix

Thank you so much for giving this some of your time

natweststaffmember

digitalsgirl wrote: »

Thank you so much for giving this some of your time

How much were you defaulted for? Was it lower than the amount that the bank refunded?

Smasher

Also, when were the charges applied? By this I mean when did they start & finish?

It is possible that with the right help, you can reclaim them all, apply interest and get the defaults removed. However, this will depend on how much effort you are willing to make to achieve it and more importantly, if you can hold out long enough to see it through because it will take time..

It has been done before, but this test case farce is making it more difficult right now with goalposts being shifted all over the place.

Serendipity_phoenix

Thanks so much for your help on this

Default 1. is £1034 on my credit file it states
start 07/07/2006 (I gather this is the date I opened it)
default 19/02/2008
end 19/02/2008

Default 2. is for £1706, again it states
start 06/10/2004
default 19/02/2008
End 19/02/2008

HSBC has offered £2377

We have been fighting long and hard on this one so we have no problem with continuing,
we were going to file in court under financial hardship, but had already informed the F.O.S, so wrote to them asking if it would change matters, but then personal problems took over again (so far 4 years of court case due to ex) and now I don't think we would come under hardship, as money is tight but I now get DLA etc, so not as bad as it was.
It would be tight if we had to suddenly pay HSBC! We just dont have any "spare" money, in fact for example we are living in a place where the water freezes (so we have none) nearly every night and mould grows in the bedrooms, but we need to save before we can afford to move out, due to moving fee's, deposit, rent up front, agency fee's....blah blah blah

I have been thinking of writing to the office of fair trading or someone, as although the amount of each fee is something we are fighting(example £125 per letter), I am not expecting to get away with not paying anything for going overdrawn/not paying, but when you are in the branch asking for help time and time again, speaking to them by phone, writing etc, offering to pay - just through a different account, due to exceptional circumstances, and they turn around and say no, or yes we agree it is stupid but....or your credit rating is to good! I think it is very poor service.

conar686

If HFC have offered that amount I'd go with your instinct and take the money, they'll likely only refund it to the account so don't expect a chq.

Have you could asked them why they are not prepared to refund the difference (£365)? or why they consider that you still owe this amount. If not I'd give that a whirl.

If you haven't already, you should also send in a SAR for all you data. Here's one I've used in the past

Addr to the data manager in their registered office

Reference: Data Protection Act disclosure request

Date:


Dear Sir or Madam


Account number (s) –

Under the Data Protection Act 1984 and 1998, and including the right of subject access under these acts, please supply me with all data on all systems relating to my account since [todays date - 6yrs]. This is not restricted to but must include the following;
1. a complete set of statements for that period.
2. A copy o the loan agreement [reference]
3. A copy of any default notices sent
4. A complete list of charges levied on the account
Additionally where there has been any event in my account history over this period which has required manual intervention by any member of your staff or any other person, I require disclosure of any indication or notes which have either caused or resulted in that manual intervention or other evidence of that manual intervention in relation to my banking business with you.
If you are unable to supply data relating to manual intervention because there has been no such manual intervention then please be kind as to confirm this in your response to this request.
You should be fully aware of your statutory obligations under the data protection act and that any failure to comply to this request could result in an investigation from the Information Commissioners Office. You have 40 days in which to comply.
Such submissions from yourselves that the relevant data is now only held on Microfiche or some other form of data storage and can only be provided at extra cost etc is unacceptable as it implies that such data is nonetheless retrievable.
In these circumstances, as opposed to copies of statements for the period, I will accept a detailed breakdown of all charges levied to my accounts in date order.

yours Faithfully

Forget about the FOS in my experience they can't see beyond the fact that you owed the creditor money and will use terms like 'fair and reasonable to assume' and 'on the balance of probabilities' and stay on the fence offering no judgement or admonishment for any wrong doing.

The OFT can be a mixed route, its a lottery if you get a good one, for instance my office in Glos think its acceptable for a creditor to provide me with a totally blank agreement in response to my request for an enforceable CCA, also where I have had a case they say 'its not in the interest of the public purse' to chase to take them to task over minor infringements of the CCA, however yours may be a bit more proactive.

I've subscribed to your thread, chin up your heading in the right direction and will eventually get this millstone off your back.

borgbaiter

hi


did their settlement offer include interest?
if not would this make it over the default amounts?


Borgbaiter

Serendipity_phoenix

No I don't think it included interest, it only states in the F.O.S letter that they have offered "as a gesture of goodwill" to refund charges of....

I asked the ombudsman why they had not just cleared the debt/how they came to us paying £365 and he refused to consider my question, saying again in parrot style: if you use a service of the bank, and that service is overdraft and the bank charges £5 every time you use the service after 50 time you would have a bill of.........
My answer to that was the same each time too! If they had only charged £5 it wouldn't have been a problem! + we had the issues of the flexi loan too

I now have no idea on the amount + interest, we tried to work out the amounts using MSE form, worked it out ourselves using statments, and another debt site form, but each time came up with a different amount, then HSBC came up with another amount! The obudsman in talking to them has stated they offered a different amount to us back in 2006 then they did (they offered £1700 leaves us to find £1000+)
So as it stands now, i dont know.

The ombudsman in his letter had made it clear that if we didnt take this offer, it would go on told till the court case, which he thinks the banks will win.

krisskross

digitalsgirl wrote: »

.
The ombudsman in his letter had made it clear that if we didnt take this offer, it would go on told till the court case, which he thinks the banks will win.

If there is any chance that the banks will win and I was offered a reasonable settlement then I would certainly accept.

natweststaffmember

krisskross wrote: »

If there is any chance that the banks will win and I was offered a reasonable settlement then I would certainly accept.

The banks cannot offer a full and final settlement under the FSA Waiver on Bank Charges.