HBOS - Is this a record!

ffcforever

1) My now 20 year old self employed son took out a personal loan with HBOS on 29/12/07 for £2500 and had an immediate £544.06 charge for insurance added from day one - can I do something about this?

2) This was paid into his current account and fully drawn down during the subsequent week! Also during the months of January and February he made small purchases and one cash withdrawl totalling £127.72. Since then HBOS have added £518.00 as - charges as notified, although we can find no correspondence to that effect and debit interest of £66.47 (21p of which relates to the overdraft and the rest is interest on the charges) . This covers a peroid from 26/01/08 when he first went overdrawn until 30/9/08 when the charging stopped after we finally got them to agree to a 'payplan' proposal. According to my calculations this equated to an APR in excess of 600%.

HBOS will not entertain me to discuss this without my son being present - they will not accept a written authority - even though they were happy to give him the loan without a lot of proper checking in my opinion. As he is self employed to do so would cost him a days wages when he is already struggling to pay his outstanding debts.

What can I do as a parent to sort this out and is this interest rate a record!!!!:mad:

CLAPTON

lets rewrite it a bit

your son took out a loan in 12/2007
they added PPI on the loan

he then went over his OD limit on on several occasions?
they charged him for going over his OD?

it's not clear whether he made the payments on the loan??

how were Payplan involved ... they usually get involved when someone defaults on their payments...did he?
were there charges involved?

He can probably reclaim the PPI payments on the grounds of mis selling..read the threads on this subject for more details.

enjoyincubus

The adding of PPI to the original loan on day one is not unusual. But he may have been mis-sold in some kind of way (it may not even cover him as he is self-employed).

For point 2, it doesn't amaze me that £518 of charges have been added to the overdraft. Everytime a transaction goes through it costs about £28-£35 with Halifax and it all adds up very quickly! There's also a claim for refund of bank charges in there, but I believe that banks have stopped processing claims whilst they wait for the court case decision on bank charges.

Whilst I admire you as a parent for trying to help your son out in a difficult situation, he is 20 years old as such he isn't a 'minor'. You may see him as inexperienced or naive towards credit, but legally he can borrow money from 18 years old, so I can see why they are unable to discuss the account with yourself.

My recommendation would be to put things in writing and send a letter, as you probably won't get very far over the phone.