watch out for abbey national

sadiethelady

I am in the throws of reclaiming my bank charges via the Finanical Difficulties clause. I contacted Abbey back in mid October who very kindly sent me the necessary forms to be completed for my case to be reviewed. I called their head office 2 weeks ago to find that they had not received these necessary documents and was promised faithfully they would be recent. Hey presto - no sign of them. Went to my local branch (which the call centre advised me to to) and an hour and a half later) was told after much searching did not know what I was talking about. Gave up hope until today when i contacted Financial Ombudsman who has now taken up my case. Basically please do not give up on this ludicrous system as there is always hope and I will keep you all informed.

InsureFox

Hi Sadie,

Any further correspondence you have with Abbey use recorded delivery. It is too easy for banks to "lose" regular letters. :rolleyes:

The process for claiming charges back under financial hardship is a fairly recent development in the Bank Charges saga. It doesn't really surprise me that bank staff can't keep up!

Good luck with the FOS. I'd like to hear how it goes.

militantconsumer

We have been chasing Abbey since July last year for bank charges refund. They eventually agreed to refund them on hardship grounds (but forgot to tell the debt collectors - oh dear) but didn't pay us the interest. We referred it to FOS at the start of January and because Abbey never gave us a proper final response the FOS have given them another 8 weeks to come up with an answer for us. To be honest, I think they will need it. I don't know what's going on in their offices but we have now received 3 identical copies of a couple of their standard letters. I think they do respond to customers but they just don't read what you've sent them!