HSBC and the FOS- supported HSBC help needed please

raquelle_2

Bank: HSBC
Amount to be claimed: £1302.93 (includes 8% interest)
Amount received so far.....£100 Goodwill Gesture

The story so far.....

I sent my first letter template requesting that my charges be refunded back to me on the 21st April. I did not need to request my statements as I bank online so I was able to print them all of and highlight the relevant charges. I admit a lot of the charges I incurred were when I was 18 and at college over spending on a visa electron without an overdraft (think it’s mad that I was able to do this on numerous occasions and be charged £50 a time for going £2 over). I incurred these charges very quickly.....hid all my statements from my parents, Worked my a** off to repay it all.

6 years later……I decided to claim my charges back as I am currently suffering from financial hardship. I have found that I am now in a lower paid job 50% reduction in pay but 100% increase on my outgoings thanks to my rent and bills. i was living at home with my parents. I feel I have no other choice but to continue with this claim as I am struggling to pay all of my outgoings without having to borrow additional funds from my mother who is also a widower on a basic wage and trying to support my younger siblings. I find I am in quiet a demoralising situation where I have to borrow money from family members to cover my own debts. My current and personal circumstances mean I am now living on a lower income than my previous role which means that I am continually going into and above my overdraft facilities in both bank accounts I currently hold just to get by. I am struggling to repay my outstanding debts and am therefore being charged late payment fees by other credit agencies as I do not have the funds to pay even the minimum monthly payment. I have also had to set up a payment schedule with one credit agency just to ensure they do not take court action against me but even on some occasions I cannot make the minimum payment as requested. I am repeatedly exceeding my credit card and overdraft limit without agreement so that I am able to pay my utility bills and rent which results in further charges.


They asked me to fill in the I&E form which I sent back the very next day with a copies of “red letters” threatening court action for late payments and arrears for my credit card (reclaimed successfully from Barclay card) and loan. I didn't hear anything back at all so I wrote to them again on the 30th May 2009 asking to look at my case as they had taken over 20 days to respond to me. I then received the usual waffle of “we accept that you are in financial hardship but we will not be taking your claim further at this time until the outcome of the test case….”. I then wrote back on the 9th June threatening to take my case to the FOS as HSBC had agreed that I am in hardship and therefore should be considering my case. I found a lot of the call centre staff to be very unhelpful, they threatened to withdraw my overdraft facility without prior notice and cancel my solo card and replace this with just a cash card. I explained that if they did withdraw my overdraft it would leave me with no money for the month as I am always in the red. I also could not live with a cash card as I travel abroad for work.

I then received a phone call from the customer services department on the 25th May 2009. They offered £100 as gesture of goodwill, I said that I was very grateful that they decided to refund me with £100 of my charges so far but as I stated in previous letters my income does not cover my expenditure and I am still looking to reclaim the whole amount. I must say I was very impressed with the lady that contacted me in regards to my claim. She was very helpful and non-judgmental in regards to my situation. She gave me the number for National Debt line. I wrote them another letter informing them that I would be taking my case to the FOS if they did not refund the remainder. I then received the usual “final response letter” so I referred this to the FOS. Since this letter I have moved my day to day banking account to Alliance and Leicester with no overdraft to avoid HSBC taking my overdraft out of my wages.

I also found it disgusting of HSBC's call centre to call me up and ask why I had just spent £5 in primark if I was pursuing a hardship claim for my bank charges, I stated to the guy on the end of the line that I needed to buy knickers as most of my pants the elastic had snapped off! i even offered to send the reciept in to prove it! I can't believe they did that!

The Guy that was allocated my case from the FOS was not very helpful and made out straight from the start that he would be siding with the bank and agree with their actions. I received a letter from the FOS stating that they would be supporting the bank and I should wait until the outcome but if I didn’t agree with the decision it would be referred to an adjudicator. I sent the following email to the FOS stating that I did not accept their decision:

Dear Mr XXXX,

Thank you for your recent correspondence dated the 25th August 2009. I appreciate you looking into my case against HSBC, I cannot accept your decision that my case should not proceed. Whilst the bank has agreed that I am suffering from “financial Hardship” I do not believe that they have treated me fairly or indeed assisted me satisfactorily in dealing with the situation.

I am very grateful that the bank decided to refund me with £100 of my charges to date but as I have stated in previous letters my income does not cover my expenditure and I am still looking to reclaim the whole amount. This small amount did put me back within my overdraft but I then had to use this money to pay my council tax to afford incur arrears with priority payments. This then put me back into my overdraft of £150.

I disagree that they put me in touch with a debt management company, as I asked the customer service team for the telephone number and contacted them myself. I agree that the amount of debt that I currently owe to HSBC is a total of £150 which is my overdraft facility. I would like to clarify that I have moved my day to day banking to a different organization, as I felt that I had no other choice as a member of the “customer service” team threatened to withdraw my overdraft facility with no prior warning I simply could not afford to repay this in one payment, they also stated that they would ask me to return my solo card. I explained to the service agent that this would not assist me as I work for a travel company and need the facility to withdraw money abroad. I felt this was not constructive and would hinder me in my day to day life and was not assisting me in managing my debts it would infact make it worse. The bank has not contacted me in repaying my overdraft in installments. I have found HSBC to be unsympathetic to an individuals circumstance.

I feel I have no other choice but to continue with this claim as I am struggling still to pay all of my outgoings without having to borrow additional funds from my mother who is also a widower on a basic wage and trying to support my younger siblings. I find I am in quiet a demoralizing situation where I have to borrow money from family members to cover my own debts. My current and personal circumstances mean I am now living on a lower income than my previous role which means that I am continually going into and above my overdraft facilities in both bank accounts I currently hold just to get by. I am struggling to repay my outstanding debts and am therefore being charged late payment fees by other credit agencies as I do not have the funds to pay even the minimum monthly payment. I have also had to set up a payment schedule with one credit agency just to ensure they do not take court action against me but even on some occasions I cannot make the minimum payment as requested. I am repeatedly exceeding my credit card and overdraft limit without agreement so that I am able to pay my utility bills and rent which results in further charges.

Also, I am currently being treated for severe depression due to the level of stress my debts are causing me.

But I do not think you havetaken this into consideration when looking at my complaint. I ask that you please reconsider my complaint.

Many Thanks for your time.

Does anyone have any ideas of where to go with this if I receive no response? Or what is likely to happen now?

esmerellda

Sounds like you are doing everything you can.

Have you been in touch with national debtline or even better CCCS consumer credit counselling service - they may be able to help you sort out a debt management plan with all your creditors to take some of the pressure off a bit ?

raquelle_2

Well they have just said to contact each creditor individually and explain my situation and just make token payments of what I can until I can pay more. Which is a help but still leaves me with little money at the end of the month. I have bad credit already so cannot get a loan or anything like that as I already have a loan which I am paying back at £97 month alongside a credit card, cataloge company. I have managed to get my charges back from barclaycard which paid that off and just leaves me with 1 CC card, 1 loan, 1 catalogue and 2 small overdrafts.

natweststaffmember

Am reading it slowly but surely as the post is long so my first intial thought was
Have you reclaimed charges on the credit card and would that help alleviate that credit card from taking you to court?

natweststaffmember

Were you given a point of contact ie when you were asked to complete an income and expenditure form(this one is a breach of the FSA Waiver on Annex 2 point 5---which one poster on here mentioned to me and may apply to your case).

natweststaffmember

When did your income drop?
I would be arguing that since that point and subsequent charges leading to priority debt arrears(mortgage/rent, council tax, utilities) is the point you look at the charges being refunded AND a period of 3 months grace to allow you to actually be able to budget on the income you have without the hassle of losing some of it to charges.

raquelle_2

natweststaffmember wrote: »

Am reading it slowly but surely as the post is long so my first intial thought was
Have you reclaimed charges on the credit card and would that help alleviate that credit card from taking you to court?

I have reclaimed from my credit card whoch gave me back £976 which paid that card off in full which your right in saying has got rid of at least one of my problems! :beer:

raquelle_2

natweststaffmember wrote: »

Were you given a point of contact ie when you were asked to complete an income and expenditure form(this one is a breach of the FSA Waiver on Annex 2 point 5---which one poster on here mentioned to me and may apply to your case).

Not sure I don't think I did have a contact? would this be an actual person or company?

natweststaffmember

Have you reclaimed the catalogue charges?

raquelle_2

natweststaffmember wrote: »

When did your income drop?
I would be arguing that since that point and subsequent charges leading to priority debt arrears(mortgage/rent, council tax, utilities) is the point you look at the charges being refunded AND a period of 3 months grace to allow you to actually be able to budget on the income you have without the hassle of losing some of it to charges.

The FOS has written to me again today saying that they will not reconsider my complaint (please see the email at the start of the post that I sent to the fos starting Dear MR XXX. They stated that they thought I was ordering the FOS to make HSBC repay my charges, I'm not sure I was ordering him in anyway! what do you think? Maybe it's my tone of writing :rotfl:

They have said that they think the bank has done everything in their power as I do not have a majority debt with my bank, and by them refunding me £100 (I only have £150 O/D with them) it put me back into credit with them. I'm not sure whether to continue with the claim or not they said that I can reject their decision again but must do so in writing before the 22nd September with new evidence, not sure what new evidence i can provide as i have had to change my bank to A&L and leave my O/D with HSBC as i cannot pay this back at the moment. They already have copies of my "red letters".

Any ideas? I will try and copy the letter and put a copy of the important bits on here.

Thanks for your help Natwest!

natweststaffmember

raquelle wrote: »

The FOS has written to me again today saying that they will not reconsider my complaint (please see the email at the start of the post that I sent to the fos starting Dear MR XXX. They stated that they thought I was ordering the FOS to make HSBC repay my charges, I'm not sure I was ordering him in anyway! what do you think? Maybe it's my tone of writing :rotfl:

They have said that they think the bank has done everything in their power as I do not have a majority debt with my bank, and by them refunding me £100 (I only have £150 O/D with them) it put me back into credit with them. I'm not sure whether to continue with the claim or not they said that I can reject their decision again but must do so in writing before the 22nd September with new evidence, not sure what new evidence i can provide as i have had to change my bank to A&L and leave my O/D with HSBC as i cannot pay this back at the moment. They already have copies of my "red letters".

Any ideas? I will try and copy the letter and put a copy of the important bits on here.

Thanks for your help Natwest!

Do you have any priority debt arrears(mortgage/rent, council tax, utilities)?
Are any of the arrears being paid off?
The argument in line with the FSA Waiver is a lifestyle event ie loss of job/hours caused less income to go into the account leading to charges which as a consequence left insufficient to cover essential outgoings leading to arrears. You can claim back to July 2001 but the issue of financial hardship is the point in which the lifestyle issue caused charges leading to arrears.
I hope that make sense?