Compensation offer from credit card company

chattychappy

Tabitha_T wrote: »

I have no idea of such things, presumably this will be actioned by way of a credit to my balance which is approx £8K. Any thoughts please? Thanks

If you do go for more I think you should argue for a cheque. (Don't bother if you're simply going to pay down the account with it anyway.) I don't think they have a right of offset in this matter - different if they had taken proceedings against you or it was part of an overall settlement.

Good luck!

neas

This is what i don't get about people in debt... why is offsetting it a bad thing? Most likely she is getting charged a larger interest rate than the £300 could achieve in a bank account.. and if she got the £300 she may be tempted to just splash out from the compensation when really regardless of the error and gossip she is in trouble and will spiral into more debt soon.

chattychappy

neas wrote: »

This is what i don't get about people in debt... why is offsetting it a bad thing? Most likely she is getting charged a larger interest rate than the £300 could achieve in a bank account.. and if she got the £300 she may be tempted to just splash out from the compensation when really regardless of the error and gossip she is in trouble and will spiral into more debt soon.

It should be the OP's decision. Why should this particular CC have first claim on the money? Just because she is in debt doesn't mean she shouldn't have the freedom to decide what she does with the proceeds of a successful claim. She might want to retain it as a buffer to reduce the chance of missing minimum payments, she might have more costly debt elsewhere or indeed she might want to be tempted. It's none of our business, up to her. That's my view.

Tabitha_T

Thanks for your further responses, I am giving it all due consideration and will be penning my letter to cc a little later. Hadn't even thought to ask for a cheque, but if that ends up being the case, don't worry neas, I shall be very sensible with how I use the money, will probably buy heating oil for my family, which sadly, we can't currently afford to do.
Cheers all for your help everybody

Col7777

You could contact them again and say your neighbour handed you the OPENED letter about the compensation, (sorry couldn't resist just my evil mind working overtime).

I agree with you trying for more money, I have a nosy neighbour who tells me all sorts of gossip about other neighbours and very detailed too, and as you know Chinese whispers, she tells one you owe x amount and then someone else tells someone else you owe xxx amount and so on, expect food parcels on your doorstep soon come to mind. I'm not trying to be funny but this sort of thing is very bad, as for the ones saying get over it, if it happened to them it would be a different story.

neas

Tabitha_T wrote: »

Thanks for your further responses, I am giving it all due consideration and will be penning my letter to cc a little later. Hadn't even thought to ask for a cheque, but if that ends up being the case, don't worry neas, I shall be very sensible with how I use the money, will probably buy heating oil for my family, which sadly, we can't currently afford to do.
Cheers all for your help everybody

No heating oil is bad and agree you should do what you must for your family but by the sounds of it you are just putting off the inevitable... Hope you beat the debt in the end.

If you can'y afford heating oil things are pretty bad... what about next winter?

Tabitha_T

Hi neas, hopefully, by next winter we will be discharged bankrupts, or well on the way. We have been saving up for the BR route but it's taken a little longer than we originally anticipated. It has been a bad situation for us, dire in fact. However, I'm sure there are plenty of other people like us, with children, who are probably just as badly off, if not worse. At least we have a (rented) roof over our heads, it's just a very cold one! It's somewhat galling to think that just a few years ago we had a successful business, nice house, holidays (ahh, I remember those, dimly) the works. We perished in the recession, lost everything. We borrowed every penny we could to try and stay afloat, but finally sank and had to accept the inevitable earlier this year. Anyway, I don't want to open (another) debate about the greed of the banking moguls and how they ruined the lives of so many people, not just in this country. Having said that, I would do anything I could to squeeze any last penny out of these greedy blighters when an appropriate situation presents itself to do so. There you go, rant over, got to keep smiling, the love and support of my family can't be taken away from me

Col7777

Tabitha please don't take this the wrong way but have you tried Social Services regarding your situation, they may be able to help, I got in a mess a few years ago through illness and I was really struggling, I went to them and explained and I can't remember the exact sum but I was a few hundred pounds?
Don't feel ashamed as there are plenty of people who are better off than you claiming all sorts of benifits, you have worked and paid in to the tax system etc so why shouldn't you claim something back.

callum9999

opinions4u wrote: »

Putting it in perspective, the card company appears to have admitted fault and made an offer to settle.

I know from personal experience that the FOS would value a typical breach of the DPA of this nature at more than £150.

The figure I suggested above (£300) is probably slightly higher than the FOS would normally recommend but, I believe, lower than they would insist on given the specific circumstances of this case.

While the OP could probably try and hold out for more than £300-£500, this would almost certainly mean going via the FOS. That would be frustrating from a time perspective and probably not worth the hassle, especially if somebody has a stressful situation in their life at the moment.

So getting real, the OP has been wronged, there are prececedents for larger settlements than £150 and I think the OP should pursue it to a point.

There are also precendants for McDonalds getting sued because their coffee was hot - doesn't make it right.

Getting paid £150 because the bank sent a letter to a wrong address sounds like a lot to me - regardless of whatever the FOS think. As the OP is in a lot of debt, I don't blame them at all for wanting to get as much as possible (I would probably do the same), but this seems like a non-issue to me. Take a step back - the neighbours found out they are in debt - so what? Maybe the OP is just a really sensitive person, but if neighbours I didn't care about (if they were the malicious type then I wouldn't care about them) talked about me, I wouldn't care less.

chattychappy

callum9999 wrote: »

There are also precendants for McDonalds getting sued because their coffee was hot - doesn't make it right.

It might be right if you were served coffee so hot and in a drive-through in such a way that resulted in your receiving third degree burns and being hospitalised for several days.

callum9999 wrote: »

Getting paid £150 because the bank sent a letter to a wrong address sounds like a lot to me - regardless of whatever the FOS think.

Fair enough, and I personally would have been happy with that on the basis that money wouldn't really fix the problem anyway. But the FOS does try to put a figure on these things based on what it thinks is reasonable - which will be a best guess of what "society" would expect. The FOS is meant to be an alternative to formal litigation - people can always sue if they prefer.