Advice please re bank charges

KittyKat1958_2

Hi, I hope someone can advise me on my situation with Nat West. It's a longish story but I'll try to precis it as much as poss. Last year my partner and I had long periods of unemployment and got into financial difficulty. We had a £100 overdraft limit with NatWest and in June 2010 we went £98.00 over the limit. We had contacted CCCS, the debt counsellors and they recommended we contact the bank and offer to pay them back at £10 a month. I did this and I've got a letter from the bank dated 5th Aug 2010 thanking us for the proposal to pay £10 a month and that it would be forwarded to the relevant dept. Another month went by and we got a letter saying we were over the overdraft limit and would we contact the bank to sort it out. The charges had been being added over the month so we were now a couple of hundred pounds over the limit. To cut a long story short, since June/July 2010 I have been trying to get someone to accept our offer but no one has actually acted on it. I have got all the correspondance from the Bank and my replies. Finally last week, we had a letter, in fact several letters, from the bank saying we ae now nearly £2000 overdrawn and that they will be passing it to a debt collecting agency. I am gobsmacked because I have been trying to sort it out for a year but now that they have finally got their act together, they decided to pass it to a debt collector. The letters from the Bank have been from depts in Wimbledon, Telford, Bangor, Manchester and Birmingham and it seems to me that one dept doesn't know what the other is doing. Also, a minor point but niggly, is that they have got my name wrong in letters ie they have put my surname as being the same as my partner's and it isn't and they have put the wrong initial when writing to my partner. My question is, am I justified in feeling that I am in the right as I have been trying my utmost to get this sorted for a year now and don't feel inclined to pay almost £1000 worth of charges because of their incompetence? I hope I've got the gist of this across to you but I'll clarify anything that needs to be. Thanks

Kath

ilesmark

Dunno how much ice the misspelling of the name will cut - apart from to indicate the deficiency in communication between branches.

But I would have thought that, if you have proof that you've been trying to contact the bank and that they haven't been getting back to you (and failing to communicate between branches) while the debt has been snowballing, you would have a claim against the bank for negligence.

xcakex

Hi

Ohhh what a nightmare I am with natwest and they are usually pretty helpful with things as long as you have a copy of all correspondence with dates etc on I would write to there Edinburgh customer complaints team who are usually pretty good at helping out and going through things on your account, they have all copies of documents letters sent over the past 6years so hopefully they will see these and all calls are logged so I'm sure if you go through this dept you could come to some agreement and try and close the case

Hope this helps

KittyKat1958_2

Thanks for that but I have already contacted them and sent copies of all correspondance and have heard nothing from them. I suppose I can contact them again with the latest letters and see if I get a response this time

Kath

ilesmark

I would go further than this and write a Letter Before Action to their head office, setting out:-
- what you have done to try to resolve the matter in terms of attempts to contact them
- what they have done (or rather failed to do) in response
- that this failure to address your communications while the debt has been snowballing constitutes negligence and
- that you will launch a County Court claim against them for all the costs that have accrued since your original letter of June 2010 if they do not respond within 14 days.

KittyKat1958_2

Thank you very much for that, I'll do it today and let you know what happens!