50% deal or no deal?

downandlow

I have had a quick read through some of the posts and couldnt see that anyone had claimed and been succesful from this Building Society.

I sent off a letter to them last week asking for my statements, so would be interested to hear if anyone had success with them.

Thanks in advance

Canaan

downandlow wrote:

I have had a quick read through some of the posts and couldnt see that anyone had claimed and been succesful from this Building Society.

I sent off a letter to them last week asking for my statements, so would be interested to hear if anyone had success with them.

Thanks in advance

I am about to start claiming from them, like you I can't seem to find anyone who has sucessfully claimed back from them

Canaan

downandlow

Oh dear, will just have to wait and see what happens then, but fingers crossed for both of us, let me know how you get on please?

downandlow

Still wondering if anyone has had any luck with them? Had a no letter, now waiting to hear from them re the sending you to court if you dont pay letter.

downandlow

We have a dilema, we have an overdraft of £2800, ( the account is at the limit), we sent the letters to the Building society, the last one being the one that said please pay us £3600 or we will take to court, we also added the bit that said if not the full amount then we would accept £3000. (both amounts do not include interest)

We received a letter today which was a bit long winded but i would like to post the relevant bits and to see what you guys thought was the best thing for us to do.


having reviewed your account i am of the opinion that your expectations of the service we offer in relation to your current account are beyond those which we are reasonably able to provide. On our part we are unable to continue to refund acount charges that have been correctly applied (which basically means in the past we have claimed back 3 charges whcih we felt at the time were not appropriate and that was over 6 years!!)

Therefore, as you cannot agree to the terms and conditions of the account I am sure that you will agree that is is best if your account is closed. Allowing for the 30 days notice we propose to close your account on 8th March, by which time your overdrawn balance will need to have been repaid in full. On closure, as a gesture of goodwill only, we will refund an amount equivalent to 50% of the unpaid/paid item charges that have been applied to your account. Whilst it is clear that you do not agree with the level of charges speciified,. i am sure that you agree that a charge in itself is appropriate.

Please confirm your acceptance of the position set out in this letter by signing and returning the enlosed copy letter, together with your account facilities (cards, pass books, cheque books) within the next 14 days/. In the event that you remain dissatisfied in this matter please let me know and i will arrange for your complaint to be reviwed by our Banking Operations Manager.


so there you have it, what do we do?? We are a little sceptical about going to court, guaranteed we will be the first people to have it defended in court and end up having to pay a fortune, even though we havent got it!, So do we accept the 50% and still end up having to pay an extra £1000 into the acccount (which we havent got!) or do we wait and take them to court? Or is there another letter somewhere that says thanks but no thanks, but we still want the £3000 or we will take you to court?

Many many thanks if you have read all that, i did miss out a lot, but i really dont know what our chances would be if we took them to court, we have never seen anyone else who has taken this BS to court, so we cant judge on that.

downandlow

Please can anyone offer any advice? Really dont know what to do.

Also if we accept and they then close the account, how long would we have to pay back the £1000 extra? would they want it on the 8th March when they close the account or would they give us some time?

Rex_Mundi

downandlow wrote:

so there you have it, what do we do?? We are a little sceptical about going to court, guaranteed we will be the first people to have it defended in court and end up having to pay a fortune, even though we havent got it!, So do we accept the 50% and still end up having to pay an extra £1000 into the acccount (which we havent got!) or do we wait and take them to court? Or is there another letter somewhere that says thanks but no thanks, but we still want the £3000 or we will take you to court?

It looks like they will close your account anyhow. My advice is NOT to accept this offer. It is very low. Consider this......if the bank feels they have done nothing wrong, why are they offering you £1000? They know you have a strong legal case for reclaiming these charges, and don't want you to take them to court (they will most likely lose if they try to defend at a hearing and they know this). They will try to scare you into either not claiming, or accepting a lower offer. This is what they are doing now. If you press on with your claim, you stand an excellent chance (99.9%) of getting back the full amount of your charges.

I would write back to them saying something like.............

I cannot accept your offer of £1000 as full and final settlement of my claim. I will accept this as part payment and without prejudice, but will continue my claim for the balance. If we cannot agree to settle this claim, I will issue a county court claim for the return of these charges. If this happens, I will be claiming for the charges+statutory interest+court fees.

In the matter of closing my account. I feel this is a punative and retaliatory action on your behalf because of this claim. I am not in any way questioning, or disagreeing to the terms of my account. I am questioning the lawfulness of the level of these charges as laid out in the Unfair (Contract) Terms Act 1977 s.4 and the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999. para. 8 and sch. 2(1)(e) and common law.

In a recent case, The ombudsman ruled against Alliance & Leicester for taking similar action against a customer. If you close my account, I will have no choice but to lodge a complaint with the ombudsman that you are taking this action solely on retaliatory grounds.

Beate

But just to be on the safe side, look into opening an account with another bank ASAP!

downandlow

Many many thanks for your advice, we have already opened another account, so was ready just in case.

The letter sounds really good, think i will send that and keep my fingers crossed.

I was a little scared by the letter we received today, but i suppose thats what they want me to do, and back down, but am going to try and see what happens and send off your briliant letter.

Thank you once again for taking the time to reply to me, i just wanted someone else to say what i was really thinking deep down, but i just didnt know how to say it.