One Day I Will .... get debts below £8500 (Debt Diary)

Shineyhappy

Hello, sorry to hear you are still feeling bad, you should be so proud of all you have accomplished!:T

Anyway here is a kind of DFW joke, I hope you like it:

A 98 year old woman wrote this to her bank. The bank manager thought
it
amusing enough to have it published in The Times.

Dear Sir

I am writing to thank you for bouncing my cheque with which I
endeavoured to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations, three
'nanoseconds' must have elapsed between his presenting the cheque and
the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honour it. I refer,
of
course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my Pension, an
arrangement
which, I admit, has been in place for only 38 years. You are to be
commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for
debiting my account £30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience
caused
to your bank.

My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has
caused me to rethink my errant financial ways. I noticed that whereas
I
personally attend to your telephone calls and letters, when I try to
contact you, I am confronted by the impersonal, overcharging,
pre-recorded, faceless entity which your bank has become. From now
on,
I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person. My
mortgage and loan payments will therefore and hereafter no longer be
automatic, but will arrive at your bank by cheque, addressed
personally
and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you must
nominate.
Be aware that it is an offence under the Postal Act for any other
person
to open such an envelope.

Please find attached an Application Contact Status which I require
your
chosen employee to complete. I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but
in
order that I know as much about him or her as your bank knows about
me,
there is no alternative. Please note that all copies of his or her
medical history must be countersigned by a solicitor, and the
mandatory
details of his/ her financial situation (income, debts, assets and
liabilities) must be accompanied by documented proof. In due course,
I
will issue your employee with a PIN number which he/she must quote in
dealings with me. I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits
but,
again, I have modelled it on the number of button presses required of
me
to access my account balance on your phone bank service. As they say,
imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Let me level the playing field even further. When you call me, press
buttons as follows:

1-- To make an appointment to see me.
2-- To query a missing payment.
3-- To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there.
4-- To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping.
5-- To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to
nature.
6-- To transfer the call to my mobile phone if I am not at home.
7-- To leave a message on my computer (a password to access my
computer
is required. A password will be communicated to you at a later date
to
the authorized contact.)
8-- To return to the main menu and to listen to options 1 through 8
9-- To make a general complaint or inquiry, the contact will then be
put
on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service.
While
this may, on occasion, involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music will
play
for the duration of the call.

Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an
establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement.

May I wish you a happy, if ever so slightly less prosperous, New Year.

Your Humble Client
:rotfl:

onedayiwill

Hehehehe! That is very funny. I hope she got a refund of her charges!

Shineyhappy

If you want more jokes I have loads on my work email account I can either post a few on here or email you if you pm me your email address

etxec

Can you put them on the jokes thread so we can all see?

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=104281&page=42

Shineyhappy

Sorry hadnt looked at that bit of the forum so didnt realise there was a joke thread:o

etxec

No worries. I found it completely by accident. It helps keep me sane

onedayiwill

etxec - thanks for that link - what a great place to go for laughs when I need to get a smile on face

I have added the £7.25 I saved on my mobile bill from next month to my monthly standing order for the CC - which brings that to £272.50 - I'm still trying to pay £390 off it each month as then I will be free of the CC by the end of the year, and will just have the Virgin Money/MBNA loan to contend with. I will then save what I had been paying towards the CC to settle my loan early. And then its off on our big adventure. It's amazing what a story saving £7.50 per month triggers in my little brain!

GazzaE

Hi One day,

I have just joined and read your post from start to finish, exhausted now! But well done and good luck with your new life abroad, something I may well be doing also. You said that you were going to put up the letter you used for your PPI refund, is it possible to share this as it is something I too am planning on trying?

onedayiwill

Hi Gazza - I'm not surprised you're exhausted having read all this! And I bet you fancy a creme egg now as well....

I completely forgot to post the PPI letter ... so here it is now...

Complaints Department
MBNA Europe Bank Ltd
PO Box 1004
Chester Business Park
Wrexham Road
Chester
CH4 9WW

23 March 2007

Re: Loan Account Reference No. XXXXXXXXXXX

COMPLAINT

Dear Sir or Madam,

I took out the above loan for £7,500 on 18/05/2005 with Virgin Money. When I took it out, I signed up for Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) which added an additional £1405.78 to the loan, giving a total loan amount of £8905.78.

I called Virgin Money on 05/03/2007 to ask to cancel my PPI policy and was told that though possible this would not have any effect on the amount or repayments of my loan and that no refund could be made. I am writing to complain.

I wish to cancel the PPI because I now have sufficient alternative insurance cover from my employer and other sources.

Since this telephone conversation, I have taken Independent Financial Advice and I am informed that this type of Single Premium PPI policy has recently been investigated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) which regulates all insurances.

I have been advised that I should be able to cancel the unused portion of my PPI policy and request a return of the premium for the unused portion at any time. I would like to do this, beginning 5th March 2007, the date on which I originally requested this cancellation.

Please reply to this letter within fourteen days. If you reject this complaint, I would be grateful if you could explain whether you provide an internal appeals process. If you do not, please supply me with a final response letter, so that I can take up the matter with the Financial Ombudsman Service.

All correspondence should be sent to: -

XXXXXX
XXXXX
XXXX

Thank you in anticipation of your prompt reply and satisfactory conclusion to this matter.

Yours faithfully,
OneDayIWill Real Name


Hope that helps ... it was made up from a combinations of letters I found by searching on this site, and I got a result I am happy with. Note that although I took the loan out with Virgin Money it is actually MBNA who administrate the loan, which is why the letter was written to them.

I wasn't really missold the policy as it did cover me, I was guilty of not really understanding/not caring about the extra cost at the time I took out the loan due to "head in sand" syndrome. So, for this reason I did not request a full refund (though of course I would have liked one).

Within 14 days of sending the letter, I had a response saying they were looking into my complaint, and two weeks later they credited my loan account with a rebate of £358.62, therefore lowering my payments to £209.40 per month. It's not a huge refund, but I am happy with the outcome as the monthly saving will help me pay off my CC sooner.

tigzem

Good luck with the TEFL course, my brother did his in Barcelona and he's now teaching English in Poland. He'll be back for the summer then off to Spain.

Fab news re the T mobile contract, every little helps as you've found out.

I enjoy reading your updates xx