Have the banks got 8 weeks to reply?!!!

Stephen_Leak

lucinad wrote: »

hi i have had exactly the same letter, word for word, from royal bank of scotland... i am going to leave them for 6 weeks and then get in touch... as they have been very good at giving offers to those that have given them space to organise things.

the way i see it, i have waited 5 1/2 yrs for my charges, another 6 weeks isnt going to be that bad, and i would rather not antagonise them and get nothing!

hope that helps.

If the OP had been claiming from RBS, I would have told them to wait.

Unfortunately, the reply you usually get from the others is another standard letter, saying that the charges are correct, because they were in the T&C's and the OFT says so as well.

I also worked for 28 years with PO Telephones/British Telecom/BT, mostly on accounts, customer service and itemised call investigation. All letters were acknowledged within 24 hours of receipt, albeit with a pre-printed postcard. Unfortunately, they were then put at the bottom of my in tray and allowed to work their way to the top.

juliejured

Can someone give me a bit of advice as to what to do next.

I have writen the first letter to lloyds asking for my money back on both my personal and business account giving them 14 days to respond (which runs out on monday) I have had no responce yet regarding my personal account but received the following letter this morning regarding my business account-

I am just writing to let you know that we have received you complaint- and to say how sorry I am to learn that you feel you have cause to complain.

Please get in tough if we've misunderstood your concerns or if you have some more information you want us to have. If we dont hear back from you in the next couple of days, we will carry on with our investigation using the information you've already provided.

We expect our enquiries to be completed within the next four weeks but we will try to get our responce to you sooner if we can. If there is a delay, we will let you know why and we will give you an idea of when you can expect to receive a full responce to your complaint. I hope we can sort things out for you.

In the meantime attached to this letter is a document called 'voicing your concerns' This tells you all you need to know about resolving your complaint with us.


I know that they are just trying to stall things. Do I let them have another four weeks, or do I send the next letter? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Ju

keeny77

I got a very similar letter from Natwest!! - they ignored my original letter and only replied to my second letter which gave them 14 days before i took them to court; they said they 'would try' and sort out my complaint within 6-8 weeks.

I also have no idea what to do next!

Do i take them to court? or write and give them another 14 days warning?

juliejured

Hi Keeny77
I also posterd on the lloyds tsb thread abd this is the responce I got. I am going to take their advice. You probably should to.


Most dfeinitely DO NOT give them another 4 weeks. We got the same response from them and chose to ignore this (recognising it as a stalling tactic) and you bet your life - 4 weeks later they wrote another letter advising that despite the 4 weeks they still did not have a response for us and needed even more time to investigate our claim. How long were they hoping to drag this excuse out for. Oh I know! until the office of Fair Trading made a judgement at the end of the year over the true cost of bank charges. With that letter begging for more time to investigate they sent a leaflet telling us we could refer the matter to the financial ombudsman. In all this time they had broken their own customer service code by being unable to deal with our response in a timely manner and we had by then filed a claim on MCOL anyway. No acknowledgement/admission OR defence on MCOL so we entered judgement which we obtained by default. No payment to date, and so last week we issued a warrant to obtain money byu force from our local branch. i will be phoning the bailiffs office on tuesday for an update.
What baffles me is that they appear to be paying up when they have already issued a defence - however we are at the bailiffs stage and have received nothing. They are so damned arrogant it's infuriating. I hope the bailiffs storm in and rip their flaming furniture & computer equipment off them. Their own damned fault, AND they'll be paying the costs for the privilege of that humiliation.

Stephen_Leak

The letters saying that they are investigating and will reply within 8 weeks are acknowledgements of receipt and attempts to make you give up and go away. The 8 weeks only applies if you refer your claim to the Financial Ombudsman because you haven’t received a reply.

Your first claim letter should give them 14 days to reply. If you have not received an acceptable reply by your deadline, send them the second “Letter Before Action” letter.

Please read the Reclaim Bank Charges Help thread for information and the Reclaimed Bank Charges Success Stories and Reclaimed Bank Charges Success Stories II threads for inspiration.</O:p

bazhole

Have given the bank notice for reply to monies owed within 14 days but they say this could take upto 8 weeks.
Can i challenge this or wait ? :beer:

natweststaffmember

You can sue them if you have sent the letter before action

Stephen_Leak

bazhole wrote: »

Have given the bank notice for reply to monies owed within 14 days but they say this could take upto 8 weeks.
Can i challenge this or wait ? :beer:

The letters saying that they are investigating and will reply within 8 weeks are acknowledgements of receipt and attempts to make you give up and go away. The 8 weeks only applies if you refer your claim to the Financial Ombudsman because you haven’t received a reply.

Your first claim letter should give them 14 days to reply. If you have not received an acceptable reply by your deadline, send them the second “Letter Before Action” letter.

Please read the Reclaim Bank Charges Help thread.<O:p</O:p

Edinburghlass_2

Edinburghlass wrote: »

Under the FSA guidelines the bank has 8 weeks in which to deal with a complaint and they must let the complainant know if they think they can't deal with the complaint within this timescale and give them an approximate date as to when they will have completed their investigation.

If you receive such a letter giving a second "date" as to when they will be dealing with your complaint this is a holding/stalling letter.

By following Martin's step by step guide you give the bank 14 days to respond to your initial letter and if no response you can send out the letter before action on day 15 and give that bank a further 14 days or you will take them to court. If you decide to file court action at either court or via MCOL you can then expect the bank to acknowledge your claim and file a defence and should read Beate's post in the Reclaim Help Thread as to the timescale for this next step.

Should your bank send you a letter giving a definate no to paying your claim or indeed if the bank suggest you take your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman you can go straight to the FO alternatively you have to have been dealing with your bank for 6/8 weeks before the FO will take on your complaint.

HOWEVER, personally, I would advise you to read the bank thread relevant to your particular bank, you'll find them all linked in the Reclaim Help Thread, as some of the banks when they say they are dealing with your complaint and will reply in 8 weeks they do in fact do this and will at that stage offer to pay the whole of your claim.

You'll also find in the relevant bank threads just which banks will take it to the wire and won't make any offer nor are open to negotiation.

As above and please read the relevant thread to your bank as RBS/NatWest do in fact usually reply with a full offer at the 8 weeks mark.

wigston_2

hi there i have just received a reply from my bank telling me they are looking into the unfair charges and they have told me it could take between 4 weeks to 8 weeks to look into my claim i have read not to let the banks take control of the time scale is this right