Bank charges claim with CCJ

Atidi

AgentJR wrote: »

Sorry, I thought I'd made myself clear. To summarise:
The bank passed my account to their solicitor to recover the outstanding overdraft balance. A county court claim was then issued. I contacted the solicitor and asked for supporting documents (statements etc), making an interim part payment as a goodwill gesture. The solicitors agreed to take no further action on the claim until this had happened, to give me a chance for a defence. In the meantime, the claim was progressed into a Judgment by default - an error on their part having agreed to hold off. They acknowledged this and applied to the court to set aside the Judgment, which was accepted and happened.
So at present there is still an outstanding balance which I need to challenge....negotiate....pay etc. and I have only just now discovered that people can claim against a bank for some charges made, and having checked the criteria (financial hardship etc) I appear to fall into this category.
Therefore, my question was whether I should make a claim directly to the bank, as per the guidance out there, or whether the claims/CCJ factor affects this and my next course of action.
I hope this is clearer. Thanks.

No, no clearer sorry.

That doesn't make any sense to me because I don't believe things happen that way, sorry.

You would have been sent the summons; why did you not respond to it? Don't tell me because you made an agreement with the complainant otherwise, the complainant who took you to court and then when you failed to respond, asked for the judgement by default.

A judgement by default needs to be requested - it doesn't happen automatically

Furthermore

Under Rule 13.3(1), the court can use its discretion to set aside or vary a default judgment if the applicant can show that:

• he (the defendant) has a real prospect of successfully defending the claim; or
• it appears to the court that there is some other good reason why

o the judgment should be set aside or varied; or
o the defendant should be allowed to defend the claim.

The complainant does not request a judgement given by default is set aside - but they may agree not to challenge your application to have it set aside.

I suggest you go with all the papers, etc to the CAB, and get them to explain to you what exactly is going on here.

Atidi

Nasqueron wrote: »

The MSE article now states that the info is out of date (since the court case win in 2009) and that only claims for current hardship are likely to be looked at (though you can't rule out a gesture of goodwill sometimes, it's not 100% you won't get old charges back but fairly close as the banks have no obligation to look at them)

The MSE article on reclaiming bank charges is not out of date; its the article on reclaiming credit card charges that is out of date.;)
Here's the bank charges article:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/bank-charges

The article was totally re-written after the Supreme Court ruling of 2009, and the latest version says it was updated as recently as September this year.


Edit: there is another MSE article suggesting taking legal action, that too was created post the 2009 Supreme Court ruling, and that is now out of date/archived
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/oft-bank-charges
There have been no known successes using the very expensive legal advice Martin paid for to write that article.

Atidi

AgentJR wrote: »

I was just asking for advice on here, having first read the MSE guidance on reclaiming bank charges, of which I fall into several of the criteria listed.

Which of the cretieria do you fall into??? :huh:

The main thrust of the advice is now based on those in financial hardship. You cannot take a bank to court, or try to defend a claim against you, based on financial hardship.
There is no legal basis to do so, and the bank are not even under any obligation to refund charges even when they comply with the voluntary code.

There is a linked article about taking legal action, but as already advised that is out of date/archived.
There have been no known successes by anyone attempting to follow that article which I understand Martin paid big money to some top barrister to help complile.

AgentJR

Thank you to everyone for your comments/views.
Just to be clear - the CCJ was made, and then set aside and I have all the paperwork to confirm such. It happened exactly how I set it out above.

I was in financial hardship at the time (and still am!), hence for the charges in the first place, and no, there are no Sky TV direct debits or anything of that nature on my statement.

I will sleep on the comments made and seek further advise on this if needed. At the end of the day I guess I have nothing to lose by negotiating directly with the bank (or solicitor), but had hoped that the charges could be claimed back using the guidance already mentioned.

Thank you.

[Deleted User]

AgentJR wrote: »

hoped that the charges could be claimed back using the guidance already mentioned.

They might well have been, if you had approached the Bank detailing your financial circumstance BEFORE the CCJ court hearing was arranged.
As I said earlier, I think you'll need to prepare any defence for the still pending CCJ. This won't simply go away.