Hi Can I challenge this OD - bank charges?

chinathecat

This morning I have received a letter from HSBC Assitant General Counsel. It says I owe them £12k but they would take 9k in 10 days in full and final settlement.

The debt I think is for an OD on a personal account. When it hit £3k overdrawn (2005?) they stopped me from using the account and bounced every DD. They continued though to take my mortgage payment (£600 a month) for a mortgage with them. They then added on unauthorised overdraft fees. This continued until the OD hit £11k and then they stopped taking the mortgage from the account to.

They then went and got a CCJ. They repossessed my home and now they obviously want this back as well.

My questions are this:
1) Can I challenge the amount they want or is it too late? I think when I told them I couldn't afford my mortgage they should have repossessed the house then (2006) rather than keep taking the payment like this leaving an already broke household in more debt.

They didnt repossess until 2015 - despite them knowing through being told and non payment for ages that we just didnt have the money for the house no matter how hard we tried.


2) Can I get the charges refunded - I did always try to pay some towards the mortgage but they kept putting the interest rates up and the fees of £800 were added every 6 months on review so it became impossible. The arrears on the loan were added in at one point - I thought they had included this in that - but clearly not.

3) I did try to stop the repossession but they continually sent letters to the house they knew I had left 18 months before, not my new address which they admitted they had the other day.

4) They told me another account I had with them had closed. This was at the same time as my son decided he no longer wanted to see his father anymore and he stopped contact. I was told continously by the bank that the maintenance that went into this closed account had stopped also. During the repossession they sent paperwork that told me there was £15,000. Turned out my ex had continued to pay the maintenance. HSBC never sent me one statement on the account and I didnt ask as they told me it was closed. The arrears on the house were £13,000k. The money for the loan had been coming out of this account with the £15k in it. How can they repossess a house for arrears when there is £2k more than they need in one account and also why didnt they just take it for the OD?

I want to go back to the court and say - this happened. Is this OK for a bank to cause considerable hardship - we were £600 a month down as they held this money back from us and lied that the account was closed. The impact is immense - we lost our home, we lost everything. If we were poor before they did this - the aftermath was totally soul destroying.

Can I do anything?

Thank you.

[Deleted User]

Think you need a solicitor for this one.

National_Debtline

Hello chinathecat

chinathecat wrote: »

This morning I have received a letter from HSBC Assitant General Counsel. It says I owe them £12k but they would take 9k in 10 days in full and final settlement.

The debt I think is for an OD on a personal account. When it hit £3k overdrawn (2005?) they stopped me from using the account and bounced every DD. They continued though to take my mortgage payment (£600 a month) for a mortgage with them. They then added on unauthorised overdraft fees. This continued until the OD hit £11k and then they stopped taking the mortgage from the account to.

They then went and got a CCJ. They repossessed my home and now they obviously want this back as well.

My questions are this:
1) Can I challenge the amount they want or is it too late? I think when I told them I couldn't afford my mortgage they should have repossessed the house then (2006) rather than keep taking the payment like this leaving an already broke household in more debt.

They didnt repossess until 2015 - despite them knowing through being told and non payment for ages that we just didnt have the money for the house no matter how hard we tried.

If they have already got a CCJ for the overdraft then you can challenge it with a set aside application. If there is no CCJ for the overdraft then you can write and challenge them but it sounds as though the bank used their right of set off in this situation (where they took payments from one account for another one held with them). You could argue that doing that on an account that was already overdrawn and had been frozen is irresponsible and see if they will agree to write some of it off. Of course, if you never cancelled the direct debit that may complicate matters.

2) Can I get the charges refunded - I did always try to pay some towards the mortgage but they kept putting the interest rates up and the fees of £800 were added every 6 months on review so it became impossible. The arrears on the loan were added in at one point - I thought they had included this in that - but clearly not.


Loan? Unless they added interest and charges outside of the contractual rate I think you would struggle with this. So, is there a mortgage shortfall on top of the overdraft debt?

3) I did try to stop the repossession but they continually sent letters to the house they knew I had left 18 months before, not my new address which they admitted they had the other day.


A creditor is only required to send information to the last known UK address. If you can demonstrate (or get them to commit on paper) that you did in fact inform them of an address change and they ignored this you may be in a better position to argue that some of the interest and charges could be written off.

4) They told me another account I had with them had closed. This was at the same time as my son decided he no longer wanted to see his father anymore and he stopped contact. I was told continously by the bank that the maintenance that went into this closed account had stopped also. During the repossession they sent paperwork that told me there was £15,000. Turned out my ex had continued to pay the maintenance. HSBC never sent me one statement on the account and I didnt ask as they told me it was closed. The arrears on the house were £13,000k. The money for the loan had been coming out of this account with the £15k in it. How can they repossess a house for arrears when there is £2k more than they need in one account and also why didnt they just take it for the OD?



I am afraid this is the hardest question to answer. You seemed to have the mortgage, an overdraft and a loan with the HSBC. If they have had £15,000 savings/maintenance then you could argue that you would like that money sent to you and then you could use that to deal with things. However, one thing I did notice in your post is that you first started having arrears in 2006 but the house wasn’t repossessed until 2015. You mentioned that the overdraft covered the mortgage for a time, but how much was the monthly instalments? Is it possible that the £15,000 savings/maintenance was used to make up the shortfall on payments to the monthly mortgage bill and that is why the repossession took 9 years?

I want to go back to the court and say - this happened. Is this OK for a bank to cause considerable hardship - we were £600 a month down as they held this money back from us and lied that the account was closed. The impact is immense - we lost our home, we lost everything. If we were poor before they did this - the aftermath was totally soul destroying.

Can I do anything?
This is obviously a very complicated situation and if they have a CCJ you will need some legal advice to file a set aside.
Thank you.

I hope that helps,
Laura
@natdebtline