Credit Card Reclaiming Discussion

Premier_2

Lond2009 wrote: »

thx for info, but will asking for interest increase my chances of having to go to court?

Not at all. But if you don't ask you won't get (usually), so what have you got to lose?

You asking for interest as well will have no bearing on whether the original charges are refunded.

FatMartinR

To be clear, I'd being going for both the 8% interest AND the added credit card interest at the APR.

The reason?

Let's say Bill owes John £1000 on Jan 1st. Bill refuses to pay John, so John decides to sue him for it. The proceedings take until Dec. 31st that year to clear, so John is entitled to claim for loss of interest on that money at the statutory set rate of 8% per year. Therefore, after the court proceedings (exactly one year after the debt was due in this example, to keep the sums simple), Bill owes John (£1000 + 8% of £1000) = £1080. This prevents Bill gaining financially by hanging on to the money (due to inflation etc.).

This applies to any normal debt, not just credit card ones.

However, since credit cards also charge their own interest at their APR on the debt (it is the business they are in after all), you should be claiming for that too. They have been charging you their own interest on their own fees !! So if we assume an APR of 25%, and the same initial debt of £1000 then after one year,

(£1000.00 * 25%) + £1000.00 = £1250 (the APR rate) plus,
(£1000.00 * 8%) = £ 80. (the inflation-beater rate)

Giving a Total of £1330.

Remember, it's only this high because there is also an interest rate of 25% per year on the £1000 owing. It's what Bill has been charging John for the past year while hanging on to John's money that he had no right to do. Plus, there's the 8% per year 'inflation-beater' that the money would have lost anyway. (Ie; if you leave your money in your current account not accruing any interest, its true value will have fallen due to inflation. This 8% takes care of that, plus other factors).

In practice of course, for your credit card fees, you would be replacing the initial £1000 with £35 (or £12, depending), and then compounding this over the number of years the fee was first charged. So if your fee was charged 3 years ago, then,

(£35.00 * 25%) + £35.00 = £43.75 (for year 1), plus,
(£43.75 * 25%) + £43.75 = £54.69 (for year 2), plus,
(£54.69 * 25%) + £54.69 = £68.36 (for year 3), plus,
(£35.00 * 8% * 3 years) = £ 8.40.

Giving a Grand Total of £175.20, which was initially just the £35 3 years ago.

That's how much you will truly have lost over the past 3 years on the initial £35, and not just the measily 8%.

Lond2009

podperson wrote: »

It depends on whether you really want to push for it. I asked for the interest at the contractual rate (what they charged me on it!) and 2 of them have come back and offered me the statutory rate of 8% instead. I'm quite pig-headed so sent them back and asked for the contractual and one has come back within a week and offered me £200 towards the contractual as a 'goodwill gesture' which I have accepted as it should clear my balance off. If I had really wanted the full amount of contractual interest then yes I probably would have had to take them to court.
It also depends on what you still owe them as if they can just take the refunded charges off your balance they are much likelier to just pay up rather then bother with court as they aren't having to pay anything back, it is just going back into their company.

Thx. I dont owe anything to Halifax as i transferred the balance over to Virgin.

podperson

Doesn't mean they won't refund, especially if it's not a large amount. Also means you can't get any trouble off them in regards to a current account, was still paying all mine off so was a little worried it might make them start chasing me more etc but so far has actually shut them up

JaspaC

Hi all.

I have 6 credit cards and I know that I have had some charges on all of them in the past. However I don't keep all my old statements and none of my online statements of any card goes back far enough to when these charges were added.

I have phoned each company and some have said things like "there have definitely been charges on your card but the system doesn't let us see how many or when, you'll need to pay £10 and write to us etc.."

Do I have to include a list of what dates the charges have been incurred on/the charge amount/charge type, on my letters to the companies/FOS/court?

I.e. I'd rather ask for 'all charges that have been applied to my account' rather than listing the specific ones. Because I don't want to waste £10 for a DSAR per card which may only have 1 £12 charge on it.


Any help much appreciated.

Premier_2

JaspaC wrote: »

Hi all.

I have 6 credit cards and I know that I have had some charges on all of them in the past. However I don't keep all my old statements and none of my online statements of any card goes back far enough to when these charges were added.

I have phoned each company and some have said things like "there have definitely been charges on your card but the system doesn't let us see how many or when, you'll need to pay £10 and write to us etc.."

Do I have to include a list of what dates the charges have been incurred on/the charge amount/charge type, on my letters to the companies/FOS/court?

I.e. I'd rather ask for 'all charges that have been applied to my account' rather than listing the specific ones. Because I don't want to waste £10 for a DSAR per card which may only have 1 £12 charge on it.


Any help much appreciated.

Refer to the guide.

You need to give details of all charges you are asking to be refunded, and the guide explains how you can get those details if you don't already have them.

Yes it will cost you a tenner per company if you need to request them ... which is considerably cheaper than requesting all copy statements.

podperson

If you don't know what charges are on the account then if they do make you an offer for the charges back how will you know if it's right or not?? They could offer you £12 back on the account when you had hundred of pounds in charges on it and you would have no idea if it was a good offer or not!

JaspaC

I have read the guide.

But it doesn't say what the significance is of including a schedule of charges. It just says that you should.

I appreciate that the card companies could rip me off but I do have a rough idea of what charges I've had and it's a risk I could be willing to take in order to save potentially nearly 80% of my refunds which would otherwise be spent just requesting the list of charges.

What I want to know is would the claim still be processed if I just stated I wanted all the charges, am I under any legal obligation to detail the charges individually? Surely card comanies can't demand a list, when they clearly have that information to hand for themselves (as they'd have to check the list anyway), and surely the law doesn't differ for a request not containing specific details.


Anybody done this or know anything more about it?


Cheers, J

joncow75

A list of charges will only cost you £10 so I'd say its much better to get these so you can clearly state what it is yu are trying to claim, and that nothing is missed by your credit card issuer

leclerc

JaspaC wrote: »

I have read the guide.

But it doesn't say what the significance is of including a schedule of charges. It just says that you should.
It's because they can simply say "we'll refund you £100 and they may owe you £1000.00. Now, do you trust them to use a calculator or do you want to be certain that their figures are the same as yours?
I appreciate that the card companies could rip me off but I do have a rough idea of what charges I've had and it's a risk I could be willing to take in order to save potentially nearly 80% of my refunds which would otherwise be spent just requesting the list of charges.
Why not send them a request without any money for the list?
What I want to know is would the claim still be processed if I just stated I wanted all the charges, am I under any legal obligation to detail the charges individually? Surely card comanies can't demand a list, when they clearly have that information to hand for themselves (as they'd have to check the list anyway), and surely the law doesn't differ for a request not containing specific details.
If you were to go to the FOS/Court then you would need the list of charges otherwise it will delay the process. If you sent me a demand for £100 then I WANT to know what that amount comprised of otherwise it's Foxtrot Oscar

Anybody done this or know anything more about it?


Cheers, J

J, the reason for having a process within the guides is so that you follow it and are not stiffed by an organisation. Just follow it or do it your way and report back what you get.