Charge Notification Letters

[Budgie]

Dear All,

I urgently need copies of either charge notification letters from Banks, dated between 2001 and the present day.

Ideally the target is to build up a collection of such letters for each bank, for each account type and for each year ( covering the various changes in versions of the relevant terms and conditions for each bank ).

Additionally copies of any responses from Banks in relation to preliminary reclaim letters or LBA's would also be extremely useful.

What I am specifically looking for are written statements within those letters detailing exactly what the charges were in respect of, confirming a breach of contract, failure to fulfill obligations or other key information.

Please post copies up on this thread but make sure you remove any personal identification information first.

Thanks Budgie

[askl]

Abbey Offer

We enclose by way of service a copy of the defence that we have filed with the court.

The next stage in the process will be for the court to send each of us an allocation questionnaire. In the interim we are writing to you to ascertain whether you would be prepared to agree to a settlement of your claim now in order to bring the matter to a close, limiting further expense to both of us and also avoiding the necessity of taking the further procedural steps such as filling of AQ.

Regarding the charges, you will see from the defence that Abbey takes issue with your claim on a number of points. For the purpose of this letter though, we should like to mention in particular that your claim seems to be based on the argument that you should not pay any charges at all. It cannot be correct that Abbey cannot charge anything at all if you become overdrawn or do not meet direct debits as Abbey must remedy the issues with the account and this incurs expense. This is in line with the bank industry practice and the T&C under which you opened the account. Even if it were correct (which is not accepted) that the charges are greater than Abbey’s actual loss in dealing with your account, Abbey would still be entitled to charge you something for the expenses. Further, you will see the charges are liquidated damages and not penalty charges and are therefore valid pre-estimates of loss.

"6. The claimant has overdrawn or exceeded overdraft limits on the Account on a number of occasions, full details of which will be provided in disclosure. Therefore by virtue of the conditions referred to in paragraph 3 above such overdrawing was unauthorised and in breach of contract"

"8. The claimant's contention that the fees are unenforeceable and/or are "penalty charges" is denied. The fees reflect and are proportionate to the Defendant's administrative expenses incurred due to the Claimant's breach of contract and are a genuine pre-estimate of the damage suffered by the Defendant"

Also dug up a letter he got from Halifax in 2003:

We have paid the item(s) below which means your account is now overdrawn by more than your overdraft limit.
To cover our costs, we make a charge of £20 for any item we pay. We take this money from your account two days after you incur the charge...

Nobody likes paying charges and we'd like to help you avoid them in future...

Attached is a NatWest 2001 Business Account bounced cheque notification.

As dealing with unpaid cheques means extra administrative work, I have charged a fee of £30 to your account to cover these costs.
The charge is also immediate (i.e. no 14 day notification period).

[borgbaiter]

[ATTACH]2888[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]2889[/ATTACH]


[ATTACH]2890[/ATTACH]




halifax june 2006 terms and conditions, a notice of charges and a response to complaint about charges letters.


http://www.scribe-computers.co.uk/we...une%202006.pdf


http://www.scribe-computers.co.uk/we...e%20letter.pdf

http://www.scribe-computers.co.uk/we...%20charges.pdf


http://www.scribe-computers.co.uk/website/letter asking for fees to be refunded Halifax edited.pdf

http://www.scribe-computers.co.uk/we...0%20edited.pdf

http://www.scribe-computers.co.uk/we...r%20edited.pdf

[Amethyst]

Letters

Examples which can be used in cases



NATWEST 2001 - cover costs of extra admin



HALIFAX 2003 - cover our costs
Legal Beagles


HSBC - 2006 - cover our costs
Legal Beagles

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Others









Was just looking for some letter examples and came across this in the CC report - http://www.competition-commission.or...t/527_4-13.pdf
Pre-notification: current requirements, practices and future requirements

The Consumer Credit Act 2006 future requirements
6. The relevant requirements on pre-notification of the CCA 2006 (which amends the CCA 1974) are likely to come into force in October 2008.
7. The CCA requires that creditors give the customer a notice when a sum becomes payable due to a breach of the agreement (default sum). Examples of such a default sum include charges imposed for late payment of an instalment or a fee imposed for exceeding a credit limit on a credit card. The term default sum does not apply to
A4(13)-1
interest, and therefore this provision would not apply to differential interest rates applied to unauthorized overdrafts.
8. The bank can only enforce the agreement and deduct charges from a customer’s account once they have given notice. The CCA does not, however, provide for a particular notice period before the default sum is deducted from a customer’s account. The bank may only require the customer to pay interest in connection with a default sum 28 days after the day the notice was given.
9. The notice may be issued separately or incorporated in a statement or another notice that is required under the CCA.
10. Practically, where a charge is incurred because a customer has exceeded their authorized overdraft, that charge would be considered to be a default sum. The bank could not, therefore, impose the charge until it had provided the customer with a notice. The bank would not be able to charge interest on the value of the charge until the 29th day after the notice was given, although it could charge a higher rate of interest on the overdrawn balance.

HSBC.


HSBC terms of the 2006 overdraft renewal notice.



Furthermore, I dug out their written defence from my personal account claim of early 2006. This is their one and only point on which they justify their charges:
"Persuant to the defendant's terms & conditions the defendant is entitled to make a charge for its services as set out in the defendant's price list including an overdraft review fee for considering whether to provide and providing an overdraft."


Letters I received from the Halifax ( charge notification ) state the following : (extracts)

" We haven't been able to pay the item (s) shown below because there wasn't enough money in your account. To cover our costs, we make a charge of £39 ( maximum 3 charges per day ) for any item we can't pay. We will take this money from your account seven days from the date of this letter. If it causes you to have an unauthorised overdraught, we will also charge you interest at the unauthorised rate and a monthly unauthorised overdraft fee of £28."

Furthermore, in response to my preliminary letter in 2007 Halifax wrote :

"When you opened your account, you agreed to our terms and conditions which explained that charges would be applied if you did not keep to the terms of the account."

and

"We apply these charges because when customers have insufficient funds in their account to cover a payment they have asked us to make, this means additional work for us. As a result we feel it is reasonable to charge for this service."

and

"As previously explained, the charges you are asking us to refund are our fees for the additional work that we carry out when a Customer requests a payment without insufficient funds in their account."

and

"If you continue to manage your account in this way, future charges will be applied to your account."

and ( very important )

"If you need greater flexibility, we may be able to help you by providing an overdraft or extending your overdraft facility. This can help to keep the costs of any unauthorised transactions down."