Woolwich - Joint Account

[Shira]

Hiya,

I sent LBA in Feb 08 for over £1,600 but without the interest & they replied back saying the legal proceedings between OFT & banks finish & will resolve my complaint as quickly as possible etc.

I've deicide to sent another LBA with interest but before I go ahead with the spreadsheet, should I stick with 8% statutory interest to file a claim?

Thanks Shira xx

[Amy]

Re: Woolwich - Joint Account

Yes, stick with 8% but only add this into your claim when you actually file at court.

[Shira]

Re: Woolwich - Joint Account

Thanks Amy, done it, Charges is £1590 & the stat int is £585 but would be grateful what is Unpaid DD refund/charges are? cos there are awful alot of them in the statments although we ve only been overdrawn few times.

Thanks SHira

[Amy]

Re: Woolwich - Joint Account

Claim your unpaid DD charges. Are you claiming overdraft interest too?

[Shira]

Re: Woolwich - Joint Account

No, haven't got the overdraft fees in Woolwich.

We r claiming for
Unpaid DD refund/charges
Return cheque refund/charges
Cheq charge refund/charges
Upaid S.O. refund/charges

[Budgie]

Re: Woolwich - Joint Account

Hi Shira,

Before you file claim could you please post up a copy of your preliminary letter and LBA so that we can see exactly what you have done so far and offer you best advice as to the way forward.

There is nothing wrong with just going for statutory court interest on your claim as Amy has suggested. However there are some alternatives that you might like to consider before you send your LBA.

Once you have posted up your docs to date I will post up a little summary regarding the pros and cons associated with each type of interest claim.

Regards Budgie

[Shira]

Re: Woolwich - Joint Account

HI Bud, thanks for the reply. The first letter that I sent was in 14th Feb, I think I copied it from Martin Lewis’s site without the interest.

Woolwich
54 Lombard Street
London,
EC3P 3AH

Dear Sir,
Account no xxxxx
I would like to request of all the default charges that have been applied to my account.

Under the unfair Terms in consumer contracts regulations 1999 charges must reflect administration costs and cannot be punitive. I believe that the following charges are unlawful as they do not relect the true cost of going into an unauthorised overdraft.

You have taken £1,650.00 from me, and I would like request repayment of this £1,650 total sum.
I also ask you to ensure any default notices entered against my credit record are removed entirely.

Please repay this money in full and remove any default notices within 14 days. If this is not done, I will begin a claim against you for all the full amount plus interest and my costs
Your Faithfully.

And then they replied back in 25th Feb “Once the legal proceedings between OFT & banks finish, they will resolve my complaint asp” blah blah.

Then I found another website which the spreadsheet showed over £2,000 which of course now I knew it was wrong. I sent the 2nd one in 27th March with 8% interest

Barclays Bank PLC
(Woolwich)
1 Churchill Place
London, E14 5HP

27 March 2008

Dear Sir,
I was writing to request the repayment of unlawful penalty charges from my account. I have not received a refund of these charges that your company had levied from my account from Jan 2003 to Nov 2005 amounting to £2,749.00 as requested.

I hereby give you a further 14 days from the date of this letter in which to comply with my request. If i do not receive a full refund of these penalty charges within this time, I will’ve no alternative but to begin legal proceedings to recover this money. Please do not waste my time by offering a part payment, as such offers will be ignored. I will only accept a full & unconditional refund.

Yours Sincerely.

Now, It’s the last time I heard from them.
Regards Shira

[Xena]

Re: Woolwich - Joint Account

Hi Shira,


There is nothing wrong with just going for statutory court interest on your claim as Amy has suggested. However there are some alternatives that you might like to consider before you send your LBA.


Regards Budgie

Budgie, I know exactly where you are trying to go on this. However, not tried and trusted on bank claims, (nor credit card claims yet, I will reserve judgement on that) and to be perfectly frank, Barclays are not playing ball on hardship claims - so why complicate it. 8% end of, at court claim stage.

[Amethyst]

Re: Woolwich - Joint Account

i don't think Shira is claiming hardship and as such is just getting her LBA and thus her complaint updated and in the pile before taking it to FOS to wait till the end of the test case.

Some form of compensatory interest is a good idea to include at this stage as none of us know what the FSA/OFt/Banks are going to order on repayment of unlawful charges once this is all over and the FSA waiver allows for interest at least during the period of the stay, and as cases are going to FOS as opposed to Court we needn't worry about stat interest. If later on Shira does decide to try the court route, or if thats whats required after the test case, the interest element can be looked at again.

It is a different matter to contractual compound interest.

8% is likely to be the rate awarded and it is simply a matter of including this in complaints as opposed to waiting for court. It is not being claimed under section 69 CCA.



FSA waiver

(15)
to the extent that sums are ultimately to be paid to complainants in respect of relevant charges complaints that have been stayed, the firm must include in these sums an element of compensation in respect of interest charged to or lost by the customer as a result of being out of money during the stay period;

[Shira]

Re: Woolwich - Joint Account

Thanks for your replies, you all are very helpful. We are not in hardship, just bit struggling paying the bills. I think I could stick with 8% stat interest cos I won’t able to arguing with compound interest in court if it goes through due being a bit thick!

Anyway before we go ahead, do you think it will better leave it until the OFT & the Banks sort themselves out?

We do have another 3 accounts with Barclays, one of them is business account which a Prelim letter already sent out in April although no reply yet & the another two from 1995-2002.

Sorry for so many questions as I want to sort them out!

Thanks
Shira

[Budgie]

Re: Woolwich - Joint Account

Hi Shira,

Sorry for delay in responding. It's been a busy couple of days.

Thanks for posting up your letter copies.

One more quick question, did you send a copy of a spreadsheet together with your letter of 27th March. If so could you post it up ( or email to me and I will do it for you ). Remember to remove personal details firstl.

If you are intending to send a further LBA ( and I woul recommend that you do ) then you should not refer to the interest element that you are requesting as "statutory court interest" You can only add statutory court interest to your claim when you actually file your claim at Court.

I recommend you actually refer to the interest as a compensatory interest element in your LBA ( just in case the Bank decide to settle your claim prior to you actually filing your claim at Court ).

Basically this compensatory interest element can be calculated exactly the same
way as you would normally calculate statutory Court interest but you will actually refer to it in your LBA as COMPENSATORY interest.

I need to quickly prepare a new version of the statutory interest spreadsheet ( to make it a "compensatory interest" version that you and anyone else who wishes can use either for their preliminary or LBA letters. ( I will try and get this done tomorrow morning ). If you have a spreadsheet already prepared I can simply modify this for you for your LBA purposes.

Rgds Budgie


To be honest, I am not convinced that there is any benefit to actually filing your Woolwich claim ( or any other Bank charges claim for that matter ) in the County Court. The claim is just going to be stayed anyway and you will have tied up the money you spend on filing the claim until after the test case is resolved. I believe this is especially true if you only intend to claim for return of charges plus statutory court interest when filing your claim at Court. I suggest that you would probably be better served by preparing and sending the Bank a good updated LBA and leaving it at that for the moment. Keep updated with regards to progress being made in the test case and follow any updated advice about filing your claim in court in the future.

[Shira]

Re: Woolwich - Joint Account

Hi Bud,
No worries, I know you have been busy helping with others. I do have the copy of the old spready , I will try scanning it because i lost all my data in my old PC.
Thanks SHira

[Budgie]

Re: Woolwich - Joint Account

And Shira you are not "thick"

Learning the arguments necessary for justification, in Court, of an award of compound interest are extremely difficult, complex and time consuming and I admit that I spent hours and hours studying, researching and reading in order to actually convince myself that I was sure enough of my own capability to actually proceed with my own claim on that basis.

It's not the sort of thing that everyone has the time, the patience or the incentive to actually do and I would never try to forcefully persuade anyone to embark on a claim of this type just because I have done so.

However, I do believe in giving people all the various options and then let them make their own decision as to the best way forward for their own claim.

I will soon get a judgment from the Court regarding my own claim for compound interest on a credit card charge reclaim. Whichever way this goes, win or lose, will either justify all the work I have put in to this or give me an indication of where I might have gone wrong and provide some clues as to what might be necessary to succesfully argue such a claim in the future.

Budgie

[Amethyst]

Re: Woolwich - Joint Account

We do have another 3 accounts with Barclays, one of them is business account which a Prelim letter already sent out in April although no reply yet

Hi honey - you do really want to send off your LBA on that claim. Business Claims should still proceed as normal despite the waiver Ame xxx

[Budgie]

Re: Woolwich - Joint Account

Oh yes, well spotted Ame, sorry I missed that.

Shira please start a new thread for each of these other claims so that we can keep a track of things.

Also, do you have any other credit card claims?

Budgie