D&d V Rbs 2011

[DandD]

Hi All

We have been asked to post our story here. For anyone that has the patience to read this, thank you. It is interesting, but the story needs to be posted in sections. (it's way too much in one go!)

Anyway, here we go.....

Original Debt in 1993 to the RBS about £25K, this was caused by them allowing us to go overdrawn to give credit to a Company that they had done a credit check (they charged us £50 for this credit check!) on which went bust owing us all of the money.

We're going to use 'us and we' throughout, as this is my wife and myself against the RBS.

There is a reason why we are telling you this story, and not giving explanations as we go along. It's important that you know the background before we get into the REAL bad bank stuff!! This is not a simple case. We will need everybodies help. But the first post would be too huge for people to be interested. I hope our first bit is enough to keep you interested. We will post again this weekend.

It's a long story. After talking to Paul Walton (you can read his thread here: http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk...lton-rbos.html ) we have decided to post our own thread to let you know what's happened, what's happening and to hopefully get some advice.

Here's part 1.

It's as brief as we can make it.....sorry!

We started a business in 1991. This was ouselves 'Trading as' xxx. All of our accounts were with the RBS. We had 5 accounts in total.

1. Us Tading As xxx Current Account
2. Business Loan Account
3. Business High interest Savings Account
4. Debbie Interest Paying Current account
5. Duncan Interst Paying Current Account

The Business Loan Account had an original loan of £13,000. This was secured on Debbie's parents home. The deeds were held by the Bank as security. Luckily, Debbie's parents went to a solicitor to draw up a contract with the bank to make sure that the deeds were to cover the Loan Account ONLY. ( A bit of advice...If anyone is thinking of being a Guarantor, please go and see a solicitor first)

We had a good relationship with the Business Manager at our local branch.

One of our Customers gave us a big order. This was out of the blue so we asked our Business Mangager to do a credit check on them and he said that they were fine. Because of this, he allowed us to go substantially overdrawn (£16,000-£17,000). Within a week from delivering the goods this Company went bust.

This happened in the summer of 1993. We never recovered from this and we decided to enter into an IVA. This was supported by the RBS (they were pretty much the only creditor).By this time our total debt to the bank was about £27,000. The IVA was granted on the 23rd November 1993. We were to repay £300 per month for 5 years.

At this stage we still owed money on the Secured Loan, but this account was NOT part of the IVA as it was a secured loan.

We paid into the IVA for two and a half years but just couldn't manage to carry on. So it failed in late 1996. At this stage we had paid £7,600 into The IVA.

Regarding the Business Loan Account........Debbie was in constant cantact with the bank from 1993 onwards to try and pay this off to get her parents deeds back. They wouldn't admit that once the Loan was paid off in full that they would return the deeds. It seemed to us that they were trying to get the Guarantee to cover the WHOLE debt, not just the LOAN account.

Eventually in the middle of 1996 (before the IVA failed) they reluctantly admitted they had no choice.

A final payment was made directly to RBS in Edinburgh and the deeds were returned to Debbie's parents, however, a lot of this important paperwork was missing! Debbie's parents complained to the bank and eventually the bank paid them compensation for damages. This was all done through Debbie's parents solicitor.

The bank are now chasing us for about £47,000. They were adding charges and interst during the IVA. We constantlt asked them how they got to this figure, but we were ignored. We still have copies of letters sent in 1997 (and POD).

In November 1997 we had a letter from the Bank saying that our accounts were being moved to Edinburgh and that the account numbers had changed. This is all that we were told.

In November 1998 the bank obtain CCJ's for £58,837.36 for Debbie and £57,273.96 for Duncan (Men always spend less!!). They get these 'Undefended'. But the debt was never admitted.

We were ordered to pay £300 per month, which we did for 7 Years.

In 2005 we made the bank an offer for Full and final, but the amount that they came back with was impossible to pay at that time.This was £8,500.

In late 2006 we stopped paying the £300 per month. As we were going to try to resolve the matter with the RBS.

In February 2008 the RBS applied for a charging order against Duncan. This was issued in April.

[DandD]

Re: D&d V Rbs 2011

We applied for a DSAR on the RBS on the 13th March 2008. This was done to see if we had any claim for unfair charges and interest.

Here it is.....

They sent us a 'Diary Event History'. This is a printout of events on our accounts and is from data held on us by the 'Recovery Dept.' in Telford.7

We sent a letter requesting more information to their response.

Mistake 1.

They Say 'Debt at Date at Treansfer 21 June 1996' is £101,516.13

They say 'The amount quoted on your DSAR front sheet was incorrect. The information supplied to you was sourced from an incorrect screen'!

Naughty screen!!!

Mistake 2.

06 March 2001. There was an audit carried out on our account. The Auditors discovered ' Branch have incorrectly keyed 80% interest instead of 8% when carrying out validation'!

Good Auditors!!!

Mistake 3.

In 2005, according to the Bank we sold a house. (If Only).

What we would have given to get a mortgage!!

Mistake 4.

On the 19th July 2007 the bank applied to the Courts for an AOE on Debbie with the following info:-

'Income :- £2400
Outgoings :- £2214.94
Total Debt :- £88,740.50
Amount available :- £185.03
Number of creditors :- 11
outwith travel trig :- £293.98
HP :- £152.90 ends 12 Months
Applying for AOE
SOLS will advis in due course as to outcome'

Our response to the bank was

You have provided the Courts when applying for an AOE with false information. I didn't supply this information. Could you please provide me with the details of who created these figures?'
The Banks response to this was ....'The entry is incorrect as we do not believe that the income and expenditure details are yours. This information was not sent to the Courts or the Banks Solicitors.'
We know this is a LIE

More about this later.....and we haven't even got on to the Secured Loan Account yet!

[DandD]

Re: D&d V Rbs 2011

I feel like I'm bombarding you lot with loads of stuff.... I'msure you can cope with it!



We think it might be best to go through each of our accounts in turn.......this is done in no particular order.

Let's start with our D&D Trading As xxxxxxx account. This was a Business Current Account.

When we entered into the IVA this account was overdrawn by around £23,000. A lot of this was interest and charges, we are still waiting for copies of the statements. But, we have been told by the Bank that we should have these within a week.

As mentioned in a previous post the IVA failed in 1996. We had contributed £7,600.

We started getting letters from the bank in the spring of 1997. This was from Retail Credit Services, Drummond House, Edinburgh. They were now demanding £44,637.86.

We sent a letter back to them dated 5th June 1997 (we have been told by The Information Commissioners Office that they are required to provide information 6 years prior to this date and not just from our recent DSAR, this may be relevent for claiming interest and charges, but not sure yet), here is an extract:-

'I agree that there is a large amount outstanding to you and I would very much like to propose a satisfactory solution. As I mentioned when we spoke on the telephone could you please send me a Breakdown of the debt. I need to know how much has been interest and bank charges, and how much has been credited to the account over the last three years from the Insolvency Agreement. It would be impossible for me to try and offer a proposal until I know exactly what the debt of £44,637.86 is for. I hope to hear from you soon.'

This was sent by courier and by Fax, I still have the Fax confirmation sheet that shows it was sent on the 16th June 1997 at 14:23.

I had no reply to this.

The next letters were from a different person, who we had already been dealing with prior to the IVA failing, regarding the Secured Loan Account. We received one letter each. They are slightly different but the main points are the same, here's an extract:-

'....your accounts have been transferred to this office under sorting code xx-xx-xx. The new account number are detailed below.

xxxxxxxx88 DR£45,219.53
xxxxxxxx18 DR£20.40

At this time we were still unaware that our account TYPES had been changed. We knew that the account NUMBERS had been changed. Even the CCJ called the account a 'Business Current Account'

We tried to resolve this but they never responded.

In November 1998 they apply for a CCJ for £50,724.71 for this account.(there are other accounts on the CCJ, but we will get to those later). Their Claim against us both to the courts states:

'The Defendent is further indebted to the Plaintiff in the sum of £50,7254.71 as at the date hereof in respect of monies lent by the Plaintiff to the Defendent on the Defendent's joint business current account number xxxxxx88 which sums are repayable on demand. On 27 October 1998 the Plaintiff, by its solicitors, made formal demand for repayment of the sum outstanding. The Defendent failed to pay the amount demanded or any part thereof. Interest has continued to accrue at the rate of 3% per annum above the Plaintiffs Base rate ruling from time to time compounded with quarterly rests'

The very first time that we find out that our accounts have been changed is after our DSAR. The Recovery Manager in Telford refers to this account on the 6th May THIS YEAR as a 'Business Term Loan Capital and Interest' account.

As mentioned, we haven't received any statements for our original D&D T/a xxxx account yet but we have received some for the account that the bank changed it to.

We have just received statements for the account that this changed to. This NEW account was opened in June 1996 without our knowledge. Page 1 shows an opening balance of DR£37,424.30. A week later they add interest of £3006.39.The address that the statements are being managed by is Kendall Court , Telford, but the address that they are being sent to is 1 Redheughs Avenue, Edinburgh.

On the 30th March 2000 the debt was now £53,973.96. The statament shows a payment in from us of £300. The bank debits on the same day £5581.76 in interest. On the 29th June 2000 the Bank debits interest of £11,733.48 (we are still paying the £300 per Month). On the 20th September 2000 the bank debit £13,587.83 interest and on the 28th December (Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year) they debit £15,883.40 in interest. (Did we pay for the banks Christmas party?)

Current debt is now standing at £98,060.43.

Under our DSAR the bank have supplied a 'Manual Intervention' statement. This is dated from 14th March 2002 to 14 March 2008 (6 Years). This shows our payments IN, their Interst charges, and various amounts that says 'Solicitors Fees'. These Solicitor fees add up to over £1400. Is this allowed?

On Pauls advice, we will be applying to the Bank for a CCA request. Under our original DSAR they have not supplied the original documents so they can't have them any more, or else they would have supplied them. We know that we knew nothing about the new accounts so it's going to be interesting to see these documents that we didn't even know existed.

Haven't even started yet!!!

Duncan & Debbie

You need to remember that this was an original debt of around £25,000 that the bank helped us get in to, and that we have already paid back over £32,000.

[Pinky69]

Re: D&d V Rbs 2011

A business credit rating may be sound right up to the point of going out of business so I don't think you can blame the bank for this. What you are basically talking about here are unpaid overdrafts. Was there any reason you did not defend in court? Had you done so you would have discovered the erroneous income figures submitted by the bank and been able to negotiate with the court a repayment schedule suitable to both parties and a waiver of interest. Courts are not unsympathetic to people who have gone out of business. Why did you stop paying £300 a month if you were "trying to sort things out with RBS"? It would have been in your best interests to continue paying whilst negotiations were ongoing. Then the court would have seen you were making an effort to clear the debt.

Overdraft agreements come under Section 10 of the Consumer Credit Act but have Part V exemption in form and content. In other words all they have to send you is the overdraft amount, the period of the overdraft, Terms and Conditions and interest rate.

Trying to work out what you should be paying given the passage of 18 years is impossible for observers on a debt advice forum and in my view requires the assistance of an accountant who would also be able to negotiate a discount with the bank.