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About 10 years ago, I broke up with my girlfriend. Between us, we had 2 joint bank accounts, both with £500 overdrafts, and I had a £3000 loan with Lloyds that I'd taken out so we could set up house together.

I called up First Direct (who had one of the overdrafts) and explained the situation, and that I'd need to freeze the joint overdraft and make some kind of repayment arrangment - I proposed £50 a month. "No problem" the nice lady said, "I'll set you up a seperate sole account, freeze the joint account, and since Christmas is coming up (this was late November) I'll set up your account so you don't start making payments until January." Lovely and painless.

Then I called Lloyds to try and do the same with the second overdraft. Again, everything seemed fine - they didn't take the extra step of waiting until after Christmas, but they were nice about it, and froze the account. Happy, I went about my business.

Mid December, I made the first payment to Lloyds. Again, no problem, all well and good. A few weeks later, my statement came through. I was £40 worse off than I was before I paid them. To make the payment, they'd unlocked the account and applied interest and a fee for unlocking it, applying the payment, and freezing the account again. This came to about £55 in total. That had taken the account slightly over limit, which they'd charged me another £35 for.

At this point, I'd already gone through various headaches on account of the ex, and frankly, I couldn't be arsed to argue with them. So I wrote them one letter - paraphrased, but this is the gist:

Dear sir,

I notice with dismay that my recent attempt to pay £50 off my outstanding joint overdraft with yourselves has resulted in charges totalling approx £90 being applied to my account. As I'm sure you can see, this is not a sustainable approach to reducing my debt. In the interests of keeping the debt to a minimum, I will be making no more payments until we are able to reach an agreement which results in my payment actually going towards my debt.

I realise that the terms and conditions of my account allow you to take funds from my sole account to clear this debt. Therefore, please also be advised that I have transferred my salary payments to another bank. As you have previously advised me that you will only collect my loan payments from a Lloyds account, this also means that I am unable to make repayments towards my loan, since I harbour concerns that deposits into my sole account will be reappropriated to cover the fees you have charged on the joint account.

Please be advised that I am still putting your payments aside, and once we have reached an agreement, all my accounts will be brought up to date. All I am asking is that I be allowed to make the payments already agreed with yourselves without incurring higher charges than the amount I am paying in.

I look forward to hearing your proposals for how this can be achieved.

Your Sincerely

Me.

All very cordial and professional, I think you'll agree. Unfortunately, they never bothered to reply. They also stopped sending statements. Since they never replied, I never made any more repayments, and a few years later I had a nice little bit squirrelled away, which I saved until the 6 year Statute of Limitations had expired, at which point I blew the lot on drugs and hookers. Actually, it was probably beer and geek toys...I can't actually remember.
(bblgoose, Fri 11 Feb 2011, 17:10, 4 replies)

that is a responsible and respectable win!
well done.
( camp freddy well, would you look at that!, Fri 11 Feb 2011, 18:36, closed)

Had
a very similar thing with two credit card companies.
I sold my house, phoned them both up to request a final settlement fee (my neighbour had a nightmare trying to pay off a barclaycard in full - he paid the amount on his last statement, yet in the two days in between had added something like 23 pence interest which left him paying interest on the whole 10 grand, so I thought it best to phone for an actual figure) and pay it off in full with some of the money from the sale. Both companies told me that 'that isn't possible sir'. So I asked for a copy of the orig. agreement, so that I could work it out for myself, in writing.
I stopped paying the minimum amount (it was always more than that in any case) until I received either a figure to settle the whole debt, or the agreement so that I could work it out myself.
I had a bloke come round from one of them when I was out about a year later, but since then, not a word from either.
If they hadn't been so greedy trying to fukc me about to maximise the amount they get could get from me, they'd have had all their cash back in full.
Instead, they got nothing.
Turns out, if you request the agreement and they don't get it to you within 12 days, the law no longer sees that as an enforceable debt. I didn't know that at the time mind you.
(dchurch bah, Fri 11 Feb 2011, 19:08, closed)

Nice
For both stories. Lloyds TSB are a bunch of fucktards, offered my sister a final settlement fee (which I was going to pay off to bail her out) then fucked the whole job over to reclamations so she couldn't pay it. Last she's heard from them, as far as I know (she already owes me a shitload more than she owes them mind).
( eXOBeX, Sun 13 Feb 2011, 15:34, closed)

Honda Accords and prostitutes?
(hairybuddha, Sat 12 Feb 2011, 1:47, closed)