Notice from Ruthbrdge acting for Cabot - assistance needed

[Silk75]

Let me start, a few years ago I appear to have moved house, not transferred my address details and for a credit card and now things appear to have caught up with me.

First letter received 14th July 2008

Client Name: Cabot Financial Europe Ltd
Assigned from: Finance Department
Regarding: Credit Card
Balance: £6735.89

NOTICE BEFORE PROCEEDINGS

We have been instructed by the above named client to retrieve the outstanding balance in full. Failure to respond to this notice within seven days may result in the following legal action.

A County Court claim form is due to be served in the next seven days from the date of this notice and any subsequent proceedings would take place at Kingston County Court.
Upon being granted a County Court Judgement, costs and interest would be added to the above amount. If this is not paid we could apply to the Courts for a Warrant of Execution which may allow us to proceed with any of the following courses of action.

- A County Court Bailiff to enter your property and levy goods to the value of the above liability for subsequent sale at auction. Any proceeds from auction would, after the deduction of any cost incurred, discharge some or all of the liability.
- An Attachment to your earnings with your employer. This would mean that a Court agreed sum would be deducted from your salary before you receive it.
- A Charging Order could be placed against your property, should you own one. This would mean that this liability would be settled upon the sale of your property, prior to you receiving any of the sale proceeds.

To avoid these proceeding being issued against you, contact must be made through our legal dept on the above telephone number and your payment in full, must be received within the next seven days.

All payments should be sent to the above address... etc etc

Yours sincerely Jason Evans

After looking through this site I sent them a CCA request enclosing the £1 max fee by cheque the next day, and sent it by recorded delivery which Royal Mail's website confirmed as delivered. I didn't sign the letter as is recommended I avoid doing from this website.

On Monday 21st July I received another letter dated 18th July, this looked like a combination of standard letter that had numbers and dates in biro, but my name and address in print:

Same reference and header

Further to your letter of 18/07/2008, regarding your outstanding indebtness to our above client.

Although you have stated you have no agreement with our clients, you have requested a copy of your agreement as licensed under the Credit Consumer Act 1974. This request would be made under section 77(1) and section 78(1).

The terms and conditions of your agreement were terminated on 30/11/2006. This was done by CitiFinCreditCard serving you with a notice of termination, served under the same Credit Consumer Act, which you referred to in your letter.

The terms of your agreement were terminated due to non payment. You were required to return the property of the vendor and pay the balance outstanding in full in accordance with your agreement. All defaults will remain on your credit card file until the debt is paid in full.

Your agreement was taken out on the 12/12/1996 and you paid a total of 119 monthly payments to the above client. The address we were given to locate you from was: (left blank?)

To avoid proceeding being issued against you, contact must be made through the legal dept on 020 8734 3554 and your payment made in full, must be received within the next seven days.

Yours,

Jason Evans

This didn't look to me like a copy of the original CCA that I signed, and had no CitiBank details on it at all.

Today I received another letter, again dated 18th July!

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Despite many attempts to contact you directly by telephone and letter, you have totally ignored or disregarded our efforts to resolve this matter.

We are now advising our client to commence bankruptcy proceedings.

If this action is undertaken, you may be required to attend a personal hearing at which point the counts may have the power to administer a bankruptcy order. This order then enables the Official Receivers Office to gain possession and control of any goods and property.

A creditors meeting would then be held to determine the extent of your assets and also your total indebtness.

The bankruptcy order would then be advertised in the the London Gazette and your local newspaper.

The Official Receiver would usually employ an accountant to interview you, so that a statement of affairs can be drawn up. Once the full extent of your financial position is obtained, any monies gained from the seizure of assets or from your liquidity, would be distributed to your preferental creditors, such as the Inland Revenue and any others holding a secured debt.

Your unsecured creditors would then be dealt with on a pro-rata basis and any shortfall in monies would be recovered via an attachment to your income, or, if self employed, a garnishee order.

If you do not cooperate fully, you may be declared bankrupt.

In order to discuss your settlement proposals, blah blah,

Yours sincerely

Jason Evans (again)

So letters 2 and 3 say differing things, are produced on the same date, but get to me 2 days apart.

From looking at what letter 2 provides, they have not given me a copy of my CCA so far.

Where do I go from here? I was thinking of sending a CCA request to Cabot themselves as they are the originators, but I need to respond to Ruthbridge in some way.
I feel I should point out to them that they have not provided me with a copy of my CCA from CitiBank, and remind them of the deadline to do so by. Would that be enough or should I get an Subject Access Request (a brief explanation as to what this is would be good)?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Goldlady]

Ruthbridge know what their responsibilities are. I had a run-in with them a couple of years ago and reminded them that without a CCA they had no chance. They are full of bull. I love their attempt to say that they don't need to supply a CCA because the agreement has been terminated.

I certainly wouldn't waste any more money.

A Subject Access Request is asking for everything the original creditor holds about your account, can run to tapes of phone conversations, but will normally include statements, copies of letters etc etc.

Without a CCA there is nothing Ruthless can do, in spite of their scaremongering.

[Silk75]

Thanks for the response

I'll drop them a letter in a few days reminding them as such. They have until the 5th if August to produce the original CCA, so fingers crossed they will think that their own sabre rattling is sufficient.

[Curlyben]

Throw this at them as it makes things perfectly clear.

Account In Dispute

Ref:

Dear Sir/Madam

Thank you for your letter of xx/xx/xx, the contents of which have been noted.

You have failed to respond to my legal request to supply me a true copy of the original Consumer Credit Agreement for the above account.

On the **DATE** I wrote to you requesting a copy of the credit agreement and other information under the Consumer Credit Act 1974 (Sections 77-79).

On **DATE** a member of your staff signed for delivery of my written request and I have an electronic proof of delivery showing their signature and the date.

To date you have failed to comply with these requests in any way, whether by confirmation of receipt of the request or by supplying the requested documents.

These documents I requested should be readily available as proof of your legal right to collect this account under the Consumer Credit Act 1974.

In my letter of the **DATE** I made a formal request for a copy of the signed, executed credit agreement for the above account under section 77(1) of the Consumer Credit Act 1974. In addition a full statement of this account should have been sent to me detailing all debits and credits to the account.

Furthermore


You are aware that the Consumer Credit Act allows 12 working days for a request for a true copy of a credit agreement to be carried out before your client enters into a default situation.

If that request is not satisfied after a further 30 calendar days your client commits a summary criminal offence.

These limits have expired.

As you are no doubt aware section 77(6) states:

If the creditor fails to comply with Subsection (1)

(a) He is not entitled , while the default continues, to enforce the agreement.

And

(b) If the default continues for one month he commits an offence.

Therefore this account has become unenforceable at law.

As you have Failed to comply with a lawful request for a true, signed copy of the said agreement and other relevant documents mentioned in it, Failed to send a full statement of the account and Failed to provide any of the documentation requested.

Consequentially any legal action you pursue will be averred as both UNLAWFUL and VEXATIOUS.

Furthermore I shall counterclaim that any such action constitutes unlawful harassment.

Please note you may also consider this letter as a statutory notice under section 10 of the Data Protection Act to cease processing any data in relation to this account with immediate effect.

This means you must remove all information regarding this account from your own internal records and from my records with any credit reference agencies.

Should you refuse to comply, you must within 21 days provide me with a detailed breakdown of your reasoning behind continuing to process my data.

It is not sufficient to simply state that you have a ‘legal right’; You must outline your reasoning in this matter and state upon which legislation this reasoning depends.

Should you not respond within 14 days I expect that this means you agree to remove all such data.

Furthermore you should be aware that a creditor is not permitted to take ANY
Action against an account whilst it remains in dispute.

The lack of a credit agreement is a very clear dispute and as such the following applies.

* You may not demand any payment on the account, nor am I obliged to offer any payment to you.
* You may not add further interest or any charges to the account.
* You may not pass the account to a third party.
* You may not register any information in respect of the account with any credit reference agency.
* You may not issue a default notice related to the account.


I reserve the right to report your actions to any such regulatory authorities as I see fit.
You have 14 days from receiving this letter to contact me with your intentions to resolve this matter which is now a formal complaint.

I would appreciate your due diligence in this matter.

I look forward to hearing from you in writing.

Yours faithfully
BLAH

Edit as needed.