theoldrouge Thanks. You have no idea what you have just done. Having read what I have just read as a result of you pointing me to the above thread I realise I absolutely have a miss-selling case worth what looks like hundreds of thousands of pounds assuming the principle of being placed back in the position you were before you were ripped off. I am too exhausted to explain further as I have been on the computer for days & days all day to the exclusion of everything else. I always did know all this really , but with me being fobbed off right left & centre by absolutely everyone my brain has just turned to porridge. And the harsh reality is that you can do nothing by yourself. Lawyers are essential & so is other support before that. Instead all I've had is the exact opposite of support of any kind. I'll be back. I'm determined to seek redress as the damage done to my life by having my house stolen is immense & until the sub-prime nasties got hold of me I was always exemplary & conservative about managing my mortgage & always had a huge amount of equity in the house. But the thing is, not only have I been stitched up by the lenders, but amazingly by everyone I went to for any help - the CAB, Solicitors, Shelter and loads more. You just could not believe what I have gone through. I'll be back. I am also going to write the whole thing out in a blog somewhere. I can't resist one little example of what I mean. I was the LIP in the appeal court asking to overturn the judgement of eviction by the lender from the lower court. I had no idea about law at all & assumed that judges would know the law and I had no idea of how to present/argue a case. The lower court judge bowled me over when his first words in his judgement were "This has been going on long enough now ........' in other words it's time to stop your legitimate attempts to avoid eviction. The case going on too long was being quoted as the reason for the eviction judgement which actually should have been at least deferred pending further action. So, the judge in the appeal court interrupts my opening of the case where I was explaining the history of the mortgage and quoting various grounds of law which seemed to show why I had a case. At some point I said the lender had behaved fraudulently - it had, definitely. This judge stopped me and said "Don't spoil what is a very good case by talking about fraud in this court....' He then went red in the face and corrected himself by repeating what he had said word for word but changing is to what MAY be a very good case. He then proceeded to interrupt me twice more to tell me to 'get a move on'. I had been speaking for not more than ten minutes max. On the last interruption I said I don't know what to say (as you are interrupting me and effectively telling me I can't tell you about the mortgage and what happened) & after five seconds he whipped his head round to face the barrister for the lender & asked them to rebut my 'case' which I hadn't yet presented.That judge was a nasty piece of work. He also ignored my statement that I had not been sent the evidence by the lender. I badly wanted a copy of the mortgage agreement because I know it had been altered after I had sent it to the lender and that alteration alone proved their fraud. As a result of the fiasco of the appeal I was evicted the very next day, out on the street with my child. Just 24 hours notice of eviction, completely homeless, nowhere to go at all. And then there were the shenanegins from the council. There's a novel here I think.

I spoke to the Ombudsman & they didn't know what it was, saying they had never heard of something like this, but advised me to look at t&c and send it all to them anyway so they could find out if it was actionable.

Your description sounds like it is the same as insurance ?

Thanks Dx100uk I had heard a lot about PPI & I had already had a careful think whether I had taken out any PPI & concluded that as I was completely unaware of being in any situation where I had voluntarily taken out a loan or any kind or credit card etc, where I had then also deliberately & specifically thought I'll take out payment protection insurance ( I had once actually looked at this & was of the opinion that it was very expensive & cover was so limited as to be virtually worthless anyway and definitely not something I would ever buy ) that I therefore had nothing to claim. How wrong I was. I think I have three large figures of about £1000 plus interest for three mortgages to claim. This really goes to show that the obfuscation of the financial industry is good at completely pulling the wool over peoples eyes. Even though I am immersed in reading & thinking about financial industry scandal on a daily basis I was still incapable of realising I had signifigant claims. I am amazed at how this can happen.

When I took out a mortgage with SPML (& previously with other lenders) there was a large figure of about £1000 for an insurance premium added to the loan. I didn't understand what it was at all & asked for an explanation. I was told a) that it was compulsory (wrong ?) & b) that it was insurance not for me but the the lender so that if I failed to pay the mortgage this insurance policy was in place to re-imburse the lender if I couldn't pay. I now realise this must have been single premium PPI & therefore should be reclaimed plus all the interest . Can someone tell me if this the case - that this is a PPI which I can claim for being miss-sold. Thanks for any help on this

Searching via Google is pretty useless for finding legal judgements. It is quite difficult even for lawyers to research legal cases and they have to learn how to actually do it as part of their legal studies - which indicates it is a complicated process & you need to have access to the specialist law libraries to do it which is why Google is useless.

JamesH1 I have only just today realised that I might have a PPI claim exactly similar to yours. I was floundering around looking where to post about it when I came across this thread & think I might (subject to me verifying it) that I think you and I both have a bog standard PPI claim. The insurance you are rabbiting on about is, I think, something I remember querying with a mortgage provider. I didn't understand what it was at all & asked for an explanation. I was told a) that it was compulsory (wrong ?) & b) that it was insurance not for me but the the lender so that if I failed to pay the mortgage this insurance policy was in place to re-imburse the lender if I couldn't pay. I now realise this must have been single premium PPI & therefore should be reclaimed plus all the interest (you will be paying on that sum for the whole mortgage term. But I am about to start a thread asking for advice on whether I am right about all this.

I was just saying exactly what you have just said in a much more long winded way caused by attempting to explain where the legal type logic led - which is to the person with lawful possession & if that fails because they can't be got hold of then applying to a court as an alternative. Using the police to make a complaint could be helpful in this respect if the person with legal possession is unhelpful and if they are a bank you can be sure they will be extremely unhelpful.

As you correctly state, the 'agency' which other posters had assumed was a letting agency, is in fact the bailiff ( I presume) which takes possession & changes the locks. A separate 'agency' usually attends with the bailiff to make sure the property is safe and he turns off water and removes inflammable materials etc. So, as you appear to have located these two groups of people, you need to speak to them. If you haven't located them you need to do so by trying to find out from the 'landlady' . Also try speaking to the bank. Ask both the bank & the bailiff & the cleaning up people what they suggest. What can be done is the bailiff can let you in to remove your stuff if he believes you are the owner of the property. But the problem is that he will probably say he will only let the actual property owner in. But he is in jail. Your problem seems to be that everyone is fobbing you off - including the police. BUT, the police are very often completely wrong and they rarely seem to have the slightest understanding of law. I would imagine that you have a right to expect the police to retrieve your possessions because the 'landlady' you mention has committed a fraud against you by renting out the property in the first place. This fraud was compounded by her actions then denying you access to your possessions. You could claim to the police that it might have been her intention all along to deprive you of your property . It is therefore stolen property and you have the right to expect the police to retrieve it & bring criminal charges for theft.There is no doubt you have a case for damages etc against her. Because her actions have been fraudulent, you can make a formal complaint against her to the police and don't forget to include the subsequent theft of your possessions. The police are obliged to investigate this complaint and if there is adequate evidence a criminal case would be brought against the 'landlady'. Under these circumstances you can use the police investigation to obtain all the details from the 'landlady' of who the bank, bailiffs, & her husband are & their contact details because the police should be getting all these details when they do their investigation anyway. I would imagine a decent policeman might gain entry while you remove your belongings. But, unfortunately, it is probable that everyone involved are all a complete pain in the backside and all will witter on about not being able to do anything without proper authority. This means you will have to find a lawyer to bring the matter before a court so that the court can order the bailiff to open the property for you to remove your belongings. So, the two things you can do now is find the nearest 'Citizens Advice' office ( Google it) and explain the problem to them. They should help you & help find a lawyer & it should cost you nothing. The second is complain to the police as above and the third thing is get all contact details from the landlady - where she lives etc also where her husband is in prison who the bank is and she must also have contact details from the bailiff. You will need all this information - go, get it now. Then try speaking nicely to the bailiff who I believe has a legal obligation to open the property as long as the owner or owners agent is present to verify your belongings are yours and can be therefore be removed. It is normal procedure that a bailiff can return by arrangement with the owner of a re-possessed property to allow an owner to remove their belongings if they had been unable to on the actual day of repossession when the locks were changed. This is a legal requirement for the bailiff to return. The only complication here is you need the cooperation of the landlady to do this.

SPARK ENERGY oh dear... I rented a very small two bedroom house and moved in on November 14th 2011. SPARK ENERGY were the electricity and gas supplier. When I received a huge bill from them and looked at their tariff I was astonished at how they were overcharging. They were just using a series of excuses to ramp up 'extra' charges and a higher tariff. They were impossible to telephone and they refused to email me. They sent me a bill for £323 for just six weeks consumption and I can see they are charging about double per Kwh electricity unit than other suppliers. They are also charging me about £300 'extra' per year for not having a direct debit. Of course I am not expecting to be involved in direct debits when I am trying to transfer to another supplier & I never signed a contract with them and don't want anything to do with them - ever ! ! They are totally unprincipled and I advise anyone never to have anything to do with them. They are appalling !!!!! When I asked Scottish Power to supply me, SPARK ENERGY refused to transfer the account. Scottish Power said there was nothing they could and the would be unable to supply me if my previous supplier refused to transfer the account. Can this really be true ? If so I am in hock to an organisation which you can never escape from rather than a power supply utility company. What can I do ? How can I escape? Help anyone !!

Would it be possible to recover monies wrongly taken by a bailiff some years ago ? A car registered to my (very mentally ill) partner was taken at 2 a.m. and sold (value several thousands) for one parking tickets worth of debt (inflated of course). The parking ticket was mine, in my name - nothing to do with partner. Because my partner became increasingly mentally ill (as severe as it can get) she couldn't 'cope' with allowing me to organise legal action to recover her cars value & I have been so battered by various events I haven't been able to pursue it either. But now I'm making a comeback & want to fight all those human vermin that have ripped me & my partner off for years. Any opinions about this anyone ?

Watchinginvestigation2011, I do know about 'say no to 0870' and I have used it a lot - I always try it out first when faced with this rip off. Unfortunately, the rip off businesses that are using this weasil con-trick to milk telephone users of money are wising up to the say to 0870 website and any other avoidance methods people try using to avoid being ripped off and businesses are making enormous efforts to hide all their landline numbers as much as they can. This means the say no to 0870 website is increasingly unable to provide alternative numbers to ring, as I have often found out. For instance, I needed to contact Marks & Spencer urgently late yesterday about sorting out car insurance and the BT directory website simply refused to come up with ANY number for M&S. then, Googling M&S and looking at their website, there was no landline number of any kind there and not even any email excepting a 'complaint' form which is consigned to some dustbin and which will never allow proper communication - the proof of which is I have no response to what is an urgent issue when I tried using it. Then, I tried say no to 0870 and there was no alternative number on there when I tried using that- so I was completely thwarted and have no choice but to use the expensive telephone number. I haven't given up on it yet though as I am trying to get around it today.

CAN WE ORGANISE A CAMPAIGN AGAINST THIS 'DREADFUL BEHAVIOUR' ? (I HAVE TO USE THE SLIGHTLY SILLY PHRASE 'DREADFUL BEHAVIOUR' BECAUSE THIS WEBSITE WILL NOT LET ME USE THE WORD '[problem]') Don’t you just loathe the way more and more businesses are using computerisation to manipulate their customers ? Particularly the 'DREADFUL BEHAVIOUR' of forcing customers to use chargeable premium 08 numbers when they need to contact a business, instead of ordinary telephone numbers for landlines. Some chargeable numbers (maybe all of them for all I know) are designed so the business is paid as well by the telephone number provider (usually BT). In other words you, the customer, are charged twice for making a telephone call to a dishonest business using this downright fraudulent 'DREADFUL BEHAVIOUR'. You pay firstly through your own telephone account with all those monthly minutes you pay for to your telephone account provider who typically says all those minutes are ‘free’. Of course they are not ‘free’ because you pay for them in advance each month, whether you actually use them all up or not. But we are all fed this delusion that we can telephone any mobile or any UK landline using our ‘free’ minutes that we actually pay for in advance. But this is a lie. More and more businesses are being persuaded to join in the 'DREADFUL BEHAVIOUR' dreamed up by BT who disguise it with jargon such as ‘non – geographic number’ which seems to be sufficient to bamboozle people in accepting it. But the businesses using it are rubbing their hands with glee as they can rake in part of the extra cost the telephone caller is forced to pay. Even the greedy government has joined in the 'DREADFUL BEHAVIOUR' as more and more government departments are forcing people to use these telephone numbers. A simple brief call to one of these numbers can easily cost several pounds FOR EACH CALL ! Particularly as businesses like to keep you on hold for so long as they know the minute by minute costs are mounting and they will make even more money than if they just dealt with the call straight away. It really is a completely fraudulent, dishonest 'DREADFUL BEHAVIOUR'. It is time for people to refuse to have anything to do with any business that milks money out of people in this way. It is just part of shocking ‘rip off UK’ which makes many bewildered foreign visitors think we have taken leave of our senses for allowing the UK to degenerate in so many ways. LETTER SENT I TO MARKS & SPENCER TODAY I am infuriated with Marks & Spencer. I took out a car insurance policy number … paying by direct debit. The first payment was taken, but no M&S direct debit was visible in my account the following month. When I received a letter from you dated 4th October, you said absolutely nothing about why you had sent the letter excepting to say you wanted me to contact you. You only gave an 0844 number to contact you and you failed to provide an email address. I spent ages trying to find a proper landline contact number for you on the internet and failed; excepting that I did phone a 0113 number with an unpleasantly rude woman who refused to provide me with any numbers other than 0800 or 084 numbers, all of which are chargeable at extortionate rates from my mobile phone. A brief call can easily end up costing three or four pounds, sometimes a great deal more if you are one of those horrible companies than keep people on hold for hour and hours. It was obvious you deliberately made great efforts to keep any landline numbers off your website in order to force people to phone the various chargeable 08 numbers you provide instead. My mobile is the only phone I have at present and as I already pay through the nose to pay for UK calls, I cannot stomach the fraud of companies like you then using chargeable premium numbers like 0844, 0870 and 0800 (only free from BT landlines). It is nothing more than a weasily 'DREADFUL BEHAVIOUR' to worm money out of people who have to make phone calls to you and it is dishonest and completely disgusts me. I am shocked at this arrogant manner exhibited by Marks &Spencer which rather leads me to think I should cancel my car insurance and never enter one of your stores ever again and also to persuade anyone I know not to use such an arrogant company to buy any product from either. That is the measure of my fury at any business behaving in this way towards customers. I have absolutely had a bellyful of it. I can only presume it is part of the way many business’ constantly misuse the availability of the internet and the computerisation of telephone systems which now allow digitally controlled premium rate charging to generally abuse their customers by endlessly manipulating them and milking them of money in ways which were not available prior to the availability of computerisation. I really, really dislike all of it because it makes life much more unpleasant than was the case prior to computerisation allowing this sort of abuse. I would therefore be grateful if you would kindly telephone me or email me so that I may find out why you wrote to me and why you have not taken my car insurance direct debit from my account. - Your Sincerely,

Bankfodder, When I tried to make a case for mis-selling in the County Court when I was trying to fight of eviction, the Judge was ridiculous. He just dismissed any claim I might have on the grounds of 'out of time', & I had made payments, thereby acknowledging mortgage contract etc, and, most damning of all, I did not have 'clean hands' because I had self certified and filled out mortgage application form. The Judge also wittered on about how the poor lender might lose money if I wasn't evicted immediately and he said this has been 'going on long enough' (and must be concluded because the poor lender is suffering so). He also refused permission to appeal and rabitted on about all this was entirely proportional (re recent ECHR proportionality precedent case) However. I do have clean hands as I told broker I had no income other than benefits & broker filled out salary figure over phone & I only ever talked about my intention to get back to work and salary I would expect as a self employed person. The Judge was talking total rubbish. And it is only now that I realise how casually these judges make things up as they go along as most people are just bamboozled by them. But I feel totally powerless without at least basic legal advice and although I qualify for legal aid it is impossible to get a solicitor. So it seems your advice on fighting through the County courts instead of the Ombudsman is a bit hollow ?

donein, I know ! But I haven't had the time to do any posting here. In a nutshell : I asked the next highest court for permission to appeal. I was a litigant in person. The judge interrupted me within a few minutes and said , "Do not spoil what is a very good case with allegations of fraud...............I mean to say do not spoil what may be a very good case by making allegations of fraud in my court". He then proceeded to interrupt me a further couple of times, telling me to 'get on with it'. I had only been giving the background history and had only been speaking for less than five minutes ! On the last interruption from him I was quite unsure what on earth I could say about any aspect of the case as he seemed to be just shutting me up for anything I said, so my exact words to him at this point were " I seem to have petered out' which I said merely as something to say while I tried to think of what next I would be 'allowed' to say. In an instant he turned to the barrister for other side (mortgage lender) and asked them to make their submission, which they did. Within just a microsecond of them finishing, the Judge went straight into his judgement which I could not then interrupt; and when it was finished he leapt up to leave the court. I could do nothing. The nasty little toad had deliberately 'steamrollered' me out of the court and out of permission to appeal. So, I was evicted the next day, some of the contents of my house stolen by the people 'securing the house' for the estate agent. The local council said I was 'intentionally homeless' and refused to re-house my son and I, thereby breaking the law. The housing charity Shelter thought the council had no grounds in law for making this bizarre claim and offered help in asking the council for a review of this spiteful decision. The council didn't change their mind. Shelter would not pursue it further. Social services tried several times to stop paying for B&B accommodation for my son and I and tried to throw both of us out onto the street at least twice. And in the six months we have been in B&B all sorts of ghastly things have happened and NOTHING WHATEVER has been done by the council or social services to assist in re-housing my son and I. We are powerless as I am penniless and reliant on benefits, the full amount of which I am not getting. Two days ago social services had yet another go at throwing us out onto the streets the next day with no warning whatever. Then they relented and said they would only pay for the B&B for just one more week and then throw us out anyway. They told I had just one week to find privately rented accommodation, for which I could claim housing benefit. But all the estate agents do not want to deal with benefit claimants or the council and they want guarantors for the rent. I cannot provide a guarantor. Oh, and the council said they were taking possession of the entire contents of my house which they had removed and stored and they would be disposing of them. Frankly, I am not sure who are the most criminally brutal and nasty: The purely evil mortgage lenders, the utterly corrupt courts, or the violently abusive bureaucrats of the council; take your pick. They have all been utterly disgusting specimens of humanity in my experience. So, I have been beaten into the ground. I have only told you a fraction of it. But I really really want to bring all of these vermin to account, and what I need to do that is legal help - which I can't get because lawyers are totally uninterested in taking on cases like this for legally aided people. It would be quite different if I had the money to pay the lawyers their going rate out of my own pocket. Anyone here willing and able to help in any way ?