Wicked!!! Thankyou so much!! Will try the nice route first then onto Section 75 and letters - really appreciate your help - if anyone else has any advice to guide me (or people lkike me in a similar position) would be very grateful.

Thankyou - will give that a try. I do suspect it will end up being unsuccessful though; might you be able to point me in the relevant direction of contract law that would apply here?

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I guess it would have been preferable to get in touch sooner; the reason we didn't because it honestly wasn't very near the top of our priorities at the time. Long story short - the NHS missed my father-in law's cancer and he collapse dwhilst he was abroad and had to undrgo an emergency operation which he barely made it through - that took up the first three months in Abu Dhabi. After we managed to relocate him back to England he was slow to heal and underwent a further operation which was meant to remove part of his liver but they ended up opening him up and closing him again after discovering that the cancer was widespread. My wife pretty much hit a depressive phase and quit her job and so it took a while before we could start thinking about "normal " things again. Thanks for the advice about the Section 75 - I'll have to google what that is! As you say the small claims court wil lcost money so I was thinking about getting a solicitor's letter drafted. As you say, it would have been preferable to get in touch with her earlier but she lied about the weekend being booked and she was downright rude on the phone so i think a GOGW will be fruitless. And at the end of the day, my wife handed over that money and got nothing back for it; she worked extra shifts to earn it so perhaps I'm feeling mor eguilty than I normally would! If you or anyone else has any further advice I would be very grateful to hear it - many thanks. (and thanks for sorting the paragraph thing out)

Hello all! Your helpful advice is desperately needed. Last year my wife booked a two night stay at some holiday cottages with good reviews. Because it was my birthday she paid extra for a special gourmet hamper on both nights. Everything was paid up front by Mastercard. Unfortunately, my wife's father was diagnosed with cancer around that time so we were forced to go abroad to see him. We contacted the company well in advance of our dates and explained the situation. Technically there is a no refunds condition that they have put on their website however the lady in charge of the company wrote back to say it was no problem - all we had to do was contact her back with the new dates that we wanted to book for and she would shift the booking over. Things finally settled down at home so we decided to get back in touch for my upcoming birthday THIS year. After contacting the same woman on the phone, she was extremely hostile with my wife and said that the weekend we wanted to book for was full up (it wasn't - we checked on the website and took a picture to prove it) and that we had lost our money as it had been nearly a year since we were last in touch. We pointed out that this wasn't fair since there had been no stipulation in the email that she had sent saying that we needed to be in touch by any timeframe - let alone a year. She said that we would find she had been most reasonable and put the phone down. I was annoyed at the way she had spoken to my wife and rang back in a polite way to point out that we wanted our money back since we had received nothing for it and there was no stipulation as to when we should rebook - she did the same thing with me. Nevertheless I warned her that she would be receiving a claim through the small claims court before she put the phone down. Now we are a bit stuck as to where to go next. It cost four hundred pounds in total which is a lot to us but more importantly we feel that she reneged on her promise. A s I understand things we have seven years under contract law to make a claim against her. Is this right and if so what is the best way of going about getting a refund? Contact the card company? Send a solicitor's letter? Apply through the small claims court? I would be very grateful for any advice at all on what the best course of action is. *NB sorry about the lack of paragraphs - every time i save the post it gets rid of them!

Just an update - thanks for all the advice, following the posting of my last etter I didn't hear anything further. Looks as though it was indeed "willy waving"!

yay - thanks dx - this forum has been a major help in this difficult period - can't thank you guys enough

Further couple of questions if anyone is able to help: 1. Does an email count as a written acknowledgement with a (digital) signature if you put your name at the end? 2. We never had a joint account however we made occasional transfers of cash between our accounts after the alleged loan was given - for example, whilst we were in a relationship, one of us might have paid for dinner and the other person would transfer their half of the money to cover it at a later date. Would the person making the claim have to prove that this transfer was specifically being made towards the alleged debt and therefore count as an acknowledgement? Or would ANY transfer between accounts be presumed to be for payment of the alleged debt? 3. What is a reasonable amount of time to give the other party to respond before I can say i am regarding the matter as closed and unwilling to enter into any further correspondence? thanks again - really appreciate it.

Thanks guys - much appreciated. I am going to instruct the solicitor to write back reiterating that the debt is statute barred and that I regard the matter as closed with further communication being regarded as an act of harassment. Please note though - the case that I mentioned above is really important reading for anyone on this forum - can't post links but there is a good summary written by Tim Akkouh and Emily Gillett in the Solicitors Journal. In this case, the company pursued an individual who argued his debt was statue barred - a decsion that was unanimously held up by the Court of Appeal - and which was overturned and unbarred by the House of Lords. At the very least it's important to know that any negotiations / acknowledgements entered into before court action should contain the phrase "without prejudice" to aid the chances of it being inadmissable in a subsequent action. Thanks again for your help.

So I got my solicitor to write a letter pointing out the debt was statute barred. Got one back saying that the law has recently changed due to a case that went to the House of Lords (Rashid Vs Bradford and Bingley). Here, the defendant had the statue bar overturned by the act of acknowledging the debt. (theres a brief summary on the jcp solicitors page "admission enough to confirm debt" As this will probably have a major bearing on a lot of the people using this forum I wondered if anyone had any ideas about the best step forward>?

Hi there, First time poster on here - i would really appreciate your advice on a nightmare situation Long story short - I went out with a girl for over 14 years with the intention that we would both get married together. During our time at uni we pooled our money to pay for stuff. In reality, i ended up paying for absolutely everything including holidays away, car repairs, meals, you name it. In order to pay our uni fees we both took out a loan from the bank - and she transferred a lump sum to my account so that I could pay two years fees. Initially the transfer was suggested as a loan but this was never formalised and, after we left uni, we decided that there was no point me paying her back the money as our finances were intermingled (although we had separate accounts) and that I had given her far more than she had given me. In other words, the money was a gift. More years went by and nothing further was said. Unfortunately our relationship then fell apart in 2012. I was taken aback by my (ex) partner's request to have that original loan paid back to her since we were no longer going to be together. As this "loan" had been converted to a gift you can understand that I was taken aback by this request and argued for quite some time that this was completely unreasonable. But, truth be known, i felt guilty about the relationship ending after so long and my ex wanted to save up to move away from her family who were ruining her life i agreed to pay back the money as a matter of goodwill and completely under my terms when I was financially able to afford it. I was lucky enough to start a new relationship with a new girl and things progressed so well that i ended up getting engaged to my new partner this year. The day AFTER we had told our mutual friends about the engagement, my ex (who had by now worked out the issues with her family) got in touch and enquired by email about the repayment. I replied that I hadn't forgotten about her plight and that i couldn't afford to repay her at the moment, having just gotten engaged and moving into a new house, but that I could start repaying her with a monthly standing order starting from January 2014. She emailed me back saying that this wasn't good enough and that she had recalculated a new amount that I should be paying with interest starting from the day we had broken up and a monthly payment schedule that i frankly couldn't afford. I wrote back an email pointing out in polite language that I did not accept that I owed her any money and that I had agreed to make her a payment out of my goodwill in order to help her escape her family circumstances and that we had never had a loan agreement or a repayment plan or that any interest was to be charged as the money was a gift. This morning I received a letter from her solicitor representing a formal demand for payment stating that they had seen our email exchange in which i "readily acknowledged the loan" and had made apologies for not making the payments back and that they had advised her that I could be pursued through the courts for the missing amount. I was invited to provide a written response within 21 days after which the new, recalculated amount with interest payments, would be withdrawn and I would be taken to court for a CCJ. I feel quite saddened that things have come to this and I am now in a situation where i need to find some good legal advice to examine my options. The transfer into my account was in 2003 and this email correspondence occurred this Summer, 2013. I guess my main questions would be: 1. How do I go about finding good legal advice? 2. What do I need to gather to fight this? and what sort of chance do I have? 3. Having received this letter from the solicitors unexpectedly I haven't got any leave booked from work over the next few weeks and will have to access services that are mainly available at the weekend if i'm to make the deadline - which resources should I be utilising? I'm in a state of worry as I have an upcoming wedding to pay for and it would obviously ruin my plans with my new partner. Really really appreciate any advice you can give me - many thanks in advance.