Martinix vs Lloyds TSB Select Loan

[martinhw]

I have a Select Loan with Lloyds TSB and believe I was mis sold the policy.

I have written a complaint letter as follows:

Complaints department
Personal Loans Service Centre
Lloyds TSB
PO Box 43
Peterlee
County Durham
SR8 2YQ


16 January 2007

Account No. XXXXXXXXXX



RE: Complaint & Request for Full Refund of PPI Insurance & Interest.




Dear Sir / Madam,

I took out the above loan for £XXXX on the 12th of June 2003. I was assisted by my account manager Mr. XXXXXX in completing my application at the XXXXXX Branch.

Mr. XXXXX informed me that since I had previously had charges applied to my account in respect of unpaid direct debits and unauthorized overdrafts, I would struggle to obtain the desired credit. Mr. XXX explained that I would not have been given the loan if I did not take PPI. Mr. XXX suggested that it would act as a show of good faith from my side, to provide the bank the necessary protection from redundancy etc and to minimize the risk of lending to me.

I have since learned that it is illegal to make PPI a condition of taking out a loan unless you include the costs of PPI in your quoted loan interest rate, which you did not do. I therefore consider that I have been mis-sold this expensive insurance, which I do not need and which I said that I did not really want.

I would also like to bring to your attention the FSA principles for the “Treating customers fairly – towards fair outcomes for consumers.”

Principle 7 “A Firm must pay due regard to the information needs of its clients, and communicate information to them in a way which is clear, fair and not misleading”.

Principle 9 “A firm must take reasonable care to ensure the suitability of its advice and discretionary decisions for any customer who is entitled to rely upon its judgment”.










I am therefore requesting a full refund of the Insurance plus any interest I have paid.
I calculate the insurance cost of £XXXXXX add the interest rate of the loan at 12.9% APR means the interest due today in respect of the insurance policy is £XXXXXX. I am therefore requesting you refund me the full total of £XXXXXX.

I would appreciate a reply to this letter within fourteen days. If you reject this complaint, I would be grateful if you could explain whether you provide an internal appeals process. If you do not, please supply me with a final response letter, so that I can take up the matter with the Financial Ombudsman Service.

I will also register a claim via the small claims court to recover the PPI Insurance, Interest and costs if I am required to do so.



Yours faithfully



Me

I have heard nothing from them yet.

[reidnet]

Hi,
If anything like mine they will forward your complaint onto the specialised Insurance Customer care department.

Customer Care Department
Lloyds TSB Insurance
Tredegar Park
Newport
South Wales
NP10 8SB

Good luck

Ian

[martinhw]

16 days and still no reply.

[reidnet]

Originally Posted by martinhw

16 days and still no reply.

They may be busy dealing with claims..lol

[Bicester1]

Hi

IMHO I would suggest that you do not bother with the FSO but stick to the legal pathway.

The internal complaints procedure will just string you along! Send tham an LBA as they have not replied.

See reidnets post for an example.

Bicester1

[martinhw]

I have just completed my LBA which I will be sending today. If anyone wants to comment on it. I want to send it this afternoon.

Customer Care Department
Lloyds TSB Insurance
Tredegar Park
Newport
South Wales
NP10 8SB
02 February 2007


LETTER BEFORE ACTION


Account No. XXXXXX

Dear Sir / Madam,


I am extremely disappointed that you have failed to respond or acknowledge my complaint letter dated 16th January 2007 which shows a clear breach of Principle 2 of the “FSA Statements of Principle”, which requires firms to act with due skill, care and diligence.

I would also like to bring to your attention the FSA principles for the “Treating customers fairly – towards fair outcomes for consumers“.

Principle 7 “A Firm must pay due regard to the information needs of its clients, and communicate information to them in a way which is clear, fair and not misleading”.

Principle 9 “A firm must take reasonable care to ensure the suitability of its advice and discretionary decisions for any customer who is entitled to rely upon its judgment”.


I have taken the following extract from you website relating to your complaints procedure:

“We’ll do all we can to resolve your complaint by the end of the next business day. If we can’t do this, we’ll write to you within five working days to tell you what we’ve done to resolve the problem, or acknowledge your complaint and let you know when you can expect a full response. We’ll also let you know the name and contact details of the person or team dealing with your case.”

Further failure to respond or acknowledge my complaint will be reported to the FSA without delay.

Mr. XXXX of your XXXXXXX Branch in XXXXXX informed me on the day of my application that since I had previously had charges applied to my account in respect of unpaid direct debits and unauthorized overdrafts, I would struggle to obtain the desired credit. Mr. XXXX explained that I would not have been given the loan if I did not take PPI. Mr. XXXX suggested that it would act as a show of good faith from my side, to provide the bank the necessary protection from redundancy etc and to minimize the risk of lending to me. I have since learned that it is illegal to make PPI a condition of taking out a loan and I therefore consider that I have been mis-sold this expensive insurance, which I do not need and which I said that I did not really want.





I would draw your attention to the terms of the contract which you agreed to at the time that I opened my account. It is an implied term of that contract that you would conduct yourselves lawfully and in a manner which complies with UK law.

What I require
I am requesting a full refund in the form of a cheque for the Insurance policy plus any interest I have paid. I calculate the insurance cost of £2874.28 add the interest rate of the loan at 12.9% APR means the interest due today in respect of the insurance policy is £1725.99. I am therefore requesting you refund me the full total of £4600.17. I would continue to pay the loan at the agreed monthly figure until the end of it’s term.

If you do not comply fully within 7 days then I shall begin a claim against you in the Northampton County Court for the full amount plus interest plus my costs and without further notice.

I will also submit my completed complaint form regarding this matter to the Financial Ombudsman Service on 13th February 2007.

Yours faithfully

Martinix

[reidnet]

Sorry Martin for not getting back to you sooner on this one.. Been a bit over the top here past few days with one thing or another..lol

Your LBA looks fine, It will be interesting to see if they do actually respond to it, They did with mine within a couple of hours faxing it to them. But that was in the early days and i expect they will be getting an ever increasing number of complaints..

Ian

[martinhw]

I finally got a response from Lloyds:

Dear Mr XXXXXX
I am writing to let you know that we've received your complaint and to say how sorry we are to learn that you're unhappy. Your complaint has been passed to Lloyds TSB Insurance, as we will investigate the concerns you have raised on behalf of Lloyds TSB Bank Pic.
You have my assurance that one of our case handlers will investigate the concerns you have raised. This may take a little time but we will do our best to complete our enquiries as soon as we can. We will then be able to respond in full to your complaint, and at that stage, I hope resolve matters.
In case you haven't received a copy of our leaflet called 'Caring For You' I've enclosed one with my letter. This tells you all you need to know about resolving your complaint.
If you would like to add anything to the information you have already given us, please get in touch on 0845 300 55 99.
Yours sincerely
Hazel Compton
Customer Care, Lloyds TSB Insurance

N1 still gets filed Tuesday 13th.

[Keith22]

Hi

I prefered the FSO route and was successful in getting a full refund. If you go down the CC route you will need to dig out the legal precedents, bits of of contract law and any relevent legislation to back up the claim that what the Bank did was illegal. I tried this and ran into all kinds of difficulties which is why I went to the FSO first as it seemed a far easier option. It worked perfectly for me with no problems and was quite quick. Had I not succeeded I would have returned to the CC route and tried again but you can't do it the other way round i.e. go to the FSO once court action has commenced.

[martinhw]

Question about the FSO route - can you still claim the interest the same as if you proceed down the CC route?

[Keith22]

Yes I got the interest back. The way it is calculated is that Lloyds obtain a printout report of all of the payments you have made including PPI. They then deduct the PPI payment from the original loan and total re-run the report with the new lower monthly payments. The difference between the two is the amount of interest to be refunded at the correct interest rate.

I actually asked Lloyds to provide details of how they were going to recalculate the interest and above is what they told me. They also sent me copies of all the printouts showing the reworked figures. Clear as mud! I acually had two lots of PPI one at 8.6% APR and one at 14.75%APR and was worried about what I should actually claim. To be honest the method used by Lloyds seems fair enough. Hope this helps.

[martinhw]

Thanx Keith.
Mine was a single premium policy of PPI added to the original loan.
This should make for an easy calculation.

[martinhw]

Thanx Keith.
Mine was a single premium policy of PPI added to the original loan.
This should make for an easy calculation.

[scone37]

i have just joined this forum today as I too have just found out I was missold a ppi after reading about it in a newspaper.I phoned my bank yesterday morning Lloyds TSB to explain my situation.To be fair to them the took my complaint seriously and made an appointment for me to see them this morning.I took out a personal loan 4 years ago for £2300 on a five year term so I still have 1 year to pay,the person who sold the loan to me never explained ppi to me at the time and as it was my first ever loan I assumed [stupidly] that I had to have this insurance with my loan.The amount costing of this ppi was £877.00 over 5 years.The angering point I want to make about this is that I only work 15 hours a week and this policy was absolutely useless to me,as you have to work 16 hours or more a week for at least 6 months to be able to make a claim.I also work for my local council which pays out 6 months full pay and 6 months half pay for sickness,so if the lender had informed me properly and asked the appropriate questions when taking out the loan she would have known this was no use to me,and I certainly would not have paid £877 for it.Anway the bank has taken my complaint seriously and have written my letter of complaint, which I read,agreed to and signed before sending it off to the insurers.I am determined to hold out for the full amount of ppi paid back.What do yous think my chances are. Nice to meet yous all

[martinhw]

Scone, welcome to the forum.
All PPI cases are really unique and individual. There will be not clear cut method or straight forward cut and paste template to use. I would be sceptical about having the bank write a complaint letter for me - I mean did they actually admit that they may have offered unsuitable advise?

Did they let you retain a copy of the letter they sent? Did they advise a timescale of outcome for you?

I wish you all the best with your claim. Start a thread and post your letters if you can - the more info we have available to us, the more likely we are to succeed.

[scone37]

No they didn't admit that they didn't advise me properly or give me a copy of the letter they are sending [feeling stupid now]and I had to tell her that I read on the TSB website regarding complaints that I would probably recieve a letter within days acknowledging my complaint but a proper complaints procedure could take 8 weeks,she neither denied or confirmed this was the case.