Written by John Kruse, one of the leading experts on Bailiff Law, this consumer friendly guide is essential reading for anyone who comes into contact with a bailiff.
The book is easy to understand and clearly explains the rights
a bailiff has, and also what they cannot do when collecting debts and repossessing goods etc.
Made redundant in March 2006. I had a loan with RBS for 7.5k which was approx 6 months into 4 year agreement. I was paying 274.00 a month. I told the bank that I had been made redundant and that I would be able to pay the loan up until June 2006 and hopefully I would be in work by then if not I had taken out loanguard protection. I cancelled all my direct debits and did not have an overdraft. I did not find work and continued to look for work throughout the year. I was contacted by Credit Services in October 2006 stating that my loan was in default. I informed them that I had loanguard and they told me that they were sorry and the payments must be late from that department. I was again contacted in November by Credit Services asking the same question. Again I told them that I had loanguard and that the loan should be up to date and my payments were protected for 12 months. This particular "gentleman" told me that if I did not pay the outstanding balance There would be somebody calling at my home to recover the debt by whatever means.
I was then - 7 months after informing the bank I would be needing loanguard to cover my loan - told that I need to apply for a claim pack for the insurance. I did this immediately and was told that I was too late.
The bank then said they would give me a consolidation loan which would cover my previous loan and any overdraft that has arisen through late payment charges. I found that I was 1300.00 overdrawn through charges. The loan amounted to 8400.00 - this would put the account straight. I felt that I had no choice so I agreed. When I looked closer the loan is over 5 years whith total repayable 12000.00, this is nearly 4k in interest, the monthly payment being 202.00. I told them I was only in temporary employment and that in the past the computer would refuse such a loan to me. I was told that I did not need to worry because they can overide it. i was only in temporary employment at the time and unfortunatley this ended after 4 weeks. The loan went unpaid for 2 months and I told the bank I was not working and now find myself in the exact same position. Overdrawn late payment charges..........
I already have a claim for 2500.00 awaiting the outcome of the test case but since filing that with the bank I have been charged further. I do not feel as though I can win here I am in too deep and I fear I will loose my home.............Can anyone help.
Stay calm. I'm sorry I have no experience of this issue but I'm sure someone here may be able to advise.
I suggest you research the loanguard terms and conditions because if there are terms which may be considered 'unfair' then you may have a case under the unfair terms in consumer contracts.
Meanwhile BUMP BUMP BUMP this post.
written entirely without prejudice to my whole rights and pleas in law and may not be founded upon in any proceedings.
Here are some T&Cs I found using Google- http://www.rbis.co.uk/Personal_Finan.../LoanGuard.pdf
On a quick scan through although you must inform them there is no time limit that I can see- please check your terms and conditions. Also I see that the insurance is regulated by the Financial services authority- I suggest you contact them to register a complaint. If you are not sure how to handle any of this get up to a Citizens Advice Bureaux. and keep posting here.
written entirely without prejudice to my whole rights and pleas in law and may not be founded upon in any proceedings.
Shocking behaviour from the bank, do you have the letter about being too late to claim your PPI? If so then contact the fos immediately over this, advise the bank you are putting the loan into dispute and you wish any interest to be suspended for now as this was to cover charges and their failure of the PPI that they sold you.
Any court action taken you could defend this asking for a stay until the OFT test case, it works both ways.
as I am still not working my wife and I have worked out that we can afford approx 130.00 per month as she is working and we have just finished a hire purchase greement for that amount.
Can the bank refuse this amount if I offer it as my maximum monthly allowance???
Also if I claim the insurance again I have my redundancy letter but the company no longer exists - can they refuse me as they might not be able to verify the redundancy?????
If you offer what you can afford and you can provide an Income and expenditure to show how you calculated it then they have no choice, they may wish to initiate court action at which point the judge would agree with your payment plan and furthermore would probably suspend any interest to be added onto that account.
Talk to the bank and discuss what you can pay by all means. The Citizens Advice bureaux can negotiate for you as well. But I still think you should pursue the PPI issue- you paid for it so you should get the benefit. With regard to the company, if it went into liquidation then this is all officially handled by a receiver appointed by a court so there should be plenty plenty of public evidence to support you.
written entirely without prejudice to my whole rights and pleas in law and may not be founded upon in any proceedings.
Sorry for the lack of thanks for your assistance. I think I am now in too deep for anyone to help me. I wrote to the bank twice offering 100.00 a month until things sort themselves out at which point we could consolidate the loan to get it paid back over a shorter period, included in the letter was a query on why my PPI was not paid, no reply. I have been in Bristol for the last few months with a sick relative so I have only just returned home to find that not only have I not had any response on my offers but I have been issued with a county court summons in Bounremouth. I used the internet to state that I was to challenge part of the claim and wrote asking the case to be moved to Liverpool. Received a letter from Bournemouth county court stating that it had been moved to Liverpool for enforcement. Did not know what this meant so I inquired and to my amazement the judgement has been made for the bank and I now owe over 12000.00. WHAT IS HAPPENING-WHAT IS ENFORCEMENT-WHAT CAN I DO????????-----------HELP.
The loan was raised by the collections centre not my branch they posted out two copies of the loan application with terms and one was sent back to them. I have the other.
To the best of my knowledge I have not had a default notice.
I have to reply to the land registry by noon tomorrow to object the the application by RBS TO REGISTER A RESTRICTION IN THE PROPRIETORSHIP REGISTER OF THE ABOVE TITLE - MY HOME.giving my reasons but it says I can not use the reason of "I do not owe the amount stated" The court hearing in Liverppol on 24th July is as follows
Judgement was made agianst me on 17/04/08 by Northampton county court to pay 12899.79.
the judgement debtor is the owner of or has a beneficial interest in the asset described below - my home.
and the court orders that
the interest in the judgement debtor - me - in the asset described stand chargedwith payment of 12899.79 together with any further interest becoming due and the costs of the application
the hearing will be heard on 24/07/08 when a judge will decide whether the charge created by this order should continue with or without modification or should be discharged
Sorry for not getting back to you sooner, for some reason i never seemed to get the email notification to say you had replied.
Ok, well, if it was taken out last June, that would be fall under the Consumer Credit Act 2006 and the unfair relationships tests
the biggest problem in my humble opinion is it will be extremely difficult to find any real grounds to argue the agreement is defective and therefore should be regarded unenforceable
this is going to be a difficult to be honest, i shall raise this with the site team and get some opinions in this case and see what we can come up with
Thank you. Do I not have any argument over the original loan geing allowed to go unpaid when I had been made redundant and had taken out PPI which was claimed but never paid by the RBS. The original loan would have had 12 months payments made and would have been significantly reduced when I had to consolidate. Not to mention by the time they wanted me to consolidate over 1200.00 pounds had been applied to the account due to the non payment of the original loan, which made the new laon even greater???
How are we getting on. I am in court on Thursday as described in the post. Can you tell me what the intention of the bank is. Are they trying to get the house sold to repay the debt?????
The loan was an unsecured loan......
As I was not given the opportunity to defend the original order which was given in Bournemouth can I not counter with my defence now???
The court must consider whether it is reasonable to make a charging order. Under The Charging Orders Act 1979 the court has to consider all the circumstances of the case and in particular your personal circumstances. Also other creditors would be "unduly prejudiced". The court has to decide if making a charging order would disadvantage other creditors.
The arguments you can use against the order being made will vary depending on your circumstances, whether you have equity in your house, and whether you own your home in joint names or on your own.
Some factors the court may consider:
Whether any member of your family has a disability or serious illness.
Where you have a number of debts, whether making a charging order in favour of one creditor would give them unfair priority over other unsecured creditors. It is particularly useful if you can show you already have a payment arrangement in place with your other creditors. This would be affected by a different arrangement being made.
Whether there are any other creditors who might object to the order being made. The charging order nisi should be sent to all your other creditors. If they have not been informed of the hearing you can ask for the application to be dismissed or at least adjourned to allow creditors to be notified and make an objection if they wish.
If the debt is small you can argue it would be unfair to make a charging order on your home if it is worth a lot in comparison. This is based on a case called Robinson v Bailey.
Whether the creditor could have given you a secured loan when you first took out the loan. If they decided to give you an unsecured loan instead, this could be particularly relevant if you have other unsecured creditors who may be disadvantaged by a charging order being made.
Whether there are other ways the court could enforce payment of the debt. You could ask the court to make an instalment order or an attachment of earnings order so that the instalments would come directly from your wages. This only applies if you are employed and your employment would not be at risk.
If you owe less than £5000 in total to all your creditors you can argue that the debt should be included in an administration order rather than the charging order being made absolute.
If you are likely to be made bankrupt you can argue that a charging order would give the creditor an unfair advantage over other unsecured creditors.
If your home is not worth as much as your mortgage, known as "negative equity", then you can argue it is not worth a charging order being made as the creditor would not be paid off even if they forced your home to be sold.
You should point out any particular hardship which your family would suffer if a charging order was to lead to the sale of the home. This is particularly important if the debt is not in joint names, as it is not then your partner’s debt.
If none of your arguments are successful and the court makes a charging order absolute, you can still ask them not to allow your house to be sold as long as you pay monthly instalments.
A charging order may be made against any item in which you have "an interest". This usually means property that you own or partly own and will usually be your home. If you own your home in your sole name then the house will be covered by the charging order absolute. If you own your home in joint names with someone else then the charging order will only cover your share or "interest" in the property.
These should be typed out as bullet points to take into court with you. It is very easy to forget certain pieces of information in court, especially when you are stressed out. Remember Barristers do this for a living and take no prisoners, you have to do the same. I don't think there is much more i can add.
This is certainly a lot to take in bur I will print out.
To answer some of your questions.
The loan was unsecured. I was in employment when it was taken out. I did offer a lower repayment offer to the bank when my hours were reduced but they did not respond.
I have no other debts.
I am in joint mortgage with my wife. But I do not pay the mortgage, she does, we only jointly applied because it ensued the correct amount of borrowing.
My children are 12 and 13 my son has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
My wife is not part of the debt and If the house was sold we would all be homeless.
My main argument is covered in the thread. The loan in question now was a consolidation loan to cover one taken out in Oct 2005. I was made redundant in March 2006 but I had PPI on that loan. I went to the bank to explain that I could pay my direct debits for 2 months and if I had not found employment by that time I was covered by the PPI which they acknowledged. Having not found employment I continued to look for the next few months. The bank did not contact me for six months when they did it was the collections centre and they informed me that I had not been making my loan payments. I told them I had insurance and they apologised and said that it must be late coming through.
It was 7 months before someone from the bank told me that I had to fill in a claim form to access the PPI payments. I was sent a pack which I filled in and sent off. No response - all the while the bank were charging me over 100.00 per month in charges. they eventually telephoned me and said that if I did not consolidate the loan to include the charges Iwould be getting a visit from people to remove goods from my house to re[pay the amount outstanding.
I was assured when consolidating that the PPI issue would be looked into and credited after three months when the system resets itself???
I also have a stayed claim for 2500.00 in unlawful chasrges and the PPI should have made payments up to 3200.00.
Does the bank not have a duty of care towards somebody who has been a customer for 15 years?????
I would jot down as bullet points for your case from above to use in court. You have some very strong arguments here. A stayed case, your wife not named on the loan etc, your son's condition.
Example of Irresponsible lending :
Increasing credit card limits too easily.
Increasing overdraft limits without authorisation.
Not requesting proof of income.
Credit facilities being offered as incentives to purchase more.
Credit cards being sent through the post that are pre approved.
Credit card cheques being sent through the post.
False and Misleading adverting veiling interest rates.
“Small print” trickery in long and text heavy credit contracts.
Lending money to the unemployed.
Giving loans and credit cards to those on benefits.
At least two of the parts above you can use against them. The route cause of irresponsible lending is the staff employed at credit companies who are given incentives such as bonuses or commission to actively sell credit cards and loans. These staff are paid on the volume of the loans they sell which itself is irresponsible.
When you signed up for the new loan, did they just transfer the outstanding amount to the new loan?, they should have given back some of the PPI on the original loan, it is normally added on at the start, when the loan is taken out.
So your defence should centre around:
Irresponsible lending
Your wife owns part of the property
Unfair to other creditors to have a charging order
Your son's condition
PPI mis selling on the new loan
PPI refund on the old loan
Increase in the APR on the new loan ( Obviously generated commission for the employee, duty of care issue here)
A time order or an administration order could be used instead of the charging order.
You say you have no other debts, you should still do an income expenditure spreadsheet to take along to the court. Put down all of your outgoings, and what your income is.
I now go to this meeting with much more confidence. I can not tell you how much this means to me. This institution would not exist if people did not have their wages paid into bank accounts ----- banks should realise they only exist because we exist.
You are welcome, please make sure you prepare a list to bring up in court, as you could forget vital information if you get flustered during your hearing. There should be enough there to see off the bank hopefully.
Also when your original loan was defaulted this was due to your PPI not being activated. Did you notify them of your unemployment in writing at the time or by a call/visit to branch. If you can prove you followed the correct procedures at the time then this will help you. Do you have copies of the notice you gave them when you were unemployed.
These 12 missed payments, the charges incurred during these times and then the consolidated loan (irresponsible lending and feeling pushed into accepting it through the pressures applied by credit services) against these very things have greatly inflated the actual amount owed.