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I have recently sent a cca to Amex and received a reply, with an application form and a signature. The also sent three different types of terms but no statements.
Has anyone seen one these applications before and are they enforceable. Any help will be greatly appreciated
I will try and attached the images through photobucket later
IMHO unenforceable. It is an application with no prescribed terms and unexecuted cos there is no signature from American Express. Send them this to put the account in dispute. Good luck
Re: my request under the Consumer Credit Act 1974
Thank you for your recent letter sent to me, the contents of which are noted. I appreciate your quick response to my original letter. However, the reply received by me does not fulfil your requirements under the Consumer Credit Act 1974.
The Act demands that I be supplied with a true copy of any properly executed credit agreement that exists in relation to the above account. I may ask for this on demand providing that a fee of £1.00 is paid. This fee was sent with my original letter.
My request remains outstanding. An application form, like the one you sent in your reply, does not constitute a true copy of any credit agreement that may or may not have been signed by me on the opening of this account. A application neither confirms that I am liable for any alleged debt to you, nor gives me any chance to evaluate whether any original agreement was ‘properly executed’.
I still require you to send me a true copy of the original credit agreement that you allege exists. As you will know, under the Consumer Credit Act 1974, a judge is not permitted to make any enforcement order unless the creditor can provide a true signed copy of the original credit agreement. This means that unless you can produce such an agreement, this alleged debt is not enforceable in law.
You had until XX/XX/2007 to provide me with the true copy I requested. You are now in default of my request. Any account I hold with you is now in legal dispute. Whilst the account remains in dispute, you are not permitted to ask for any payment, nor am I obliged to offer any payment to you. Furthermore, whilst the dispute remains, you are not entitled to charge any interest on the account, nor make any further charges to the account. Additionally, you are not entitled to register any information on this account with any credit reference agency.
To register information with a credit reference agency, you must have written consent from the customer to collate and share such information. This consent is given in the form of a signed credit agreement, so until you produce such an agreement, you may not do this.
The requirement for consent to share data is a clear requirement of the Data Protection Act 1998. any such attempts to share my data without my consent will be met with a complaint to the Information Commissioners Office
To sum up, I will not be making any further payments to you until you provide me with the document I have requested. Whilst you remain in default of my request, you are not permitted to take any action against this account. This includes adding further charges and passing any information to the credit reference agencies.
Should you not have any signed credit agreement in relation to this alleged debt, please confirm this in writing to me.
I look forward to your reply.
Yours faithfully
**amend to suit your circumstances.**
<<<If I have helped please tickle the scales;-)<<<
Refuse to answer security questions. This way they cannot discuss anything with you and if they do they are in breach of the data protection act so complain. There is a letter to send stating you will only deal with them in writing. I will have a look for it and post it up for you. MBNA are a particularly nasty bunch of people to deal with so make sure you don't enter into a phone conversation with them.
<<<If I have helped please tickle the scales;-)<<<
If they start hassling you by phone, send them this. Be warned- they will tell you they are an American telephone based company and they can only deal with you by phone- cow poo. They make their own rules up as they go along and will tell you anything on the phone and threaten all sorts of doom to you. When you ask for a transcript of the conversation- lo and behold- it's disappeared!! Be strong and don't let them get you down
Dear Sir/Madam.
I am writing in relation to telephone calls that I have received from your organisation, which I deem to be personally harassing. I have verbally requested that these calls stop, but I am still receiving call. I now require the telephone number listed above to be completely removed from your systems.
I am in the view that your continued telephone calls put you in breach of the Protection of Harassment Act 1997.
This is a private telephone line, operated on a contract with the intention of receiving and making personal phone calls, I have not authorised any other member of my family to receive calls from your organisation using this PRIVATE TELEPHONE LINE.
By using this telephone number without my permission you are interferring with my ability to use my own private property for the duration of any call. It is my right to require that this telephone line, which is licenced solely to myself, is kept clear for my own personal calls. It is consquently my view that you are commiting the tort of interference with contract insofar as for the duration of each call you make to me without my permission, you are interfering with my contractual right to receive and make personal calls on my private telephone line.
Continued interference with my contractual rights in this manner may result in legal action.
If you continue to harass me by telephone, you will also be in breach of the Communications Act (2003) s.127 and I will report you to the Office of Communications, Trading Standards and the Office of Fair Trading, meaning that you may be liable for a substantial fine.
Be advised that all telephone calls from your company will be recorded.
Yours faithfully,
<<<If I have helped please tickle the scales;-)<<<
Excellent letter, I am so lucky to have this support and kind words of encouragement.
MBNA have ignored my cca, but i had a strange call from them the other day already. I've been following some other post's about them and expecting a barrage of calls.
I will now look into sending a Subject access request to fAmex to follow on from the letter I will post in the morning stating my accounts are in dispute.
Amex is a type of card, the liscence out their name and function to credit card companies. Any issues with the card MUST be taken up with the issuer, in this case MBNA BoA.
OK, BoA are not a bad company to deal with, they are very very good, they have to be, they crave good rapport and opinion from customers.
the collections team are very patient and WILL listen. If you are happy to speak to them abotu your concerns, feel free to cal them in your own time and present your case, you can still return to mail correspondance only if you need to. However, BoA prefer to settle things over the phone because they can deal with questions and concerns as they arise rather then waiting for correspondances.
My advice for dealing the MBNA BoA has always been the same, just call them yourself first and have your say, tell them what you expect and find a compromise that suits you best. Sometimes compromise is not an option and you have to try for everything, still feel free to do this over the phone. nothing is stopping you from reverting to mail only in the future
BoA will bend over backwards to assist customers they deem worthy, others they deal with with equanimity becaus ethey don't want bad rep and they don't want to lose money or custom. So just try them on the phone, but don't let them goad you or corner you into tsomething you are not happy with. Maintain focus on what you want, f they won't listen to reason, then you can always do it the otehr way.
I appreciate your well informed input and suggestions.
Please then excuse my ignorance on these subjects. Why didn't Amex tell me to deal with the card issuer in the first place, instead of replying to my CCA request.
As you have seen in earlier posts, I am challenging whether or not I have an agreement in place and whether or not it is enforceable.
I would appreciate your view on that.
As for the contact. It should be apparent that I would rather prefer letters and am dreading the calls. The reason for that is I have a tendency to stutter and cannot get out what I want to say very clearly, especially under pressure. It would give me more confidence to contact them and receive contact back via mail.
Stick to the letters Elgrand- this way you have a paper trail of your dispute. In my experience of MBNA they don't give a flying fig about customer service, how they speak to you or how degraded they make you feel. Maybe BoA have different action plans than MBNA and if this is going to rolled out to give fantastic customer service then that's all good. I won't hold my breath though (I would be as pink as the lovely pig letters they send out, then turn a lovely purply colour!)
Every single call I have had from MBNA (and there have been many!!) made me feel like a naughty schoolkid, and no, before people offer opinions, I was never off with them, I asked for help and they didn't want to know. They were not willing to compromise at all.
Perhaps Grummy you could kindly explain which customers MBNA deem "worthy" to bend over backwards for? I have had my card for 10 years, never had a problem, paid the account off. I was off work for 12 months due to health reasons- they wouldn't accept reduced payments, kept adding charges, hiked up the interest and bombarded me with abusive telephone calls, one even telling me it was my own fault I was in this situation. They don't have an enforceable agreement and sold it on (no doubt claiming tax relief on bad debt). So I would be really interested to know those customers that MBNA help. You only have to read the threads on here to realise how awful they are to deal with, God help the people who haven't found CAG.
To summarise Elgrand- I would stick to the letters!!!
<<<If I have helped please tickle the scales;-)<<<
Thanks Fedup,
I will be sticking to letter writing and I believe I'm correct in thinking that it is Amex not MBNA who I'm in dispute with and will correspond with them.
On another matter, I will be starting a new thread for MBNA CCA request, because I have just received a reply, the final day they had left.
Very unusual admission on their covering letter. I will quote a sentence.
We appreciate the copy of the original agreement is not very clear but it is the best copy we can provide.
And once again, it's a copy of an application form.
I ALWAYS reccomend talking to BoA if you can as the grunts on the phone tend towards patience and understanding, and they do work hard and do their best to get what they can for you.
However, dealing with them on the phone has 1 draw back, they still want 'their' money and will always try to get it back off you, even whlst helping you.
If anyone ever does call them, always get anything agreed to or discussed in writing so there is that paper trail.
BoA DO honour agreements made over the phone, but its rare that anything agreed to over the phone becomes anything more than them getting the most out of you they can whilst keeping you as happy as possible.
OK, I've added a note in my big thread about BoA about how they decide who are worthy, but Il give you a quick rundown again.
In a nutshell, the best customers to BoA are those who have a balance, make payments over the minimum on time every month, but never clear the balance, and continue to use the card.
Those kinds of customers are both profitable and reliable, which is what BoA loves.
A customer who runs up a balance, but clears it every month in full, is NOT a good customer, in BoA eyes as they are not making any profit from them.
Obviously the worst are people who run up balances and don't pay, because whilst they are in a position to make BoA a profit, they're not paying reliably, so BoA aren't actually getting much money back.
There are also a mix of 'average' customers, some who only use the card sparingly, but when they do, they clear the balance over time. Some who always pay, but only the minimum and not always on time, and a bunch of other combinations of being mildly profitable and mildly reliable.
The favoured customers get charges back with ease. If the charges are huge amounts, they need to be authorized by a manager, a grunt can only agree to refund £100 without consult, but I've never known the refunds ot be refused as BoA likes to kiss the asses of its 'favoured' customers.
Average customers can get some money back, up to about £50 before needing manager authorization. usually you will be negotiated with and get about 1/2 of the charges back or something similar, perhaps you could get interest refunded but charges remain or vice versa.
'Bad' customers won't be given anything. Well actually they can have any interest back, up to £5, but after that, nothing. And they on;y get that because anything under £5 'Is not worth quibbling about'.
Remember, this is just what you can manage over the phone. After that, if your not satisfied, the paper express cans till get you more.
I always recommend the phone again because you can get some charges back quickly just by being on the phone for a few minutes. And its good to get something back quickly, then in the mean time you can work on getting the rest by whatever methods you see fit.
I'd really rather not get into an argument about this. Im sure you have good cause to not trust MBNA.
But there are a few things important to note.
First, up until a year ago, BoA standards and practices were not in place in the company. Harrasment, lies et al were common place, as it is with all DCA's.
In the past year BoA have been bringing their own S&P's into the company, and the way things work has been changing.
ITs not by any means perfect, god no its not that, but, BoA staff CAN be trusted. If you call them and arrange something with them, they will honour it. In the past they did only what was good for them. That was an MBNA practice. BoA hates negative publicity so is making the changes necessary for good publicity to be the norm. And one of the things that has changed is 'fair treatment' of its customers.
And yes I do say that with tongue firmly in cheek, however, compared to past practices, things have changed for the 'better'.
Yes mistakes DO happen, grunts DO screw up (fairly frequently), but they are not out to decieve you or cheat you, which, frankly, when it was still running as MBNA, that is exactly what they did.
I can only reiterate, talking to them can help, beause the grunts on the phone want to help.
MBNA perspective was 'get what we can however we can' BoA is 'get what we can, however is best for the customer'. The difference is simply that even when they are taking money you struggle to afford, you are content knowing that you have set up an agreement that you are happy with. and they DO honour it.
But again, I will say, mistakes do happen, people do screw up, so always get paper trail an transcripts of what was agreed.
As I said above, you can ask for complete transcripts of notes made on any call you make to BoA. So if you are to call, for any reason, get those transcripts sent out to you so if they do screw up, its one more paper trail.
But again, remember, in talking to them onthe phone, BoA will always try to get something out of you, that is the downside. If you want what you want without having to negotiate an agreement where you also pay something to BoA, then don't call.
My main piece od avice for anyone who is mailing correspondance with BoA is to call them anyway, and tell the grunt to make a note on your file to say that you are sending a letter. How much you tell them about the letter is down to you, but if you make this one call at least, then again, records of BoA's knowledge of the letter is on your file.
MBNA BoA have been known in the past to 'not know' about a letter sent to them, and to be fair, unless its registered mail (which I would recommend) A simple 'lost in the post' excuse would suffice.
Remember your accounts with BoA, the files are yours and you have a right to see them. You also have a right to have notes added to them whenever you ask. So calling and telling them to make a note of everything you are doing is always a good idea as it is a 2nd permanent trail, along wth the paper one.
I would rather get confirmation of everything in writing by only communicating in writing to them.
It keeps everything clear. You can not be pressurised and there is a record of what has been stated. This means that misinformation/mistakes, etc. can not later be denied.
What would be the best way of dealing with calls, once they start coming, I've been reading some scary stuff about MBNA
Either record the calls if you can, if not keep a log of all calls. If they start phoning you should report them for harassment to OFCOM, the OFT, Trading Standards and the fos. You have stated that their phone calls are unwelcome.
Is this Amex application enforeceable
and received a reply, with an application form and a signature
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will look later if you put it on photobucket
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