Thread: More HSBC idiocy

Some further developments to this:

1. I have written to MCS telling them that they have got the details wrong and asking them to clarify what the debt is for etc. I have received a letter back stating that this relates to one loan (as I guessed) and giving me thirty days to contact them. This would be the loan that they have still not provided any paperwork for, despite the request last April. I will be sending them the letter in the post above on Monday.

2. I have written to HSBC under CPR 31.16 asking them to provide the agreements. They have a week left from my first letter before I take things further.

3. HSBC have in the last week entered a default on my credit record with Equifax (and I presume the other CRAs) in respect of the other loan account. They have sent me "Final Demands" but never a Default Notice. I gather this is further ammunition to use against them in Court so I have not yet queried this with them or the CRAs, as I guess that if I do, they will then issue a default notice. However, they're not being consistent in their approach as this loan has been defaulted but not passed to MCS, whereas the other loan has been passed to MCS but not defaulted.

Some advice on where to go from here would be appreciated, particularly with the default issue.

Thanks in advance

AP

subs

Text of the letter sent to HSBC on March 8th:

I am in receipt of your letter, dated 3rd March 2010, and the enclosed Default Notice. I note that I have not received a substantive response to my letter dated 4th February 2010 (sent to the Credit Underwriting Unit in Sheffield), nor to my letter dated 8th February 2010 sent to your Company Secretary at Canada Square requesting a copy of the credit agreement for this account under the Civil Procedure Rules.

I must say that I am most surprised to receive this letter and notice. As you will be aware, I wrote to HSBC in April 2009 requesting a copy of the credit agreement for this account. This request was made under section 78 of the 1974 Consumer Credit Act. HSBC failed to comply with this request within the statutory time limits, and in doing so committed a default. I did receive what you claim is a reconstituted copy of the aforementioned credit agreement, however this agreement was defective in that it did not contain my signature, did not contain the full terms and conditions, and had a number of other mistakes that prove beyond reasonable doubt it cannot be the original agreement despite your assertions otherwise. I have written to HSBC on numerous occasions regarding this matter but these concerns have been ignored.

As you have not provided a copy of the agreement that satisfies the requirements of the Consumer Credit Act, you are not entitled to enforce this agreement in any way, which means that you are prohibited from issuing the Default Notice you have now sent me. You can be assured that I will bring your flagrant disregard for the relevant laws to the attention of the Court when I commence proceedings against HSBC.

I would therefore suggest that to avoid any further difficulties, you cease all further collection activity on this account unless and until you can produce a copy of the credit agreement that is fully compliant with the requirements of the section 78 of the 1974 Consumer Credit Act. Should you continue with this course of action and register the default with any credit reference agency, I shall without further notice issue proceedings for damages due to defamation of character and lodge formal complaints with the appropriate regulatory bodies. Once you produce a properly executed agreement with the terms and conditions as required by the Consumer Credit Act, I will without further delay enter into discussions regarding the resolution of this matter.

TAKE URGENT NOTE:

I DO NOT WISH TO RECEIVE ANY REPRESENTATIVE OF YOUR ORGANISATION, OR INDEED AN AGENT OR REPRESENTATIVE EMPLOYED BY ANY ORGANISATION THAT YOU ISSUE INSTRUCTIONS TO.

There is only an implied license under English Common Law for people to be able to visit me on my property without express permission; the postman and people asking for directions etc (Armstrong v Sheppard and Short Ltd [1959] 2 Q.B. per Lord Evershed M.R.)

THEREFORE TAKE NOTE THAT I REVOKE LICENSE UNDER COMMON LAW FOR YOU, OR YOUR REPRESENTATIVES TO VISIT ME AT MY PROPERTY AND IF YOU DO SO, THEN YOU WILL BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES FOR A TORT OF TRESSPASS AND ACTION WILL BE TAKEN INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO POLICE ATTENDANCE.

I also caution you here that should you ignore my request on this point, the actions of your representative(s) will happily be recorded using whatever equipment is available, which may include Closed Circuit Television. Accordingly I reserve the right to use any evidence of you or your representatives’ ignoring this request in connection with any actions that I choose to pursue, including media exposure.

Should it be your intention to disregard my wishes, and break your obligations, please be advised that the following rules also apply, as laid down by the OFT in respect of debt collection, and that you, as a holder of a consumer credit license, are obliged to follow:
The areas of the OFT guidance that apply to you in this instance are:

Deceptive and/or unfair methods:

2.8 Examples of unfair practices are as follows:

k. Not ceasing collection activity whilst investigating a reasonably queried or disputed debt.

Data Protection Act, section 10

Please note that this letter is a statutory notice under section 10 of the Data Protection Act to cease processing any and all data in relation to this account with immediate effect. This means you must remove all information regarding this account from your own internal records and from my records with any third parties and credit reference agencies. If you believe that you have a lawful reason to continue processing my data, you must inform me of this, clearly stating your reasoning; to merely state that you “have a legal right” will not be accepted.

Please confirm that you have complied with my request under section 10 of the Data Protection Act. If I do not receive confirmation of this within 21 days, it will be assumed that you have complied and any further data processing will therefore be taking place without my consent and consequently will be unlawful.

Moreover, ignoring and/or disregarding claims that debts have been settled or are disputed and continuing to make unjustified demands for payment amounts to physical/psychological harassment. I am of the view that your continued harassment puts you in breach of Section 40 of the Administration of Justice Act 1970 and the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and this will be included in any subsequent legal action I may decide to take.

I look forward to hearing from you and trust that we will be able to resolve this matter before I am forced to involve the Courts.

Yours sincerely

E-mail received from HSBC this afternoon:
I apologise for the delay in getting back to you.
>
> I have investigated the location of the original Loan Agreement forms for
> your Professional Studies Loan and your Graduate Personal Loan.
> Unfortunately I have been unable to locate these documents, however if you
> wish we can reconstitute the forms for you in line with the original
> agreement forms.
>
> The Bank is within its rights to demand funds on any lending products
> where defaults have accrued on repayments as this is against the terms and
> conditions of the original agreement. Whilst we do not hold the original
> agreement forms, we can clearly evidence from your statements where the
> balance was provided to you, and how these funds were utilised. This is
> sufficient in law for you to be liable for the balances we are pursuing as
> well as reasonable interest where appropriate. Your Graduate Personal Loan
> is now 5 months in arrears and to prevent any further action being taken on
> this account these arrears need to be repaid and repayments continue
> monthly.
>
> With regards to your Professional Studies Loan, despite our attempts to
> contact you via phone and through default letters issued as per our
> procedures, there was no attempt on your behalf to rectify the position of
> the loan. This has resulted in the loan being written of to a 3rd party
> debt collection agency which is in line with our procedures and the terms
> and conditions of the loan. The collection agency will be in touch with
> yourself on how to proceed with your outstanding debt. Once again full
> history is held on our system showing the money being paid into the account
> and drawn by yourself.
>
> As stated in your letter the overdraft limit has been removed from you Bank
> Account. Letters were sent as you stated that were received to advise that
> overdraft facility will be removed. The last credit received into the
> account before the limit was removed was on the 24/09/2009. A condition of
> our overdraft facility is that regular credits are made to the account
> sufficient to support the limit provided. An overdraft is an on demand
> facility meaning If sufficient funds are not passed through the Bank
> Account each month the Bank is within its right to request full repayment
> of the outstanding amount at any time and/or remove the facility.
>
> Following your decision to refuse repayments to both of the loans this has
> resulted in the situation we are in now. All the steps taken to date have
> been done in line with both the regulations we adhere to and our own
> procedures. We stated that we can reconstitute the forms and can evidence
> the funds have been withdrawn by yourself.
>
> All data applied to your credit file will not be altered as we are obliged
> to provide up to date records of your financial status accurately to credit
> reference agencies,this has been done.
>
> Whilst we appreciate this is not the response you were hoping for I hope we
> have answered all the questions outlined in your letter. If you would like
> us to reconstitute the Loan agreement forms for you please advise us and we
> will send them out for you in the post.
>
> Please do not hesitate to contact us on 0845 850 0610 if you would like to
> discuss this matter further.
>
> Kind Regards,
>
> Emma Beck,
>
> Credit Officer

My response to previous e-mail:
Dear Ms. Beck,

Thank you for your recent email, which I assume was in response to my letter of March 8th 2010. As I understand from your email, you have received my request for disclosure under the Civil Procedure Rules, and in response to this request you confirm that HSBC no longer has in it's possession the original signed loan agreement forms for either loan account. If this is not the current situation, please would you let me know what the current situation is by return.

With regards to the loan accounts, which you claim are overdue, I would remind you that in April 2009 I wrote to HSBC to request copies of the credit agreements for both accounts, pursuant to section 78 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974. HSBC failed to supply this documentation at all for the Professional Studies Loan, and supplied what you claim is a true and accurate copy of the agreement for the Graduate Personal Loan. However, there are a number of errors in this reconstituted agreement that mean it cannot be the original agreement that I signed. Therefore, HSBC has defaulted on it's obligation to comply with my lawful request in respect of both accounts. The consequences of your default are that you can no longer enforce the account, irrespective of whatever supporting documentation you may wish to provide. Without the signed credit agreements, the debts are unenforceable without a Court Order, and all collection activity that has been undertaken since October last year is therefore unlawful. Furthermore, I am of the opinion that by continuing to record information about these accounts while they are in dispute following HSBC's default, you are in breach of the Data Protection Act and have additionally defamed me, and I will be seeking damages as redress.

With regards to the overdraft on my current account, I have recently received a letter from yourselves relating to a failed standing order payment for the Graduate Personal Loan. There should not be a standing order in respect of this from any of my accounts, as I cancelled this when the loan became unenforceable. However, this letter states that the current balance of my account is £0.00 overdrawn. I can confirm that as you have written to me stating that there is no overdrawn balance on my current account, I understand this to mean that you written off my overdraft as a goodwill gesture for the substantial inconvenience that the mishandling of this situation by HSBC has caused me. I also note that I have not yet received a response to my letter of February 4th in which I made an offer to repay the overdraft, so will therefore assume that as the overdraft has been written off (as evidenced by your recent letter) the reason I have not received a response to this letter is that you no longer require repayment of the overdraft.

I am sure you will appreciate that I need to seek further legal advice at this juncture, and would therefore request that you suspend further collection activities for a period of 14 days to allow me to do this.

Kind regards

And now received this from HSBC on 19th March 2010

I have further investigated the point raised with regards what action we
are entitled to take without a true copy of your facility documents.

Our legal department have confirmed that we are within both our legal and
regulatory guidelines in passing this debt to metropolitan collections and
whilst our service improvement team has acknowledged your complaint and
will respond to you directly, we will continue our normal collections
process up to and including passing the debt from our books.

The Professional Studies Loan is now with Metropolitan collections where
they will continue to chase for the outstanding debt. They are aware of the
position with regards the ongoing dispute and that we have so far been
unable to provide you with "true copies" of your Professional Studies Loan
agreement forms, they will bear this in mind with any future action to
ensure we continue to comply with regulations.

I can confirm that our normal collections procedures will continue on the
Graduate Personal Loan and the Bank Account. If an agreement can not be
made on either the accounts they will also be written of to a third party
debt collection agency.
We will also not clear any entries made by ourselves from your credit file,
again our legal team have confirmed that we are entitled to record non
payment of these facilities with credit reference agencies irrespective of
our inability at present to provide copies of your agreement forms.

I can see that a complaint has been raised by yourself and that it has been
dealt with. Once you receive our response, it will contain details of how
you can escalate this if you are unhappy with our response.

watching with interest and support.

Quick update on most recent developments:

• Have just printed a copy of my Equifax credit record showing that HSBC recorded a default on the GPL before they had sent me the default notice.
• Recently received a letter from MCS re: PSL stating that they were referring back to HSBC as I had raised the point about lack of credit agreement.
• Spoke to HSBC by phone last week to discuss repaying overdraft. Also discussed issues relating to this loan and was told that there is a note on my record saying that they are aware GPL cannot be referred to MCS and/or cannot take legal action

I think that things aren't going to go any further with HSBC. They're going to continue asking for repayments, I'm going to continue to refuse. Couple of questions:
1. Should I apply for a declaration of unenforceability from my county court on either or both accounts?
2. There is now a default on at least one credit record, and I intend to obtain copies of the others over the coming weeks. HSBC maintain they are entitled to record this information (despite several DPA s.10 letters) and aren't budging, so how do I get this removed. I'm thinking that I contact the CRAs to let them know what the situation is and ask them to remove the information, followed by a complaint to the ICO if no success.

In my case (no agreements) HSBC/MCS continued to drone on for months about how they were entitled to chase me, but stopped short of actually doing anything meaningful. They sold one account to the hopeless Robinson Way, and the other to the terminally dull Capquest. Both ended up going back to HSBC, who were then defeated in both cases.

HSBC/Robinson Way

HSBC/Capquest

Graduate Personal Loan has now been passed to MCS as well. I wrote to them on 1st June in response to their first letter. Sent recorded delivery so I know they got it.

(Query about this though - they're in Birmingham and my previous letters were delivered from the Royal Mail delivery office in Birmingham, this one was delivered from Coventry - according to Track and Trace - has it gone to the right place?)

Had a letter today stating that they are disappointed I have not responded to previous correspondence (Awwww! Did I hurt their feelings?) and I'm quite honestly getting sick of them. I was planning to send the following slightly abusive letter:

(Private Eye - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) - reference to Arkell vs Pressdram

I have today received your letter dated 8th June 2010, the contents of which are duly noted. In this letter, you state that you are disappointed that I not have responded to your previous correspondence. I could not care less if I have hurt your feelings, and anyway this is simply not true. I refer you to my letter of 1st June 2010, which was sent in response to your previous correspondence of May 26th 2010. I sent this letter via Royal Mail Recorded Delivery, with the Tracking Number of AG616226462GB. This letter was delivered to you at 08:01 on 4th June 2010, and signed for by “HFC”. For your information I enclose a copy of the electronic Proof of Delivery obtained from the Royal Mail “Track and Trace” Service. I also enclose a copy of my previous correspondence, as you appear to have lost it. As you are part of the HSBC group I am not that surprised by this latest demonstration of your total incompetence.

If am meant to be intimidated by your statement that you have conducted inquiries, you have failed. All you would have done is looked in the Electoral Roll to confirm I am still registered at this address – which I could do at my local library - and a simple phone call to Directory Enquiries would confirm that my telephone number is ex-directory. The reason my telephone number is ex-directory is that I do not wish to harassed by agencies such as Metropolitan Collection Services Limited, as you will no doubt attempt to bully me into repaying this unenforceable debt, breaking various laws by doing so. I suggest you return this account to HSBC forthwith, so that they can remove the details of it from the records of the Credit Reference Agencies to which they subscribe before I sue them for defamation, and then reduce the balance of the account to zero. I do not intend to pay a further penny towards this debt unless and until HSBC can provide a true copy of the original credit agreement that bears my signature. They have confirmed that this document is no longer in their possession, so they may as well give up now.

If you intend to take any further action in relation to this debt, I refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell versus Pressdram (1971). Should you attempt to take any further action, I will retaliate to the fullest extent possible with litigation and complaints to the regulatory authorities. I would remind you that I have already revoked the implied common law license for you or your representatives/agents to come on to my property, and that if you attempt to visit me at home this will at the very least lead to Police attendance and a tort for trespass.

I trust that this matter will now be resolved without the need for any further correspondence. As I feel you have wasted enough of my time with your incompetence, you will be charged the sum of £25.00 for each and every letter or phone call I make to you. These will be billed monthly, and failure to comply will result in a county court claim to recover the sums owed.

Yours sincerely, etc.


Any comments? Should I tone it down some or not bother?


Thanks guys.

Frankly, I wouldn't bother responding as fully as above.

As you know, MCS are HSBC (there is some amusement to be had getting MCS staff to admit that they work for HSBC), and so I wouldn't bother with the distinction - just address it all to HSBC (but with MCS address).

Just give them the main points:

- the alleged debts are in dispute because they have failed to produce the agreements
- they have confirmed in writing that they do not have the agreements
- they must know that they cannot take any legal action
- you will not be paying them anything
- you will not enter into further correspondence because it is clear that they have demonstrated that they are wholly incompetent and incapable of either responding properly to correspondence, or of complying with their regulatory obligations
- any proceedings they bring would be vexatious
- if they disagree with any of the above, they are referred to the answer given in Arkell vs Pressdram

As long as you watch for sneaky activity (such as issuing proceedings on the offchance they'd get a default judgment), you can sit back and ignore them.

Incidentally, if HSBC disagree that they are incompetent:

HSBC news item

..and they don't improve:

HSBC news item

Thanks SP - have made a few changes, stated the points again and will post Recorded Delivery on Monday.

Had some more from post from MCSL today, haven't seen it but my wife has told me what it contains. Basically it would seem that they have managed to produce from somwhere a copy of an original signed agreement for the GPL, a mere 14 months from my original request and after telling me in writing they don't have it.

I'll scan it and post when I get home tonight but I'm now seriously confused that I've completely screwed up now. Help!