GE Money Secured Loans ***WON***

[Goldlady]

We have sec loan with GE but hopefully not for much longer:D

 

We also have four storecards with them which their 'debt counsellor' ( who could have easily passed for a bailiff ) told us to stop paying.

 

GE owe us nearly 2k in unlawful £40 charges for late payment and we are about to incur 2.5k charge for cancelling loan before term of 15 years runs out. I intend to reclaim all of this at some stage.

 

They have sent us standard response to our reclaim letter - our charges are fair blah blah.

 

Two of the storecards have been passed to DCA's and so far no joy with CCAs. One tried to issue proceedings but withdrew after a barrage of CAG letters:p

 

Question: If the two remaining storecards take us to court (the ones still owned by GE) would it be feasible to issue a counterclaim for the charges on our secured loan as it is effectively the same company? We have already told the call centre people that it was GE themselves who told us to 'bump' our credit cards and they are suitably silenced.

[Laiste]

Hi Goldlady,

 

I'm going to address the point you raised about the cancellation charge vis a vis the loan. In my opinion, even if it's in the contract, it is likely to be unfair and fall foul of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999. So it will be inoperable, in other words, unenforceable against you.

 

The a/c's you mention, will have to be regarded as separate, litigation or otherwise, unless a Judge decides to put the claims together, not your decision I'm afraid. You can't claim anything from a/c that isn't the subject of proceedings, it doesn't work like that!

 

Regards,

 

Sam.

 

P.S. I'm supposed to make the point about, if you've found me helpful tip my scales blah, blah. Well, if you're so inclined it would be very much appreciated!

 

Regards,

 

Sam.

[notwatson]

Hi Goldlady,

 

We too have a secured loan with GE Home Lending (I won't say what I really think of them). We are paying our loan off in the next 14 days.

 

We have a bunch of charges from a year ago, and will also be paying the early repayment penalty. I am very familiar with reclaiming current account charges, as I have previously won against Lloyds TSB and have a huge case stayed against NatWest. But, I'm unsure how to procede against GE once the loan is repayed. Could you offer me some advice please ?

 

One other thing - here's a lovely bit of small-print that's been applied to our account: in May this year GE performed a valuation of our house (unarranged and un-notified) - I presume it was a "2nd gear valuation" - they then charged us £50 for the service - and apparently it's all in the terms and conditions : - they leave me speechless...

 

thanks,

 

Jon

[Goldlady]

Hi Jon, I already wrote to GE and asked for a refund of all the £40 charges - they very kindly summarise these unlawful penalties and the interest incurred on them on the latest statement! I got the standard 'all our charges are fair' response. On taking advice decided to wait until the loan is paid off (hopefully in next 10 days also as we have asked our first mortgage company to take them out:p) I also want the charge for the 'debt counsellor' who cost £70 and told us nothing we didn't know and lots of horror stories about repossession.

 

The ERC on ours is about £2.5K and would apply even if we paid the loan off after 14 years and 364 days. I know a lot of people say you can't reclaim ERC's (but surely that refers to the ones that are for one or two years of the loan period and not the entire term?) Anyway I fully intend to go after them once I have got them off my back.

 

Have you seen The Analyst's account of today in court with GE? Worth a read.

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/mortgage-companies/117514-ge-money-mortgage-repossession-3.html#post1258687

 

Once the glorious day has come and GE are no longer one of my creditors I will post my progress on reclaiming - must be about £4K altogether.

 

Goldlady

[fernack]

Jaysus,

 

I just remortgaged with GE Money .... Hope I never miss a payment:eek:

[Goldlady]

pmsl fernack.. I'm sure you will be OK:D

 

But if you do get into arrears like we did, don't listen to their phone people who tell you all that will happen is that you will get charged £40. With no warning whatsoever two years ago, just before Christmas, the repossession papers landed on our doormat. We were two months in arrears at the time.

[notwatson]

Hear, hear - unfortunately, my opinion of these guys is that they are the worst kind of sharks. Their charges are truly *unbelievable* - sky high is really not the phrase.

 

Fernack - my advice would be to really keep tabs on this account - watch them at every stage - demand answers - if you can, use their fax number - or write - for any questions or answers as their phone service is simply another way of them making money (0870 number - straight to hold - for up to 30 mins - then you talk to an uninformed, illegible call-fielder (!) - sounds like a [problem] to me).

 

Better still, if you have a solicitor, or know of one, use a solicitor - that is the only way we got answers from GE regarding our redemption figure - they completely ignored us for weeks on end - when I instructed a solicitor to contact them for a figure, the paperwork dropped on our doormat within a week.

 

Of course, I have been stung by these clowns, and this is simply my opinion - you may have no problems with them whatsoever - just don't let them get away with anything.

 

 

Message for GoldLady - if you could post with any news, I'd be grateful, as after seeing your thread, I am determined to get every single charge and as much of the ERC (perhaps Early Redemption Penalty [ERP] would be a better term) back as I possibly can ...

 

Thanks,

 

Jon

[Goldlady]

Hi, well a few updates on this one.

 

Paid the nasty GE peeps off last month so sent them another letter asking for the £40 per month charges to be refunded - now total approx 2K. In view of what I have read on here I have not tried to reclaim the £2188 ERC as yet.

 

Have today received a very long letter back which goes into great detail about how they calculate their charges and how absolutely and totally fair they are, and in line with the industry in general:confused:. Strangely they have tried to justify the ERC as well and I haven't even started to claim that back yet:p.

 

Will think about what to do next. Looks as if I will have to issue proceedings so need to decide whether to go for both the charges and the ERC at the same time.

[The GodMother]

erm

 

what is the ERC?

[Goldlady]

early repayment charge - would have still been payable if we had paid the loan off after 14 years and 364 days - total rip off

[rory32]

Personally I would play safe and keep them seperate.

[Notty]

Hi Goldlay

 

Good luck with your claim it will be interesting to see how you get on. I will keep an eye on your thread. I asked about this same issue of charges last year but was told you couldnt claim. I have a mortgage with Northern Rock but hopefully will be changing it next month. Over the fours years I have had my mortgage I had arrears in 2006 and 2004 and they have added over £3000 in late payment charges. Do you think you can claim these back?

[Goldlady]

Oh Yes. (as the dog would say)

 

I would think it would be better to wait until you have paid it off - other people may disagree. However it is not the easiest and I am still trying to work out how to reply to GE's claim that their charges are soooo fair.

 

How much do NR hit you with each time? With GE it is £40 and they say in their letter that many institutions charge even more than that:mad:

[Notty]

Hi Goldlady

 

Sorry I think I posted on the wrong one. I thought it was the mortgage thread. Hope it hasnt caused too much confusion.

 

Yes they are right about other institutions charing more. NR charge £50 for a late payment but I thought they were allowed to do this. It has certainly mounted up over the last year. Have you sent the second letter yet and is it the same as the LBA with bank charges. Also what made you start to claim this? Is there any advice about these charges anywhere? Appreciate your help Goldlady.

[Goldlady]

Hi, well mine is a secured loan (or was) so same deal as mortgage. My LBA was based on the bank charges one as same unfair terms etc applies to mortgage penalty charges IMO.

 

£50 is unbelievable - I thought £40 was bad enough.

 

No I haven't sent second letter yet - still wondering what to say. I had always intended to claim the charges once we had paid them off. There are other threads on here about mortgage penalty charges but I don't have link to them. Will post when I have drafted second letter.

[notwatson]

Hi Goldlady,

 

Excellent - well done on the first steps - sounds to me like these crooks are running scared - I think you should definitely carry on.

 

Could you please post up your preliminary letter so I can have a quick look (if you don't mind, that is) as I would dearly like to get on their case.

 

We too have paid off our secured loan - feels like I can breathe again now.

 

How did you get a list of the charges please ? If you have a letter for that, I'd love to see that too.

 

If you want to PM me with these, that's fine too.

 

Good luck - I'm rooting for you !

 

Jon

[Goldlady]

Letter Before Action

 

Dear Sir/Madam,

 

ACCOUNT NUMBER:

 

Further to our letter of 2007, we now write to request a full refund of the charges levied on the above account.

 

We calculate that a total of £1950 has been added to the account in charges and interest thereon. This is clearly stated on the account statement dated xx 2007.

 

If we do not receive a satisfactory response to this letter within fourteen working days we will be forced to issue proceedings to recover this money.

On the statements we get the extra charges and the interest on them are shown separately - which I thought was very kind of them:D

 

Our first letter was:

 

Our request

We are writing to ask you to refund to us the charges which you have levied from our account over the last two and a half years.

 

We now understand that the regime of fees which you have been applying to our account in relation to direct debit refusals, late payments and so forth are unlawful at Common Law and contrary to consumer regulations. If you say that they are not, then will you please demonstrate this by letting us have a full breakdown of the costs to which you have been put by as a result of our breaches, in order to reassure us that your charges really do reflect your costs.

 

Additionally, it has now been confirmed that your particularly high level of penalties are considered to be unfair per se by the OFT who reported on the 5th April 2006 and are therefore presumed to be unlawful in the absence of specific proof to the contrary.

 

Your responsibilities

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

 

We are frankly shocked that you have operated our account in this way as we had always reposed confidence in your integrity and expertise.

 

We consider that your repeated representations that your charges are fair and reasonable are deceptive and that they have deceived us into agreeing to pay them.

Your concealment of the true nature of your charges has prevented us from asserting our right until now.

 

What we require

We calculate that you have taken £1300 plus £130 which you have charged us in interest for the sum which you have taken. Total £1430

 

We enclose a schedule of the charges which we are claiming with this letter.

 

 

Our targets to resolve this matter

We hope that you will enter into a sincere dialogue with us about this matter and we are writing this letter to you on the assumption that you will prefer to do this than merely respond with standard letters and leaflets.

 

We will give you 14 days to reply to us accepting, unconditionally, our request in principle and letting us know a date by which we will receive a refund of these charges.

 

If you dispute that we are entitled to a refund of these charges, we request that you forward within the above mentioned time scale, a copy of the Terms and Conditions that were in force at the time our account was opened, and any subsequent amendments to those Terms and Conditions. These are requested under CPR Pre-Action Protocol 4.6©, and failure to provide them will be brought to the attention of the court, should it be necessary to commence a county court action.

 

If you do not respond, or you do not respond positively, within this time period, we will send you a letter before action giving you a further 14 days in which to reflect. We believe that these targets are more than sufficient for a large company such as yours with dedicated staff and departments.

 

After that, there will be no further communication from us and we will issue a claim at the expiry of the second deadline.

 

If you haven't got the charges shown like we have I guess you would need to send them a SAR to get the information.

[Gargykath]

Hiya everyone

 

I just joined this morning.

 

This is the very topic I am interested in.

 

I had a secured loan with Future Mortgages - £3k. I got a consolidation loan and paid them off. There were nearly £2k worth of fees - they told me even if I was one month in arrears they would charge £47 then £50.

 

Goldlady if it is okay I would like to use your template to do a preaction letter.

 

I checked the terms and conditions that they sent me and it doesnt say anything about how much the charges are at all.

 

I paid Future off and have no connection with them now but am angry at just how much the fees were.

 

BTW They sent me the fees and a copy of my agreement for FREE - didnt have to pay the usual tenner.

 

Good luck - I am planning on posting my letter this week so will let you know how I get on.

 

Thanks

 

Kath

[Goldlady]

Best of luck Kath and welcome to CAG. Of course you can borrow my letter - no doubt I borrowed most of it from others on here - that's what we're all about here.

 

GE have written back to tell me how fair and reasonable their charges are so I am planning my next move.

[Goldlady]

OK so it is straight to N1 claim. I have been advised not to use MCOL incase it gets stayed so will be dropping the claim in at my local court on Monday. If anyone has the list of GE's many identities to hand can you post a link - I know they are listed on here in someone's thread. I want to make sure I am claiming against each and every one of their alter-egos so they can't try and wriggle out of it.

 

I have been told that they will take no notice of second letter but that they are likely to pay refund and court costs once claim is issued. I hope so - £85 is a lot of money:p

[Goldlady]

Went to court today with my N1. The court officer read through it and said - you haven't put a title on the claimants' details. I was confused by this until she pointed out we needed 'Mr and Mrs' Goldlady rather than just Goldlady and OH. Also I needed four copies as I have issued the claim against all of GE's alter egos - she said that it wouldn't cost me any more but that they would need to send one to each company, even though they are all at same address. If I didn't do that they would have to delete two of the defendants' names (Noooo).

 

Also, took my tax credit award letter and asked if we could claim remission of fees. Not too worried as have put them on the claim anyway. But she told me that because we receive child tax credit as well as working tax credit we would not be eligible??

 

Four copies printing off now - with our titles - I should have told her CAG name as that is almost titled;)

[Goldlady]

Issued the claim last week after doing amendments. Have had phone message today from their solicitors wanting to talk about settlement. Rather quick.

 

What does this mean I ask myself? They certainly weren't keen to admit liability when I sent them the LBA. No doubt I will find out tomorrow.

[steven4064]

You won't find they will admit liability now, they jsut want to see what you will take to withdraw the case (answer - all of it ). You have them over a barrel - don't settle for anything less than 100%, they have had their chance to negotiate!

[Goldlady]

Hi all, they offered me £1000 in full and final. I thought about it for 5 seconds and refused it. Yes I could do with a £1000 at the moment, but I would prefer the £2000 they took off me. The girl said that I might get nothing due to test case etc etc but I said I would still take my chances and hold out for the full amount. Maybe a foolish decision - but we shall see.

[nevos]

Hi, just subscribing, I'm looking at 40 quids as savings lol...