I'm pretty surprised by some of the responses on here, advising someone that it will be in their best interests to stop payment and start the normal "Account in dispute" process without ascertaining a few key facts first. Damage to your credit file may or may not make any difference to you, but telling someone to go to court and get a CCJ for £1 per month without knowing these key facts strikes me as being bordering on reckless when there may be other options available. I'm not sure whether Scarlet Pimpernel is misreading the OP's message, but DCAs aren't involved at the moment. The Funding Corporation are the OC. The sure way to get DCAs involved will be to stop payments and stick two fingers up at them. Maybe you want the hassle of it all. I know I wouldn't. Been there and done that. None of this is to say that you shouldn't apply for a copy of the CCA. If they can't supply one and/or it's unenforceable, then the rules of the game change, but I would suggest that we try to get a bit more information first. If you could answer these questions, it would help: - Where is the bike? With him or with you? If it's with him, will he give it back voluntarily? (If it is with him, they will be able to locate the bike easily by checking the address that it is taxed to via the DVLA) - Has the agreement already been terminated by The Funding Corporation? (ie, have you received a default notice and termination letter?) - Did you take PPI when the contract was signed? - Is it a Hire Purchase or Conditional Sale Agreement, or is it a Personal Loan? If the time span that you have given in the original post is correct (five years already down, two to pay), you should be able to invoke your Voluntary Termination rights and return it to them, subject to it being in a reasonable condition and the payments not being in default. If you meet these criteria, there will be no further liability. Don't worry about the late charges and letter fees, they're almost certainly not enforceable.

Have you been issued with a default notice and termination notice yet? If so, I would advise against returning the car to them. If the account has been terminated (you'd have received a letter saying something along the lines of "you are no longer in possession of the vehicle with our consent"), DO NOT give the car back to them. They'll sell the car at auction, and will then hold you liable for complete remainder of the account. They'll have to get a court order to get the car back if you've paid the amount that you say you've paid. If the car is worth £800, you may only get £500 lopped off the account after it's sold through auction, so you could get lumbered with a large bill for fresh air if you don't get this side of it right. According to the figures that you have given, you're likely under a 36 month contract, which would mean that you probably signed for it less than two years ago. There's a decent chance that they will provide a valid CCA, but it's worth a throw for £1. Voluntary Termination will be an option, but get the account up to date first if you can, get that dent fixed (as above, it won't be considered "reasonable wear & tear") and get time and date stamped photos of the car being inspected if they come out and see the car. They would require the contract to be signed on trade premises so that it is non-cancellable, by the way (you have a seven day cooling-off period on car loan agreements signed at home).

We did this before, didn't we? The banks give their permission for DCAs to send the Notices Of Assignment on their behalf, and it would only be an issue if the banks hadn't given permission for these letters to be sent. In both of the cases above where people have contacted the OC, the OC have said that they had permission to use the letterhead for a NOA. It would only be an issue if the bank hadn't given the permission for their letterhead to be used.

Mobile phone contracts aren't usually covered by the CCA. http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/telecoms-mobile-fixed/70464-mobile-phone-companies-consumer.html

There seems to be considerable confusion on here over what a Default Notice actually is. Say, for the purposes of an example, you have a credit card and the terms of it are that your minimum monthly repayment is 2.5% of the balance. If you don't pay that amount, the difference will mount up as arrears. At an unspecified point in the future, the credit card company or their assignees will issue a Default Notice for the accumulated total of the arrears, giving you 14 days to clear those arrears in full. So - for six months, your minimum payment is £100 (let's assume for the purposes of simplicity that interest has been frozen), and you pay £20 because you're on a DMP. That £80 per month difference will amount to £480 arrears, and the default notice will give 14 days to pay that. If you pay it, you retain the right to bound by the terms of the agreement, as long as you carry on paying the 2.5%. If you don't, the arrears will build again. If you don't pay it in that 14 days, they can terminate the account, and the full balance becomes payable. It's at this point that they can apply for a CCJ or issue a Stat Demand. After the agreement is terminated, it is also a considerably greyer area whether you have an automatic right to CCA them - if the agreement has been terminated, there is no agreement between you. Also, should they issue a Stat Demand, failure to reply to a CCA request on its own will seldom be sufficient to get it set aside.

ah, I see. I'm not sure we have the technology, but he might be able to send me a copy - is there a list of things it should contain and to look out for somewhere?

thanks but my dad has it rather than me so I can't. what I am interested in hearing are peoples' views as to whether forgetting to scratch the day off the permit when the date was scratched off means that the permit was not valid and a contravention occurred. seems like madness to me, I couldn't have reu-sed the ticket on another date and the registration number was filled in so I couldn't transfer it to another car.

Hi, my dad got a parking ticket this weekend whilst parked in a resident's bay outside my house, despite him having a valid resident's visitor permit. I have just phoned up to ask why he got the ticket when the permits were valid and clearly displayed and I was informed that although he scratched the DATE off he had not scratched the DAY panel (i.e. the friday / saturday bit). I pointed out that as the date was scratched off we clearly could not use the tickets again so there was clearly no attempt to defraud and the council person on the phone said if he wrote in on the appeal form she thought he might well get it cancelled but that the back of the permits did clearly state that he had to scratch the day off too so it might not get cancelled....! bah! To me it seems obvious that the ticket was issued unfairly and we had clearly got the right permits, but this is the council we are talking about..... where do we stand legally? Does anyone have any experience of this sort of thing and / or suggested wording for the appeal form?

I agree that some DCAs behave terribly, I have and continue to be a victim of this myself. I hopped on here today because I have today recieved an AOE for a debt upon which I'm already paying an AOE! I have every sympathy for the many people who have been lied to and harassed..... Knowing your rights is one thing, I have greatly benefitted from this site! But endorsing people who are trying to avoid a debt which they freely admit they ran up knowing they are obliged to repay it weakens the position of the CAG and consumers generally. Doing this allows the DCAs who are behaving badly to respond to criticism and questions and legitimate concerns raised by people like me, and from the government, OFT, FOS, ICO by saying "look, these people have not been treated unfairly they just want to avoid their debts, if anything you should give US more rights". The government might decide to make things more difficult for people with real problems if they perceive that people are abusing the system. I will get tarred with that brush too. Does that make sense? Sorry to hijack your thread with this can of worms, Canbrilla, I don't know you and for all I know you intend to repay in full but it is something I have seen on here before (and I won't reply any more, this isn't the place)

Ah, yes. That's what it's all about isn't it? Sorry, but I don't buy it. I have already seen one person on a thread this evening post up a copy of a letter that he sent to a DCA that was, as could be evinced from his previous posts on the subject, a pack of lies, after they didn't respond to a CCA request. Do you support this? And saying, "well, it's what DCAs do" is, I'm afraid, not a good enough answer. Did any of the people that responded to this thread ask when he obtained the card - ie, whether he's actually eligible for a copy of the paperwork? Well, no. Because (and this is universal policy on this part of CAG) "send CCA" is the universally-parroted response to any thread started, regardless of whether the poster has already clearly categorically stated that they owe the debt. Now, once and for all: Does CAG endorse debt avoidance or not?

CAG has many critics in the credit industry, and this thread is a perfect validation for many of those criticisms. The original poster doesn't dispute that he owes this debt - he states himself that he was paying reduced instalment amounts prior to default notice being issued. I fail to see what good a CCA request over a debt with no dispute whatsoever over it would have. Saying "doesn't do any harm" isn't good enough in this case, and neither does saying, "it's up to them to prove it" - at least, it isn't if CAG is serious about being against debt evasion, which we (rightly) claim to be.

It is a fairly standard process for a bank, when transferring an account to a DCA, to provide them with blank headed paper and request that the DCA sends the Notice Of Assignment on their behalf. To call it "fraud" would be, I would say, a bit of a stretch. Perhaps, in such a case, it might be an idea to contact the bank to see if they have assigned the rights to do this to anyone. It would only be deception if they haven't, and IMHO primarily a matter of concern to the bank rather than you. At work, our external contractors in other companies write letters for us all the time and of course they do it on our headed paper.

you know, if you need to try to debunk the whole scientific system history and community to win your argument now you've run through the usual old stories it might be time to think about why you're going to such lengths!

heh, I believe the dutch are working on something similar around the port of rotterdam... except the co2 is used for tomatos and tulips and boring stuff rather than cannabis.....! surely cannabis is a higher value crop though - maybe it will catch on!

You agree with this man whose article you have copied and pasted? Peer Review is Censorship and Intimidation. Hmm, reliable source you have there, the scientific community must be quaking in their boots - he has a web page and everything, instead of their flimsy peer reviewed research! Oh no he's debunked relativity too: The Truth about Relativity. It contradicts basic logic and uses corruptible minutia for supposed proof. - do you agree with this expert analysis? oh really.

The Oregon petition is a smokescreen. Desperate measures by a lobby group that hasn't got any real evidence to back it up: Statement of the Council of the NAS Regarding Global Change Petition Apparently all the names are verified. Hmm, but Geri Halliwell signed it? Phew! I was holding my breath waiting for her opinion! Business | Jokers Add Fake Names To Warming Petition | Seattle Times Newspaper See also here - Robinson is hardly qualified on climate issues himself. Hawaii Reporter: Hawaii Reporter "The infamous Oregon petition hardly merits mention. The senior author of the paper accompanying the petition was Dr. Arthur Robinson, a biochemist, not a climate scientist. The second and third authors were Drs. Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. According to Hayashi, Baliunas and Soon are "legitimate scientists." What Hayashi fails to mention is that both of these individuals have been "senior scientists" with the George C. Marshall Institute, a right-wing think tank, and have been affiliated with other advocacy groups (e.g., Heritage Foundation, Fraser Institute) funded, in part, by the oil industry (particularly ExxonMobil). So, Baliunas and Moon may have science training and may be affiliated with an academic institution, but to the extent that politics and money influence their interpretation of climate data, they are not objective in their interpretations (Hayashi refers to them as "upstanding professionals") but are mouthpieces for the oil companies." Here's a hint for you. If you want a better list of real scientists, wikipedia is a good place to start. Check their backgrounds before you start blindly believeing them though (unless, you know, it suits you to blindly believe). List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Indeed, difficult and interesting times. On the one side the hysterical green lobby saying we mustn't have nuclear, coal, or gas power stations. On the other, climate sceptics who refuse to believe anything is going on despite all the evidence.

Thanks Rory, it was very reassuring to see the evidence pop through the letter box like that!

1) On your first point, I am afraid I believe the peer reviewed scientific body of evidence, not you. Call me crazy if you like. Again, your argument is spurious. 2) Please name these prominent scientists. 3) Kyoto is a political agreement not a scientific theory, what precisely are they questioning? Who? 4) That article you have linked was written in 1997, you should try keeping more up to date with the science, many of the issues in that article have moved on significantly as more resource and interest has been paid to this issue. Here's a final thought for you: you will never agree with me and the scientific community because you can't be bothered to change your lifestyle and don't want to hear about anything, no matter how catastrophic that might invoved you needing to make efforts to do so - don't look it will go away etc. I have seen it all before (and even earlier in this thread!). See the concluding paragraph of the article you claim refutes my point of view "There is a natural inclination to wait and see until we know what we shall have to face. By then it may be too late" Ever considered taking your own advice?

I took comfort from this and thought others being hassled by Lowell might too. I knew deep down that I was just getting automatically generated letters and empty threats but I now know for definite. A week or two ago, 2 letters arrived from Lowell to my flat. One addressed to Ms Cooter (me, but named wrongly...) and one to a man who has not lived in the flat for 5 or 6 years. I opened them both and they were identical. The letters are going out to everyone in a cycle and are all the same. They mean nothing. I will find it far easier to ignore them in the future. Thanks Lowell!

Spurious. See here for a collection of material from the 70s: Science-type stuff What we have now is a broad scientific consensus, how the media chooses to discuss the matter is quite separate. quite different to the 70s as you will find if you look through that link.

more nonsense. too much water vapour in the air rains out, not enough and it evaporates from the ocean, again you will recall the water cycle from primary school, I presume: Met Office: Water cycle when the air is warmed by other means, water vapour concentrations will rise and stay high, thus providing feedback. the proportion of global warming attributable to water vapor is irrelevant then, such a number doesn't really exist because warming from water vapor responds to other causes - i.e. greenhouse gases. any more?

Hmm, that's some strong and relevant empirical evidence you have right there... Yes, the climate seems to move in cycles - that BBC article clearly says that. The warming we are seeing now is not in line with the way those cycles predict it should be going, it is in the wrong direction and faster, something unusual seems to be going on. We are outside the realm of normal and probably natural variability. The planet controls these natural CO2 levels itself naturally and even controls some of the anthropogenic emissions, which is lucky for us. This is called the carbon cycle, most people learn about it at primary school. Since the industrial revolution however, humans have been putting more and more CO2 into the atmosphere without removing it and at levels higher than the natural systems for maintaining the levels can cope with causing atmospheric CO2 to increase since that time. Whatever the total amounts of CO2 going in and out "naturally," humans have upset the balance by not removing what we put in. It is the anthropogenic emissions that must (and indeed can) be controlled. To blame the oceans for increased CO2 in the atmosphere is pathetic, like blaming the air you breathe out. Also, interested to know where you got that 98% figure from? A reliable source was it? Atmosphere, Climate & Environment Information Programme What I like about these two points is that the second directly contradicts the first so I don't even need to answer them because you have rubbished your own arguments. Yeah, cos politicians love putting up taxes, don't they? Still, if you say it enough it will make you feel better about not wanting to change your behaviour. I agree - climate skeptic's arguments do tend to look like complete bunk when you look at the evidence. Unless you have any more arguments that are actually convincing?

Hi Ben, would it be possible to see the wording you used?

ouch - what a letter! thanks very much! I think I'll have to take a slightly different angle as I asked them first merely to prove it was anything to do with me, then to prove it was not statute barred as a follow on but that is a powerful start! I would welcome an answer on what would happen if they tried to pursue this person who is nearly me through the courts, if anyone knows :/