Wellerman The first thing to do now is to get all documentation that has been sent to you scanned and uploaded so that some of the experts can have a look. Open a free account at photobucket, and you can scan the documents to their and link to them on your thread. Block out any personal information and account numbers etc from your scan. You will need to approach this case fro a number of positions. 1. Does the creditor have an enforceable CCA agreement? I know you haven't got a copy yet, but they will have to provide you with one before court. 2. Was the default notice served correctly and did it contain the required wording? Scan this notice so that we can have a look. 3. Has any unlawful charges been added to the agreement? Send a S.A.R - (Subject Access Request) to creation and a £10 fee requesting all information they hold on you and a copy of all satements of account. 4. Was there PPI added to the loan? If so did you request this? Were you put under pressure indicating that it would help you get the loan? Has this been mis-sold? (there are many other reasons as to why PPI may have been mis-sold. 5. Scan the Particulars of Claim that the solicitor completed on the court claim form. Again cover up any identifying infrmation. Send PM's to pt2537, tomterm8 and car2403 who are all very knowledgeable on CCA and its requirements. Tell them that court action is imminent and get them to check your thread. They should be able to advise you on your next step inclding completing your AQ.

The Lewis Group do a lot of collection for the infamous GE capital store cards. Have you any old store card debts floating about?

Pity the letter was written 2 years ago. I have read this letter many times and always wondered why there had been no update. Surely they got some sort of response from the ICO. May be worth a letter to LACORS to ask what the reponse was, and why it hasn't been updated on their site.

Having looked at your first calculation, I think they would be able to show this to a judge to prove that the APR figure 'over the period of the loan' is correct. It seems that the only inconsitency is in their statement of the 'total charge for credit' for the 1st year because of the 11 month's payments rather than 12. Whether this is enough to mount a challenge, I don't know . Can you use your calculator in reverse to see what the charge for credit should be based on the 11 monthly payments, leaving the APR figure as quoted on the agreement? PS. I didn't receive your email

Also noted that they are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (although they couldn't even spell authority correctly ). Checked their website and they refer complaints to the Legal Complaints Service. I would also make a complaint to them and also send off for a full SAR with £10. If they don't answer that, you can also include the ICO in the list of authorities to complain to.

Hi gh I can see that now - they apply the standard rate over the whole year and ignore the special rate for 6 months. However, using your calculation, it is also easy for them to quote the 'regular installment'. Should they then not have to quantify that statement by stating 'repaid in equal monthly installments of £xx.xx'? This figure would have to be quoted in a fixed credit agreement. Surely the idea being that a 'layperson' can look at the agreement and see what it is going to cost him each month?

It looks enforceable to me, but there is one inconsistency that stands out and someone with more knowledge than me would have to confirm if what is stated makes it enforceable or not. They have given an example of interest payable as below: This is based on £1500 balance at the start of the agreement being charged with the relevant purchases rate of interest repaid in equal installments. But they haven't stated what amount the installments would be as used in their calculation. So how can they accurately calculate this figure. They calculate the interest to be £83.06 for the year. I set up a small spreadsheet to work this out: I have used their scenario. £1500 opening balance. I have calculated the repayments as the minimum allowed i.e. 2% of the balance per month. Interest rate used is 0% for 6 months, then the monthly simple interest rate of 0.839% divided by 30 and reapplied to the monthly opening balace to the power of 30. This calculates the daily compound interest which is charged. This only equates to £63.87 per annum and not £83.06! They can't have applied interest all year or it would have amounted to over £135, so they must have allowed you the 6 months interest free. They have overquoted your annual interest by 30% (the difference between 63.87 and 83.06). The only way they could have arrived at a figure greater than 63.87, is if they were not using the minimum repayments. However, if you were paying more than the minimum repayments, then the interest figure would have been even less. Surely they have not calculated the monthly repayments at less than the minimum required therefore encouraging you to break the terms of the agreement! You may need to have some experts give their opinion on this like peterbard, pt2537 etc. I have sent a few PM's and hope they have a look.

Storm I have just re-read your story. Firstly, and most importantly, get your new account opened so the Shabby Sharks cannot hit you with any more charges. As already advised, get your benefits paid by Giro until you can get the new account opened. Worst case scenario, if you cannot get a new account with a debit card, then open a Post Office account and consider a pre-paid credit card as advised earlier which will allow you to shop online etc. A good one is operated by tuxedo and there is also another one run by them in conjunction with The Sun newspaper here. You can choose to pay £4.99 per month with reduced fees, or pay as you go with transaction fees. You can top the card up anywhere that does mobile phone top-ups etc. You could authorise someone to go to the Post Office for you when your benefits are paid in and then use the money to top up your card. Don't worry about anyone else at the minute. You keep thinking about how much you owe, and it must be a cloud hanging over you. To lift that cloud, just keep thinking that all you owe is £4 per month - £1 to each of your creditors! While these payments keep the wolves at bay, just continue to send them your payment! They have agreed to them as they are accepting them, and when it boils down to it, what else can they do to you that they haven't already done? There really is no better feeling than taping a £1 coin to a payment slip, sealing the envelope and then letting out the broadest smile you can muster across your face!

Write to them and ask them who instructed them to take no further action? They would have to disclose to you who they took instruction from. This sounds very fishy indeed.

Hi Storm I have been where you are right now. For a while I had thought that I had started this thread under a pseudonym . My depression was so similar to yours, I couldn't go out across the door. I used to psyche myself up to try and even go to Tesco to get a few essentials. I would reach the door, and then couldn't face it. I would go straight to bed with my coat still on and pull the covers over my head, just wanting another day to go away. My debt situation was similar also. I too had just taken a £17k loan before the illness hit me, and I too was in a well paid job. The good news is, even though it may seem far away, you will get better. The creditors have probably tried to grind you down, make you feel ashamed etc about your debt. The best piece of advice I got when I was in that situation was: "Remember that you cannot go to jail for owing money, it cannot kill you, and you haven't done anything wrong." REPEAT AS NECESSARY. Once you accept this, you will not only be able to start dealing with these people, YOU WILL ACTUALLY FIND THE RESOLVE TO START FIGHTING THEM. After 4 years, I am still not totally cured, but I know one group who will never again cause me the slightest anxiety. Just do what you can on a daily basis without it stressing you. If you feel stressed, STOP and wait until you feel better. You will get all the advice and support you need to tackle the issues from the good people on this board.:grin:

Car No update yet, everything has gone quiet. I keep checking with my parents and there have been no letters or phonecalls from Sainsburys. I suspect they are trying to work out their next move in this game of chess. I notice from your thread you are trying to get the court to give an order of no enforcement, in 'reverse mode', so I am watching that carefully. The small claims precedure here in NI is entirely different to England. There are no CPR's as such. The POC does not have to be heavily pleaded, in fact the court form allows a very small box to say what you are claiming. To defend you just have to say that you are defending the claim in full, and you don't have to plead any defence. You are then given a court date and told to bring all papers you are relying on to court, so there is no disclosure, and each side will not know what the other is doing until court date. I'm sure that could lead to some interesting exchanges! Your thread would help greatly in putting together a skeleton argument should the need arise. Jon No case has been issued against my parents. I'll give you all the background, so this could be long. All credit that my parents ever had were 'sold' to them in shops. They had 3 store cards and a Sainsburys credit card. My mum could never say no to a salesperson, and had thought that since they were retired and on limited income that they would never get the cards in the first place, so my mum agreed to fill in the application forms as she was hounded everytime she bought something in a store. To her surprise, all the cards were issued. My father had been ill over a couple of years and had 2 heart attacks. He also has memory problems and social services insisted on making my mum is his appointee for benefits. My mum has also suffered from depression and anxiety attacks most of her life which have had some shocking physical side effects on her also. For years when she took an anxiety attack, her whole mouth, face and tongue would swell up for several days at a time. I have never seen anything like it, she was like John Merrick, seriously. Then for a few years she had a fear of drowning and could not even drink a cup of tea. Most recently, she completely lost her voice for over a year. The few words you could make out sounded like someone had been inhaling helium. No-one knew what was causing all this. My mum was never good with money, although my dad has left her to it all his life, and never taken any financial responsibility. When he was working, he was only ever allowed to open his paypacket to check that the contents were correct before handing it over! She will admit that when she first got the cards, she did spend some money on them. But being on a very tight budget, it was not long before the monthly payments were putting a strain on their finances. So she started using ths cash withdrawal facility on them, taking that cash into the bank and using it to pay the monthly payment. Something I wasn't even aware of until later was that even the store cards run by GE Capital allowed you to withdraw cash on them in the store! So every month, the card balances were increasing by the monthly payment, plus of course interest and cash withdrawal charges. This was compounded by arbitarily increased credit limits. By doing this, my mum had managed to keep everythig ticking along, and keep everything quiet. This was until last year, when the cards were approaching their limits, that she could obviously not find the money to pay them each month and could no longer withdraw cash on them either to pay the monthly bill. She had mentioned this one month to my sister saying she had one card that she couldn't pay. My sister phoned me and said she was worried about my mum's debts. None of us had ever any idea of what was going on, or that she even had cards. I confronted my mum and found out about all the cards, and to say I was shocked was an understatement. The first thing I did was negotiate a reduced payment of £5 per month with the 3 store cards, but as the Sainsbury card was in my dad's name (with my mum as an additional card holder) she did not want my dad finding out about it. So she said that if I got a reduced payment on the store cards, she would try and scrape together the money to pay Sainsbury the minimum each month, so that no phonecalls would come to the house chasing my dad's payments. I also put in place a plan for them to take out a lifetime interest only mortgage on their house so that they could address the debt. But because of their limited income and limited valuation on their ex-council house, they were only able to raise about 50% of their debt via mortgage. In the meantime, GE had transferred their card debts to Lewis. When the mortgage was finalised (which took 6 months through 2 different lenders to get an offer) Lewis agreed to 50% full and final settlement. I was then in a position to contact Sainsburys with the same offer. As mum had continued to pay the minimum each month, the first thing I was told is that they could not consider any settlement unless the account was actually in arrears. So I told mum to stop paying the card so that we could negotiate some settlement. At this stage my mum's voice started to come back as quickly as it had disappeared. The hospital specialists then soon realised that it had been the stress that had also caused this. As soon as payments stopped to Sainsburys, the multiple phonecalls and threatograms started happening daily. This was until I contacted them telling them I was sending a written offer and requested the phonecalls to stop. I had written to Sainsbury, expalining the situation, again offering the 50%. We received no response and the phonecalls and letters started again. So I wrote again and initiated a complaint, and at the same time sent in a s78 request. We received a reply from them which stated very little, no mention was made of the offer, but that they would refund all the late payment charges since last August, as I had aparently been given wrong information about the card needing to be in arrears! A couple of days later, the erroneous CCA documents arrived, and we are now at the stage of having sent them the following letter: Since than we have heard nothing back. The strange thing here is that if they had agreed to the 50% last August, this would all have been done and dusted. Now Sainsbury's are in a position of an unenforceable CCA but my parents are still keen for the issue to be resolved.

Thinking back to when I worked in the banks as a Financial Adviser in the early 90's, this 'moving' of debt accounts went on all the time. Although I wasn't involved in day to day banking, I did keep my ear to the ground as to what things went on. I clearly remember a case of a high overdraft on one account, where the account holder was not repaying anything or was not in a position to repay it. The branches were put under pressure to keep dormant overdrafts to a minimum. Branch managers were targetted on their 'net balances' of the branch . A large dormant overdraft would have an effect on the net balance of the branch and would leave the manager open to some awkwad questioning from head office. At the same time, they were targetted on sales of personal loans. So what do you think happened to large dormant overdrafts??? It was a case of branch managers killing two birds with the one stone. Net balances increased due to the 'removal' of the overdraft and the lending book increased towards their sales target. All this was done as a 'paper exercise' without the knowledge of the debtor, and no consideration given to the CCA or any repercussions. If the fantasy loan wasn't repaid, then the banks went for judgement, and the poor debtor in those days who didn't know their rights were screwed. The reverse also happened, where current accounts were opened and put into overdraft, and unauthorised overdrafts were increased if the branch had a good net balance figure - to cover the fact that a loan granted had not been repaid, as the manager would also be questioned about loans with 2 or more consecutive missed repayments. This would make it look like a PL granted by the manager, was continuing to be repaid every month and would not show up on any reports. The overdraft would not be questioned for some time if the branch had a good net balance figure. Again these new accounts were set up without the knowledge of the debtor. I suppose money laundering regulations have made this more difficult now? Or maybe not?

Thanks for the replies guys. I have issued complaints to both the ICO and TS today over their lack of providing required information. I have also sent them the following s10 DPA notice requiring them to stop processing my data.

Had sent this letter to Cabot requesting further information on original S.A.R - (Subject Access Request): Received their reply today as below: This reply raises some questions. Since they did not list the documents as requested, is this reply an admission that they do not have a deed of assignment or deed of sale for this account? They have not, despite their reply, supplied me with a statement of charges and interest added since date of assignment. How can they be adding interest and charges if they have never seen the CCA? How do they know what rate of interest to be adding? Surely there must be some sort of data relating to this account of interest rate applied? They have failed to provide details of CRA's that they report data to. Finally, they state that the data controller is Cabot Financial (UK) Ltd. From earlier reading I thought that they had earlier stated that Cabot Financial (UK) Ltd did not hold any data and that all data was held and processed by Europe Ltd. So who is the data controller? Who is processing the data? What data is REALLY held and by whom, and who is processing this? What should be the next stage, a complaint to the ICO?

You can't 'cash in' a pension at any time! They exist to provide you with retirement benefits. You can only claim benefits from them when you reach 'retirement age'. This age could differ for the various schemes you were a member of, but you must be at least 50 to claim any retirement benefits. When you reach a valid retirement age, the majority of your pension fund will be used to provide you with a monthly income, but taking your benefits early, greatly reduced this income, as they will have to pay you your pension for longer than if you waited to say age 65. Plus with only 7 years contributions, your pension benefit will be minimal. I'm afraid you will have to look at other options for funding your shop purchase.