While we wait to hear the outcome of various test cases we have decided to make a complaint to Barclaycard about the PPI on this account. It may even be the case that these charges, together with interest (contractual and/or court 8%) are more than the remaining alleged outstanding balance. In refusing to supply a copy of the agreement, Barclaycard has also not proved that we ever asked for or agreed to PPI. (this was specifically mentioned in each of our letters). If they reject this complaint then we will go to the Financial Ombudsman Service. We still have the other legal options open to us afterwards. You never know - during the complaints process, they may end up supplying some evidence that helps with these other avenues.

We have decided to make a complaint about the PPI on these loan accounts. I have heard that the FOS are deciding 99% of complaints against Egg in the customer's favour at the moment. I don't know how much this could wipe off the balance as Egg have not been very cooperative in providing information to us. But as a minimum it will take it below £5,000 which should mean that any legal action ends up on the small claims track rather than with a risk of having to pay Egg's costs. We wrote a letter to Egg on Saturday and have sent it off in today's post by recorded delivery. I'm sure they will reject our complaint, and then we will complain to the FOS.

Well, if you still want to drag this out as long as possible you could take them up on their suggestion of complaining to the Financial Ombudsman Service within six months. This will also hit them in the wallet, win or lose. Did we ever establish whether there was any PPI charged on this account? Something else you may wish to do is ask them what "well established point of law" and "recent case law" they are referring to. That is a reasonable question because they are basically saying they will damage your credit rating based on this law, but they haven't said what the law is. It's interesting that they claim that "none of our collection activity breaches any codes, rules or regulations". This is always a good place to check if that is really the case: http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/business_leaflets/consumer_credit/oft664.pdf

I would say it is definitely worth making a complaint to the FOS if a default has wrongly been issued against you. This will affect your creditworthiness for 6 years. This is the form you would need to complete (rather than send a letter) http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumer/form/complaint_form.doc Obviously there are issues about whether court action has started or whether it is too late to complain to the FOS. But you have nothing to lose by trying to complain. I would also write to Carter and tell them briefly that you dispute this amount and it is the subject of a FOS complaint. I would be surprised if they took you to court for £170, and even more surprised if they carried on regardless after seeing that there is a genuine dispute involved. It is not generally a good idea to ignore a letter before action, even if 90% of them are empty threats.

If you have a spare £100 then you could pay this now but then still make a complaint to the FOS (as there would have been no legal action). Your complaint could include asking for the default to be removed if it is found to be based on a mistake. Alternatively perhaps there will never be any legal action for the small sum of £100. Even if there is, as long as you pay within 28 days I think you avoid a permanent mark on your credit file for the CCJ. The £100 default is the problem, and I would have thought that the easiest way to get this removed is a complaint to the FOS.

Have you considered making a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service?

Is this actually a "CCJ" or a "Claim Form"? Many people receive Claim Forms (Court Claims) and assume they are a CCJ (a County Court judgment). What does it say at the top of the paperwork?

We have discovered that Cabot are chasing us for an old Next Directory Account from 2002. PT has kindly explained how such accounts are completely unenforceable (due to the total lack of signed credit agreements) in this thread: http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/legal-issues/200443-tactics-dealing-next-directory.html The above is well worth a read for anybody who has an old Next account and finds Cabot chasing after them. Obviously any interest and default charges subsequently added by Cabot will also be unenforceable. However, I am concerned that they are going to start destroying our credit file, which was due to become pretty clean by 2011. I am wondering how they could possibly have a right to do this. I will start a separate thread for this if it gets interesting. In the meantime we will continue to correspond politely.

So it looks like Cabot's business plan is to call round to see all those desperately broke credit crunched banks, buy up all their toxic debts for a few pence in the pound, and then ruthlessly go after the long suffering consumer for the full amount. Hang on a minute, didn't we bail the banks out once already....?

We have simply received a letter which states "Your Cabot account is overdue" please call us etc. It does not mention any other financial institution or any amount. We honestly do not know what account it relates to (but we could make a guess). We have never had a Cap One account. Presumably this is one of their tactics. We have written to ask for evidence to support their claim that we owe them money. Once I get this I will put the details on the correct thread and link to it from here. We will be taking a very hard line against them and I am looking forward to it.

Subbing with interest as just received first letter from Cabot in today's post.

Subbing. Thank you for starting this thread. We have just had our first letter from Cabot so will be using this resource (and probably contributing to it).

So an update on where we are with this: 4 May 09 - Complaint sent to Financial Ombudsman (FOS). 13 May 09 - Acknowledgement of receipt sent back to us from FOS. 2 Oct 09 - Letter received from FOS: "To enable us to consider your complaint further would you please provide a copy of the CCA (Consumer Credit Agreement) and the policy document". 11 Oct 09 - We wrote back to FOS saying we don't have either. We enclosed Egg's "true copy" of the CCA obtained last year via a Data Protection Act request. We said we were unable to send a copy of the policy document as we have never received it. So this shows that the FOS may have a 5 month backlog for dealing with PPI complaints. I find it strange that they are asking us for the paperwork, rather than asking Egg. How many consumers have all their paperwork from over 7 years ago? (well, actually I do, but this is my friend's case, and she - like most people - doesn't keep everything forever). I read in the news recently that the FOS are upholding 99% of complaints against Egg at the moment. Let's hope we are not in the other 1%.

Well done PN and thanks for posting. We have just let our old Egg agreement sit in the background. Thousands outstanding on the loan but we haven't paid a penny for over 6 months and heard nothing. Now I hear in the media that consumers are winning 99% of their cases against Egg. Your thread has inspired me, and I think we will put in a complaint - thanks again.

Yes I am intending to make a FOI Act request to challenge these costs but have been so busy on other projects that I haven't had a chance to do this yet. Every time somebody posts on this thread I am reminded of this and start to feel quite guilty about not getting round to it.

Hi bmwman I can't remember exactly. The guy from the Council read some technical notes to the magistrates so I would assume all the regulatory points such as this one were covered considering they do this all the time. I have no way of knowing for certain and didn't get to see the spreadsheet. By the way, I think the spreadsheet was actually just for the absent people as these were all covered right at the end of the case when I was the only person still sticking around in the court room. (Nobody would every have known about the 2,000 if I hadn't stayed to the bitter end.)

We are planning to do a voluntary termination later this year, once we have reached 50% of the total amount payable under the agreement. After the ridiculous interest rate we have been charged for the last few years (and the dodgy PPI policies on the previous cars we had on HP) we do not feel very inclined to spend a lot of money getting the vehicle into perfect condition before handing it back for them to sell at auction. Will they really bother pursuing us for repair costs? Presumably they would have to do it via small claims court, so we have nothing much to lose by defending and hoping they discontinue proceedings. And I also assume this would now be outside the credit agreement and so they couldn't put anything on the credit file?

Hi NP This is obviously a standard threatening letter. It is also, of course, a Letter Before Action in the legal sense. I don't think this changes anything as I seem to recall that you have already been sent such LBAs in the past. You need to decide whether to ignore the letter or respond. I think there comes a point at which you don't need to keep responding if you have already made your case either directly to Egg or to one of their other agents. If you decide to reply then there is a good argument for keeping things simple and repeating the same points until they answer them. Why send lots of different letters and potentially muddle your arguments? You could decide to challenge them down the route of not providing a signed CCA. Or you could raise issues about s18 multiple agreements (but how do you know the agreement is unenforceable if you haven't seen it?)

Councils can behave in this manner because of the way that the Council Tax legislation has been written. You cannot win your case except on a technicality - but there are no technicalities based on the way the Council has behaved. We cannot change these rules without taking the UK to the European Court to challenge their legality under the Human Rights Act article about the right to a fair trial. (I brought this point up at my trial but it was ignored - hardly surprising as I had heard the Court Clerk laughing about defendants who bring up the Human Rights Act earlier in the day). So we have to focus on the way that Councils are immorally abusing their position. There are probably two main ways to fight them: 1. Obtain the calculation of their "costs" under the Freedom of Information Act and then use this against them in some way. Your costs were £38; mine were £68. Why the big difference? The Council could hire double the number of staff and double their costs. They are employing people with generous final salary pension schemes to abuse the court process, and then charging the tax payer for the privilege. 2. Investigate the Council's statements about the ways they behave and then complain about the ways they have broken these promises. (remember John Major's citizen's charter?). There are lots of levels that you can take a complaint to.

By the way, when the liability order eventually arrived through the post, I paid it straightaway in full. I haven't heard anything about the small amount relating to the prior year, so perhaps they have given up on that.

Hi Jamstar I haven't made any progress on this as I have been very busy on other projects. However, I have not forgotten about it, and do intend to find out how the £68 was calculated using a FOI request. I will update this thread if/when anything happens.

I think you could probably negotiate a full and final settlement for significantly less than 100% of the amount owed if you are in a position to pay immediately.

Hi N.P Here we have the threat of county court proceedings on an account which you refused to pay. They acknowledge that you have disputed the claim, and therefore they are (I believe) unable to pursue options such as a statutory demand/bankruptcy. I seem to remember that they have already defaulted you, so that is not an issue either. A threat is just a threat. It may never happen. I recall that the amount claimed is around £7,000. This means that the Court Claim would be likely to get allocated to the "fast track" and, therefore, the case is unlikely to be heard for at least a year. On the other hand, they can seek costs against you, which could potentially massively increase the size of the 'debt'. They probably know that the agreement may be unenforceable, and that, even if they win, and obtain a CCJ against you, it will take them years to recover the money. I suspect that the loan is fully provided against in their books. This might be a last ditch attempt to scare you into paying, after which they could sell the 'debt' onto another agency. They might start a claim against you and hope to get a judgment in default where you fail to get your defence into the court in time. Then they might discontinue proceedings and give up. Only you can decide whether to stand up to them or start paying again. Good luck

Well done superg, it looks like you have won because they just gave up. Great that you stuck with it and kept putting in all those documents, you should be so proud you have beaten them. By the way, I am pretty sure they can never bring this up again in the future because, once somebody discontinues proceedings, they can't start them up again later. It's called "estoppel". I am no expert on this, but I think I am right.

Sounds interesting PT, is there any further info on this anywhere on CAG?