Thought I'd like to give our experience of Cabot which ended yesterday in Court. The first thing we knew was a Sheriff knocking at the door presenting us with a Court Summons from Cabot just before Xmas. We’d had no phone calls, letters, no previous contact whatsoever, it was out of the blue. Their summons was for £5500. It turned out it related back to a Lloyds Bank PPI 'overpayment' from 4 years previously. We had 2 Lloyds accounts, had had several loans, credit cards, & when we received two differing amounts of PPi cheques we didn't think anything was unusual, in fact we paid off our Lloyds credit cards & bought a new fridge. One cheque was for £2600, the other £2300. Quite a few months afterwards Lloyds said the 2nd payment was a mistake, they wanted it back. We told them to whistle, so they just invented an overdraft on one account to cover it. After 6 months of constantly hanging on the phone, getting £50 here & there as sweeteners, we spoke to one guy who 'sorted' it. He closed our accounts without warning & at the same time the only branch within 40 miles closed. We heard nothing more about the PPi overpayment. We kept all the letters as without an account number we could no longer get through on the phone. From this £2300, Cabot’s court claim was for £5500!! As part of their evidence that we'd been apparently ignoring them, they enclosed a post office print out as proof of sending us a recorded letter. We got the Tracking reference & easily saw from the Post Office website that the letter had been returned to them & signed for 48 hours after they'd sent it. We mentioned this as part of our defence, which cost us £97 to lodge. The Sheriff turned up once more last week to tell us Cabot’s solicitors had asked the Court to postpone the case, giving the reason that as part of our defence we had asked them for evidence of Lloyds transferring the debt. This was again untrue, so we challenged their postponement which cost another £47. (By the way, when he called, the Sheriff advised us the postponement was good for us as we now had time to communicate & reach a settlement!! No, really?) We had 2 days notice of the hearing which was in a proper courtroom with all the pomp & circumstance. Cabot actually had a solicitor there, he read out his reasons for wanting the postponement. I finally got to have my say & refuted the reason he’d given for the postponement, saying we'd asked for no further evidence whatsoever. I stated that surely before bringing the case they would have already been in possession of such evidence, the instruction from Lloyds surely was fundamental to their decision to bring the case to court in the first place. Eventually after several more responses to & fro, the Judge decided that he wouldn't allow the postponement & said the case should go ahead on the original date. With that, Cabot’s solicitor stood up & said if the case couldn't be postponed then they would have no alternative but to withdraw, providing I agreed there should be no costs. The Clerk of Court & the Judge then had a meeting to decide whether the case could be dismissed given the case was purely about postponement. To my relief they did dismiss the case. I objected to the dismissal on the grounds of the costs to us so far. The Judge asked what costs could exist given we'd represented ourselves. I told him about the Court Fees and he awarded us every penny. A couple of things to mention. On the sheet which was 'proof' of posting the registered letter to us, there were several other peoples names & addresses, obviously in the same boat as us. Surely this is a disgraceful disclosure, can we hurt Cabot over this? I have the references regarding postage to these people. Should I also search the Post Office tracking system to see whether they had their letters or whether they’d been returned to Cabot as ours had been? If we had received the letter, I’m pretty sure that one of the templates found on here could have stopped them in their tracks. Are they now employing tactics to make sure you’re not given the opportunity. Does anyone know how we go about getting the costs back that the Court has awarded us? Above is a brief summary of what happened, it wasn’t easy & there were many trips to the Court over the 2 months, it seems every moment of time off was taken up with these shysters. However, no matter what conclusion you feel has been reached, you must keep every scrap of paper, notes of things said during phone calls, names of people spoken to & times. They definitely hit us before Xmas as a tactic, people are busy & cannot dedicate the time & its not easy finding the funds to even lodge a defence. But basically we’re just ordinary people, not academic, not administrative, struggle to get by each month, but please fight them as I think if you challenge they are already on the ropes. Forgot to mention, these accounts were in my partners name. She couldn’t be in court (2 days notice!!) but the Judge was happy for me to conduct the case, I needed no proof of who I was. If you feel you cannot face up to it, perhaps see if a friend would help you out.