I am moving house shortly and in the process of clearing out and sending a lot of items to charity or skip. I have a lot of correspondence from the financial institutions as I am now reluctant to throw anything out. In a prior life, I ignored correspondence from the banks, partly due to the scale of financial problems I had several years ago, which are now thankfully resolved. CAG gave me the courage to turn things around. Any way, came across a personal loan agreement from 4 June 2003 for a consolidation/ reschedule personal loan agreement with bank of Scotland. Details are: Advance £7,500 BOS Creditcare Bronze £2,301.75 Amount of Credit 9801.75 Total charge for credit £2466.45 Total amount payable £12,688.20 APR 8.9%. I repaid the loan in full some time ago, not sure when yet. I have since been repaid bank charges for returned DD etc. The account was never in dispute nor was a default issued at any time. Thankfully credit record is A1 now. I intend to reclaim this PPI and have today started the process off by handing the following letter to my branch. I will update as we go along. I did not know of this PPI until the weekend and obviously was not counting on the money- its a bonus. Upon successful completion of this claim I will forward 20% to CAG as a contribution towards site costs. I can't contribute more as my daughter is off to University soon. As I had a fair number of other loans, I will start the reclaim process to check what other PPI I might have been sold. Bank of Scotland 23 August 2010 The Complaints Department Dear Sir/Madam, Ref: Agreement No: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Mr and Mrs Kennythecelt I believe I have been mis-sold a payment protection insurance policy (PPI) Creditcare Bronze, by you and I would like to request a full refund of my premiums, plus interest paid. This loan has since been repaid to you in full by me, before the due settlement date. I do not believe being forced to buy this policy as part of the loan was a fair and reasonable obligation upon me as I did not need this insurance and I said at the time of taking the loan that I did not want it. I have only recently found out that I was mis-sold the PPI policy by you. I took out a £7,500 loan on 4 June 2003 and was also sold a payment protection policy by you called Creditcare Bronze which cost me an extra £2301.75 over the life of the loan. You sold me this policy as a pre-requisite of providing the loan to me. I enclose a copy of the loan agreement for your information. Please note that the reason you advanced me this loan, and I draw your attention to it again, it is noted as such on the attached loan agreement for "contra/ Consolidation/ reschedule". This means that you would be aware that I had financial difficulties at the time and could therfore not afford the luxury of a worthless Payment Protection Insurance policy paid up front with interest at 8.9% added for the privilege. You will also note the absurdly high number of bank charges that I was charged by you on my current account on a regular basis at this time which lends weight to my argument. The policy was mis-sold to me because: It was sold as a condition of the loan being made available to me. I had pre existing medical conditions which would have meant that I would not have been able to make a claim for those conditions. In effect, the policy was useless to me. I did not see the policy in advance of signing the agreement to make myself aware of its terms and conditions, as you did not make me aware of them. Indeed, I did not see any paperwork relating to the policy until a courier delivered my loan cheque to me. There was no cooling off period for the insurance policy and I believe there should have been one and it should have been highlighted to me. The policy was a lump sum prepaid policy and I had to pay you interest for that policy for the period of the loan. This was not explained to me. I was also not given the cheaper option of a monthly PPI policy, which would not have accrued interest over the duration of the policy and which would have been easier to cancel. It is not easy to cancel a prepaid policy as it is paid up front. The monthly payments to you would have been considerably less and more manageable to me, if I was not sold the policy and related interest and instead sold a monthly policy. I was not asked if I had other insurances/ policies or financial measures in place which could provide me with cover if I needed it or the means to repay the loan amount. I was not offered a choice of market placed products, but directed to a policy which you provided me with. Presumably, you had a business interest for doing so and I would like to know what this was please. You did not take steps to ensure that the policy was in my/ our best interests. You did not make a comparison of products for my individual circumstances. You did not inform me that you would make commission from the sale of the policy to me or what the commission was. Can you please tell me commission you received. At the time of entering into the agreement with you, I was employed by XXXXXXXX Council and my wife with XXXXXX City Council. You were aware of these facts as our salary was paid directly to my bank account with you on a monthly basis and indeed, the loan agreement notes that we are both employed in Local Authorities. In the event that we had an illness during the period of the loan and PPI policy, both my wife and I would have been provided with sickness pay for a 12 month period (6 months at full pay) which was better than the policy you provided me with. At the time of the policy being sold to me, I was at no risk of redundancy as I was employed in local government. The only type of redundancy would have been voluntary and the terms of voluntary redundancy would have been very favourable and enough to repay the loan. Consequently the PPI policy you sold me as a condition of the loan was worthless. I believe that you have recently reviewed your policy on sales of PPI due to recommendations from the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Financial Services Authority due to complaints about circumstances such as mine. These policies were recommended to clients such as me by your sales staff who were on commission as part of their salary and conditions of service and I was not made aware of this by you or the salesperson, who I assumed to be a member of staff not motivated by sales with my best interest at heart. I now respectfully ask that you investigate the selling of the policy to me and make arrangements for full repayment of the policy amount and all interest on the policy (at fixed rate of 8.9%) that I have paid to you until the loan was settled. In addition to that sum, I require interest at 8% on the above sum, from the date of the loan agreement and PPI until you settle this claim with me. If I do not receive a favourable response from you I will pursue this claim through the Financial Ombudsman and I am prepared to seek legal redress, for which I would claim costs and time in full. I understand that your complaints process takes 30 days and I expect this issue to be resolved within that time. Yours sincerely Mr and Mrs kennythecelt