Triton Credit DCA Nightmare - Please advise

[sheilaanne]

I am sorting out my sons debts c£30K. I have paid £4500 in partial settlement to MBNA on £11K so am happy with that. Triton DCA for MINT wanted £10K, offered £3k, they refused apparently on MINTs instruction, they want £7500 within 28 days. Does my son have to provide financial breakdown? I can't see why - I thought if I let them wait till 28 days is up and then offer £4500 on a take it or leave it basis. What do you think. I have very limited funds but can't watch my son sinking into oblivion without trying to help.

 

He owes £4K to Cap1 - they refused offer of £1500 an want financial income expenditure too. They are still charging intrest. I will write and ask for interest to be stopped - what he can pay will be les than the interest if they go for monthly payments. Any advice here? All help gratefully received, thak goodness for this site.

[berrylover]

OK, you want to check that MBNA Triton and Cap1 have valid consumer credit agreements for the debts. If they cannot produce a valid CCA then your son cannot be forced to pay another penny by them.

 

Send this letter to them under your son's details

 

 

I DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE ANY DEBT TO YOUR COMPANY.

 

 

 

Re:

 

 

Dear Sir,

 

With reference to the account above I would be grateful if you could send me a copy of the signed credit agreement.

 

I understand that under the Consumer Credit Act 1974 (sections 77-79); I am entitled to receive a copy of the credit agreement on request. I enclose a payment of £1.00 which represents the fee payable under the Consumer Credit Act.

 

I understand that a copy of the credit agreement should be received within 12 working days.

 

I understand that under the Consumer Credit Act creditors are unable to enforce an agreement if they fail to comply with a request for a copy of the agreement under these sections of the Act.

 

I look forward to hearing from you.

 

 

Yours faithfully,

 

 

 

They have 12+2 working days to comply with your request for the information before the account becomes "in dispute". DO NOT SIGN IT and enclose a £1 postal order. Also send them by recorded delivery. It may not initially stop them sending him letters but he becomes more in control. Also if they are phoning him incessantly send them a letter regarding harrassment.

[Pinky69]

Have you asked for copies of the credit agreements under the Consumer Credit Act 1974? If they don't have properly executed credit agreements, you don't have to pay them anything. If they don't have them and you want to clear the debts, then it puts you in a better position to negotiate final settlements. How old are the debts and were they for loans or credit cards?

[sheilaanne]

Thanks for reminding me - I did this letter to Triton and they have not replied to it. They have replied to the letter offering £3K to say Mint refused the offer and want £7500. Does this mean he doesn't have to pay the DCA? Does this mean the bank will simply give it to another DCA? I sent SAR to Mint and received a lot of statements which I intend to go through to see if the charges are exorbitant, any advice on what to do next? Thank you so much for your help.

[sheilaanne]

I will do the same SAR and CCA letters to CAP1 and see what happens, thanks for your help and support! My heart goes out to people in debt - this is my son's and is worrying enough - the stress effects on people far outweigh the money they owe and the charges are exorbitant to say the least! Thank you

[Pinky69]

If they don't send you a copy of the credit agreement on request then you don't have to pay them at all - they have 12 (plus 2 for admin) days to send it to you, after which the account is in dispute. If they start pursuing you for payment after that, make an official complaint to their complaints department and report them to the OFT for breaches of consumer law. Triton are in breach of your request so don't pay them anything. If they do eventually send you something, scan it and post it on here so we an have a look at it to see if it is enforceable.

[berrylover]

For the CCA's they strictly have 12+2 working days to reply before the account is in dispute. You can send them another letter once that deadline is up. For a S.A.R - (Subject Access Request) they have 40 days to respond. If Triton have passed the 12+2 working days then they are in dispute and your son does not have to pay another penny until they can prove it.

 

Send them this

 

 

I do not acknowledge any debt to your company

 

 

Dear Sir,

 

Re:−

 

 

FORMAL NOTICE - ACCOUNT IN DISPUTE.

 

 

On the (enter date here) I wrote to you requesting a copy of the credit agreement and other information under the Consumer Credit Act 1974 (Sections 77-79).

 

To date you have failed to comply with these requests in any way.

 

These documents I requested should be readily available as proof of your legal right to collect this account under the Consumer Credit Act 1974.

 

Furthermore, you are aware that the Consumer Credit Act allows 12 working days for a request for a true copy of a credit agreement to be carried out before you enter into a default situation.

 

These limits have expired.

 

As you are no doubt aware the Consumer Credit Act states:

 

If the creditor fails to comply with Subsection (1)

 

He is not entitled , while the default continues, to enforce the agreement.

 

Therefore this account has become unenforceable at law.

 

Consequentially any legal action you pursue will be averred as both UNLAWFUL and VEXATIOUS.

 

Furthermore I shall counter-claim that any such action constitutes unlawful harassment.

 

Please note you may also consider this letter as a statutory notice under section 10 of the Data Protection Act to cease processing any data in relation to this account with immediate effect.

 

This means you must remove all information regarding this account from your own internal records and from my records with any credit reference agencies.

 

Should you refuse to comply, you must within 21 days of the initial request to stop processing my details, provide me with a detailed breakdown of your reasoning behind continuing to process my data.

 

It is not sufficient to simply state that you have a ‘legal right’. You must outline your reasoning in this matter and state upon which legislation this reasoning depends.

 

Furthermore you should be aware that a creditor is not permitted to take ANY

Action against an account whilst it remains in dispute.

 

The lack of a credit agreement is a very clear dispute and as such the following applies.

 

* You may not demand any payment on the account, nor am I obliged to offer any payment to you.

* You may not add further interest or any charges to the account.

* You may not pass the account to a third party.

* You may not register any information in respect of the account with any credit reference agency.

* You may not issue a default notice related to the account.

 

I reserve the right to report your actions to any such regulatory authorities as I see fit including but not limited to Trading Standards, the Office of Fair Trading, the Information Commissioners Office, The Financial Ombudsman Service and my MP .

 

You have 7 days from receiving this letter to contact me with your intentions to resolve this matter which is now a formal complaint.

 

I would appreciate your due diligence in this matter.

 

I look forward to hearing from you in writing.

 

Yours faithfully

 

 

Remember again not to sign it and to send it recorded delivery. Best of luck to you and your son.

[sheilaanne]

Thank you - I wrote a letter to Triton and MINT 23rd July asking for the CCA etc. No response from Triton on this but MINT sent copies of statements + copy of signed Credit Agreement but with RBS Advnta not MINT and dated asfar as I can see either January or June 2001. Are RBS Advanta MINT?? Does this CCA mean they can just change the name of the credit card company?? How do we stand - can anyone help please? Should I send the letter in Berrylover's reply to Triton since they have not come up with the goods and until I get advice from you, I am not sure if MINT have. Mint say

 

'We are obliged to provide you with a 'true' copy of the credit agreement and a statement of financial information relating to the accout, namely, the state of the account, amount currently due, with amounts and due dates of future payments that still require to be made. In terms of CCA copy document regulations, the 'true' copy requirement can be satisfied by providing a copy agreement at the date the card agreement was made and providing that plus a copy of the current terms of the card agreement.'

 

I am not sure if they are trying to fool me into accepting this because nowhere on the cca is MINT mentioned. What do you think?

 

I wrote to Triton and Mint on 23rd July - Mint replied 6th August. Triton have not replied to the 23rd July letter but sent the following on 27th August:

 

'The RBS plc instructs us not to accept your offer of £3K in f&f settlement of the debt owed to them. In the circumstances and on their instruction, we are prepared to accept an amount of £7386 as settlement of the above outstanding balance, provided this payment is received at our office within 14 days from the date of this letter.

 

Alternatively if you are unable to make this payment we require your proposals for monthly repayment and a full up to date financial statement. This document must include proof of your income, a list of all essential monthly outgoings, a list of names and balances for all creditors and a pro rata payment offer. Our records confirm that you recently telephoned our office on 15th August and stated you do not have a monthly income. If you are not working, we require clarification as to why you are not currently in receipt of state benefits.'

 

Can they reqlly insist on all this??

so Many many thanks

Edited September 5, 2008 by sheilaanne

[sheilaanne]

Sorry to take up so much time, but one more thing which may be relevant although I don't understand the significance of it. - The debt has not been sold to Triton, so they are acting as agents, what does this mean?

Thanks again

[berrylover]

Do you have a scanner. Can you scan up what Mint have sent you making sure you obscure any identifying details. It may be just an application form and not a CCA.

 

Yes send the letter to Triton. As they are acting as collectors they still need to hold a copy of the CCA.

[Pinky69]

Mint are talking rubbish. For a start, if your son applied for an RBS Advanta card, then his agreement should be with RBS Advanta and not Mint. Secondly, I am afraid that an example of an agreement at the time with current T&C's won't do either. A copy of an agreement must show the prescribed terms ie credit limit and interest rate, and it must have your son's signature. Terms and Conditions must be the Terms and Conditions that pertained at the time of the agreement. They clearly don't have a credit agreement for this account and I can confirm that RBS did not have 2 agreements on accounts I had with them at round this time. They may argue with you for a while but stay firm. You can then use the knowledge that they have no agreement to either not pay them anything or negotaite a reduced settlement.

[Helios]

RBS Advanta changed their name to MINT... can you upload the documents they sent you? if i read correctly it maybe unenforceable and negotiate to MINT directly not through Triton, they waste of stamp

[Pinky69]

They may have changed their name to Mint but the agreement was with RBS Advanta and that is what should be on the agreement, not a different document when Mint took over. If it is anything else, it is not the original agreement.

[sheilaanne]

Thank you so much, I think it is an application form and I will try to scan this for you to see and perhaps be kind enough to advise (not sure how to do it but I will work it out!!). Mint refuse to deal with me cos it is handled by Triton but it looks as if they will have to. I will send the account in dispute letter to Triton today and then see what occurs. Do you think I should contact Mint to say this isn't a cca, assuming it isn't? Thank goodness for this site!!!

[berrylover]

If they have passed the account on to Triton then deal with Triton at first. Send the letter to them today. If they phone your son or threaten to call at his home then there is a letter to send to stop the phone calls. Don't worry about Mint at the moment. They are wanting Triton to deal with it, but you are going to show Triton that you are playing hardball. If you have any problems scanning the documents then just ask and there are people here who will help you. Take care, have a cup of tea and tell your son not to worry. Its all manageable.

[sheilaanne]

I have done the FORMAL NOTICE - ACCOUNT IN DISPUTE letter to Triton and they are out of time 12+2 days form the first letter, so I shall see what happens. The only thing I can find about RBS Advanta changing to MINT is on a January 2004 statement saying 'Welcome to MINT' paragraph saying 'same great benefits' and 'use the RBS Advanta card as normal and they will send new MINT card when current card expires'. ]Something very odd though, enclosed with that statement is a photocopy of CCA, unsigned and undated (do you have to sign them) but stating that the credit limit is £8,900 when on the statement it clearly states £6900 and stayed at this limit until August 2004 when it was raised to £8900. The covering letter which is also 1 day outside the 12+2 limit, ie Isent the letter SAR on 23rd July and the response is dated 11 August, makes no mention of the CCA, just says 'Please fine enclosed copies of your statements which detail any charges that may have been applied to your clients account, as requested. Should any months be missing, please note tha this would be due to inactivity on your account.

 

I trust the enclosed is of assistance to you.

 

He is the account holder so who they mean by client's account I don't know.

 

Any comments and guidance greatly appreciated, thank you!!

[sheilaanne]

I found this on the net - I just copied the bit about MINT -

 

Extract from presentation document for RBS

Retail Direct - 4 October 2004

Iain Clink (MD, Cards Business):

 

Now moving on to when we have accounts on board, we want to make sure the accounts maintain the quality they initially showed when we brought them on board, and so we have an ongoing credit scoring of active accounts. This is based on the account behaviour and it is calculated monthly for all accounts we have. We base it on factors such as the credit limit utilisation, how much of the credit they are using, the type of spending - if someone starts actually going to an ATM and withdrawing cash on their credit card it is indicative of higher risk - and also the pattern of repayments which is fairly obvious.

The next stage is when someone actually gets into trouble and starts missing payments on their credit card. We split this into early stage and late stage. The early stage is when they have missed their first payment and that triggers the process. At this stage we are still focusing on maintaining the relationship. A lot of customers just miss their first payment for reasons like they have gone on holiday; they have paid for years, no problem, it just so happens they have gone on holiday and forgot to pay their credit card balance. It is very important we differentiate the types of customers here that are making payments, so we prioritise the risks between amount at risk and using our behavioural score.

We make early contact - this is key here! - through outbound power dialling, and we do that at times we are likely to get customers in, which generally is early evening when they have come back from work or Saturday mornings before they are heading out for the day.

Late stage is where they have missed three consecutive payments. At this stage we are focusing on recovering the debt, we pass the amount to a debt collection agency initially in-house, it is still in Southend, and then further down the track to an external agency. We close the account at that stage and clearly try to recover the debt, but again I would like to stress here we do it in a way which is very cognisant of the individual’s circumstances and it is not heavy-handed.

Looking at our strategies, we have over a hundred strategies covering collections, re-issue, amount of credit limit and so on. As shown on this slide, this is just an example of one in the collection site. I am not going to run through it but its really to get across that we have a very defined process here, our operations centres are working to these processes, and we are continually refining these and feeding them back in from our learning’s and we have champion/challenger approaches in all these areas.

Looking at our delinquency experience, a fairly standard measure, and you could get this data in the market place. It is looking at how much of your customers have missed repayments, that is three payments delinquent as we call it. You can see that the cards business in RBS is significantly lower than the industry as a whole and that is due to what I have been talking about in terms of how we select customers, what we do when they are on board and the collections process.

If you look at the percentage of our portfolio balances greater than three payments delinquent, you cannot compare this with the market because it is not available on a like for like basis, but you can see from this slide again that is coming down, and that is indicative again of the strength of our processes over the last few years.

Looking at provisions, they are automated. We based them on the amount of delinquent balances and the expected loss rate depending on the number of missed payments you have. You have seen from the graphs I have given you, the loss rates will be relatively stable over time; we provide for expected loss at all stages of delinquency and we feed the trends back into the scorecards again, so it is a cycle that continues.

Looking at our balance sheet provisions as a percentage of delinquent balances greater than 90 days, there was a blip in 2001 as we changed systems and also we wrote off accounts one month earlier which just reduced the coverage there. Generally it is falling a little bit and that again is just coming back to the strength of our processes. The quality of our delinquent balances has improved, there is more of them in the early stages of delinquency as opposed to previously because we are catching them

Shows how they actually get these things up and running!!

[sheilaanne]

Well, the CCA is definitely not signed - it is a photocopy of their current T&Cs, so maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel!! I do hope so as my son is severely depressed and I don't have much money (bring on the violins) but I must try to help him because there is no one else. I don't know how you all manage to cope with all this, good luck to you all, and my sincere thanks, I couldn't do this without this site

[Pinky69]

If they have sent you an unsigned copy, that means they don't have the original, which must be signed by your son and have the date on it. Thus they have not sent you a true copy of the original agreement and the account is in dispute - they have even got one of the prescribed terms ie the credit limit, wrong. If you wrote on your son's behalf, they may think you are his agent, hence "client".

[surprise]

For information Triton are the inhouse Debt Collection Agency for RBS and as Natwest are part of this group they use Triton. As far as I can ascertain NatWest Agreements are unenforceable and I have been dealing with Triton on behalf of my daughter's Natwest credit card. Triton have now passed to Moorcroft. However, Moorcroft have now passed it back as there is no signed agreement. A good tool for bargaining full and final settlements.

[sheilaanne]

Is there a letter to ask for interest to b stopped as Cap1 are still adding that monthly. Many thanks

[sheilaanne]

CAP1 sent letter to my son saying interest suspended for 28 days - they must be telepathic! He now homeless as a result of debt problems - how much worse can it get??? Still at least we are dealing with it now, wish he had confided in me earlier, might possibly have been able to help him with saving his flat! Good luck to everyone and again thanks for the help.