Reliable Collections / The Shoe Tailor

[vidvic]

Dear All,

 

Am new to the forums, so here goes.

 

My mother has an account with 'The Shoe Tailor'. She is 70+ years old. She has regularly paid them since April 2005.

 

On 4 or 5 occasions she has paid late and incurred a £12 admin charge.

 

In January 2008 she contacted them to say she was struggling with payments and they 'kindly' agreed to stop interest charges and reduce her payments. For this 'kindly' act they charged £91.30 admin charge. (10% of her debt, including the extra charges.)

 

The APR on this agreement is 39.96%.

 

I used the template letters and sent a £1 P.O for a CCA request. They have supplied a letter saying the following,

 

"There is no requirement to provide a photocopy of the agreement bearing your signature, it is sufficient that we supply you with a 'True copy' of the agreement setting out the terms and conditions to which you have agreed. A 'True copy' need not bear the debtor's signature or, in our case, the date of the agreement. We are therfore enclosing a "True Copy" of the credit agreement sent out to you when you opened the account."

 

This consists of a A4 sheet split into 2 Halves. There is a printed signature of something like P J Lynan and they have 'kindly' filled in my mothers name and address. It clearly says 'please fill in your details, then sign and date this agreement' but my mother still has the original one they sent her in 2005, and it is exactly the same and was never signed.

 

My mother has now paid nearly £400 in interest to these people plus the additional charges.

 

Do you advise that she continue to pay her £30 a month and reclaim the extra charges they've added or simply can I fight for her not to have to pay anymore?

 

Would appreciate some next step advice;

 

Kindest to all,

 

Vic

[42man]

Welcome Vidvic.....

 

How about sending them this - (EDIT to suit)

 

Thank you for your response to my request under the Consumer Credit Act section 78.

 

I am pleased to see that you confirm this as a true copy of the original agreement executed by yourselves on the XXXXX.

 

As you must realise this agreement does not conform to sections 60(1) and 61(1) of the Consumer credit Act 1974 and would therefore only be enforceable by a court under s65. However, the absence of any prescribed terms and my signature means that a court would be prevented from enforcing it under s127(3)"

 

You had until (date here) to provide me with the true copy I requested. After that date you entered into default of my request and I am therefore advising that the matter is now in dispute . Whilst the matter is in dispute, you are not permitted to ask for any payment, nor am I obliged to offer any payment to you. Furthermore, whilst the dispute remains, you are not entitled to charge any interest on the account, make any further charges to the account or pass the account to anybody else.

 

Please note you may also consider this letter 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 including any defaults. Should you refuse to comply, you must within 21 days 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.

 

Should you fail to respond within 21 days, I will expect that this means you agree to remove all such data.