Repudiation of Contract

[Turnaround]

Hi,

 

Andyorch, Ford and The Mould, thank you for dropping and I will digest your comments.

 

Recently, I have found within the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 the term "Professional Diligence" and I am considering its potential use.

 

Key terms used in the act

• "Professional diligence" means the standard of special skill and care that a trader may reasonably be expected to exercise towards consumers, commensurate with honest market practice and/or the general principle of good faith in the trader's field of activity.
  
• "Materially distort the economic behaviour" means in relation to an average consumer, appreciably to impair the average consumer's ability to make an informed decision thereby causing him to take a transactional decision that he would not have taken otherwise.
  

As yet I am unable to find any evidence that this has been used against creditors who fail to perform as the law or regulations dictate.

 

Why is this and what do you think?

 

Regards……Turnaround

[Bill Shidding]

Hi Turnaround,

 

"Professional diligence" means the standard of special skill and care that a trader may reasonably be expected to exercise towards consumers, commensurate with honest market practice and/or the general principle of good faith in the trader's field of activity.

 

IMHO, "Special skill" would be construed as compliance with statute.

 

I believe this issue was addressed in Woodchester and Swayne -

 

"Here we are dealing with a statute which, for good and obvious reasons, requires a lender or owner to set out precisely what needs to be done to put right the alleged breach of contract. If a sum of money has to be paid it needs to be "specified". And if the figure given is more than the sum which the giver of the notice is entitled to demand, the notice, in my judgment, must be invalid."

 

However, the Brandon judge conveniently ignored the "for good and obvious reasons, requires a lender or owner to set out precisely what needs to be done" bit. As that was not inline with his leanings.

 

I know this isn't how amex eventually wriggled a win, but it shows how the interpretation of statute can be twisted and bent to whatever suits the creditor/judge. In these hard times, HMCS(corp.) need all the income it can get from its main revenue stream(banks), and it is incrementally sidestepping every consumer safeguard in order to ensure the creditor banks maintain liquidity.

 

I am still waiting for any evidence to show that a debtor has an obligation to comply with an ineffective notice from his creditor or anybody else.

 

As far as morals are concerned, how many banks have morals?

This is a one-way argument used by the courts entirely for the banks!.

 

(Sorry for the minor rant:madgrin:)

Bill.

[HFO-vered]

I would say you have grasped it perfectly Turnaround .Laws are in place to protect the debtor also.

 

Regards

 

Andy

 

Unfortunately, the District Judges dont quite understand that concept at times !!

[HFO-vered]

Hi Ford,

 

Thank you so much for potentially creating a "eureka" moment.

 

As I understand it, and correct me if I’m wrong, the answer is basically about morals.

 

A debtor borrows money, signs an agreement to repay over a period of time. The debtor then becomes unable to repay in line with the agreement and therefore is the first party to break that agreement. The creditor then has to issue a default notice, inline with CCA 1974. The debtor has a prescribed amount of time to rectify the issue, after which the creditor is then able to claim the full amount owed.

 

Now the morality bit. Does a debtor use the fact that, a creditor makes an error or two during the process of enforcing CCA 1974, and then uses this to his/her advantage to evade repaying the debt.

 

Rightly or wrongly my personal view is that, it depends on the conduct of the creditor during and after the term of the agreement. Some are very helpful and constructive during times of hardship, whilst others are not. For those that are not, it ends up as a personal choice as to whether you exploit their failings to gain a form of compensation/redress for all the distress and heartache caused.

 

This particular creditor initially decided to exploit a position of trust, by miss-selling me an expensive product, fully aware that I couldn’t use it. Then decides to apply unlawful charges. When I fell on hard times they refused to accept pro-rata payments, preferring instead to harass, threaten and cause heartache.

 

The only compensation/redress that I would have to this unwarranted behaviour would be to exploit their errors, you can’t always turn the other cheek.

 

I hope that I have grasped this correctly and that you consider my views to be lawful, fair and balanced

 

Regards….Turnaround

 

Exactly as I see it, albeit tongue in cheek !!