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unlawful repo - what am i owed?


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i wont go into too much detail as this would end up a very long post but i had a vehicle repod unlawfully,then the company wouldn't return all monies paid and lied and altered documents to try and avoid having to pay.

 

its 4 years on now and i have finally got all of the evidence i need to prove that,

  1. i had paid over one third at time of repo and no court order was sought
  2. i was not in any arrears at the time of repo
  3. the company altered my credit agreement (claiming to have lost real original) to include terms that favoured themselves but that were not included in the original agreement
  4. that the company were planning to repo for 3 months prior to date they actually repo'd despite no arrears on the account and were deliberately not attempting to take payment in the hope i would fall behind on payments to allow them to repo, (when i didnt fall behind they just repo'd anyway.)

so i know i'm entitled to all monies paid under the agreement but in light of the above what other compensation could i be entitled to?

 

i have spoken breifly to one solicitor who said i' entitled to compensation for being without the vehicle from the date of repo but at what level should i ask to be compensated for this?

 

i'm asking because i'm still undecided whether to employ the solicitor or attempt to handle this myself, the main issue i have is i have no idea what additional compensation to ask for.

 

any help would be gratefully recived.

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I wouldn't employ that solicitor because he doesn't know what he is talking about. You are not entitled to anything for loss of the vehicle. If it was a wrongful repossession because you had paid a third and they had no court order, you are entitled to all the monies you paid them (including the deposit) to be returned to you. That is the only sum you can get (no more, no less) and as it effectively means you had a completely free car for the time you had it, it's a nice little windfall for you.

 

BTW when you say there were no arrears on the account, it isn't a case where they terminated when there were arrears, but you brought it up to date subsequently is it?

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I wouldn't employ that solicitor because he doesn't know what he is talking about. You are not entitled to anything for loss of the vehicle. If it was a wrongful repossession because you had paid a third and they had no court order, you are entitled to all the monies you paid them (including the deposit) to be returned to you. That is the only sum you can get (no more, no less) and as it effectively means you had a completely free car for the time you had it, it's a nice little windfall for you. ?

 

 

thank you for your reply as i value all input and views, it helps me maintain an objective perspective on the matters in hand.

 

lets address this question first;

 

BTW when you say there were no arrears on the account, it isn't a case where they terminated when there were arrears, but you brought it up to date subsequently is it?

 

no it is not is the short answer.

 

the long answer is that i did a SAR and the company provided me with all notes made on the account by their staff, on these notes senior members of staff are openly stating that they do not want payment they want the vehicle And as such are instructing staff not to attempt payment sO that if i fall behind they can terminate and repo, but after three months of me ringing the payment through they just decde to plough on regardless in the belief that they are exploiting a loophole in the law which allows then to snatch back the vehicle from a public road, leaving the onus on me to pursue a civil case for breach of contract which i think they thought unlikely.

 

but, and its a big but, the mangers and other staff making the notes had their sums wrong, and this is further supported not only by my bank records and documents but by the payment and transaction history of my account on their own computer systems, which they kindly provided me with copies of in response to my SAR.

 

i had paid one third,and now i can prove it, i wasn't in arrears, my bank statements show i made the contractual payments, their own computer records confirm this also.

 

you might be thinking, so why did they want the vehicle, well probably because i inquired about paying upto half and returning the vehicle, which was met with total anger and agression, then the vehcle gets snatched.

 

 

Coincidence ? i doubt it.

 

so what about the rest of your comments?

 

I wouldn't employ that solicitor because he doesn't know what he is talking about. You are not entitled to anything for loss of the vehicle?

 

thats an interesting, and very bold, statement considering that you don't know who this soloicitor is or what his credentials are, he works for a large respected solicitors in our area and has won a number of consumer credit agreement cases, in fact he Specialises in consumer contract disputes, its what he does day in, day out, surely he has some idea?

 

 

lastly lets address this part of your comments;

 

 

you are entitled to all the monies you paid them (including the deposit) to be returned to you. That is the only sum you can get (no more, no less) and as it effectively means you had a completely free car for the time you had it, it's a nice little windfall for you.

 

i know this to be innacurate, as i have been fighting this and gathering evidence for four years to build a case and i have incured costs in doing this, i am entitled to seek to recover those costs from the other party, plus i am entitled to seek interest on top of any monies owed, at, i think, 8%? .

as for your comments that any money back would be a "windfall" and your Insinuation that i would have further benefited from "a free car for the time that i had it" this comment is grossly offensive and incredibly misguided.

 

as a result of this unlawful repo i lost my job, as the vehicle was essential to my work, and if i did get the contractual payments returned by a court this could never get me that job back, or reverse the hardship i had to battle through four years ago as a result of the lost income.

So if i did get the contractual payments back it would be because i am owed that money, not because i won it, i suggest you read up on the difference in the dictionary as you don't appear to have a grasp on their true meanings. and those contractual payments would not come close to repaying the lost income, so excuse me if i dont celebrate any win like someone who just got lucky on a horse on a day out at the races wont yo.

in summary i have found your comments to be, inaccurate, misguided,provocative and offensive and i wouldn't feel confident in following, orbelieving any of your advice without seeking independent, professional advice.

however, as i saidabove i do value all peoples views, and you took the time to respond which iswhy i have return the gesture and taken the time to reply to your comments,although i may not do so in the future.

Edited by cyril1982
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It is of course up to you whether you accept opinions and advice offered on here - a lot of it is indeed crap. My intention is not to offend, but to offer my opinion which, where I am certain of my ground, will be unequivocal. This site is a valuable resource but unfortunately is populated with a number of ill-informed vigilantes proferring inaccurate garbage so that posters hear what they want to hear, rather than accurate advice (though there are also well-informed posters). I don't believe in sugar coating my opinions, if they appear harsh then so be it but best cut to the chase.

 

I don't need any background information about the solicitor you consulted, the Consumer Credit Act is clear on the subject and if that solicitor doesn't understand it (irrespective of his field of practice) then you should, as you suggest, seek independent professional advice. To cut corners, refer whoever you consult to sections 91 and 170 of the CCA and they will find that my opinion is correct. If you decide to invoke a right to return of monies paid, you can't get anything else, whatever other losses you may have suffered (though judicial opinions vary on whether you could get statutory interest on top of that). Having said that, the behaviour you have described of the creditor defies belief and there is a fair chance they won't work that out.

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Oh yes another thing, the events you describe amount to a flagrant disregard for the Act (rather than just a miscalculation) so you might consider bringing it to the attention of the OFT who may be interested in those sorts of practices when considering whether to renew the particular lender's CCA licence.

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It is of course up to you whether you accept opinions and advice offered on here - a lot of it is indeed crap. My intention is not to offend, but to offer my opinion which, where I am certain of my ground, will be unequivocal. This site is a valuable resource but unfortunately is populated with a number of ill-informed vigilantes proferring inaccurate garbage so that posters hear what they want to hear, rather than accurate advice (though there are also well-informed posters). I don't believe in sugar coating my opinions, if they appear harsh then so be it but best cut to the chase.

 

I don't need any background information about the solicitor you consulted, the Consumer Credit Act is clear on the subject and if that solicitor doesn't understand it (irrespective of his field of practice) then you should, as you suggest, seek independent professional advice. To cut corners, refer whoever you consult to sections 91 and 170 of the CCA and they will find that my opinion is correct. If you decide to invoke a right to return of monies paid, you can't get anything else, whatever other losses you may have suffered (though judicial opinions vary on whether you could get statutory interest on top of that). Having said that, the behaviour you have described of the creditor defies belief and there is a fair chance they won't work that out.

 

 

Thank you for your comments, I too am not of a mind to sugarcoat my opinions but I am always mindful to try not to patronise people or trivialise the wrong doing that they may have experienced.

 

Describing the recovery of monies owed due to a serious breach of contract and implying that I had gained some benefit from having “a free car” for which I should feel in some way grateful and that anything I gotback should be viewed as a windfall was,and is offensive to me.

 

I will never recover all the money that I have lost because of this, and I’ve incurred costs and losses grater than the amount paid to the agreement in pursuing it for four years so nothing I recover will ever amount to anything that could realistically be viewed as a windfall.

 

And as for any benefit of having “a free car” for the short time I had it, well that misguided view is quite frankly laughable because there was nothing “free” about it and I would much rather have not had the vehicle at all and not have to sufer the losses which I have or the stress of having to fight this injustice for four years.

 

 

 

If it was about money alone I’d have cut my losses a long time ago, because I’ll never recover enough to make it financially beneficial.

 

This is about not letting anyone get away with treating me the way this company have, they get away with it because people generally give up much easier than myself, and I won’t give up until I nail the scumbags thatripped me off, and its taken four years but I’ve finally built their coffin,now I just have to throw them in it and nail it shut.

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I wasn't expressing an opinion about whether the return of your monies was adequate compensation for you or trivialising your experience; the fact is that the way section 91 operates is designed to punish the creditor (and by corollary benefit the debtor) to a sum in excess of the actual losses caused. It is therefore by its very nature a windfall for the debtor in general terms, whether it in fact amounts to that for you personally or not. Your claim, by the way, is not for breach of contract but for breach of the CCA which is why you are stuck with the statutory remedy. I would enquire why you have incurred losses and had a fight in the four years since it happened because you had an open and shut case the minute the car was repossessed, which was unanswerable because you could prove you had paid one third and that there was no court order without requiring any information from the creditor.

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because when it first happened i didn't have the all of the eviedence i do today, and the company tried to exploit that.

 

sure i had bank statements that showed that i had paid way in excess of one third, some £600 in excess but the finance company disputed this saying that £171 was gap insurance and a little more than the remaining £440 was financial penalties,mainly for paying late during the three months they were not trying to take payment, so basically not taking the payment, then when i realised and rang with payment, blaming it on a error on my side and charging me late payment charges, and we are talking days late not weeks.

 

to get the charges to amount to more than £440 they had to alter the agreement, so thats what they did, in response to my requesting a copy of my consumer credit agreement, which was done before i went to trading standards, the company said they had lost it and so had to send me a re-created copy, in this agreement there were astronimical charges such as £50 for a missed direct debit, £35 for a letter, £50 for a phonecall, they then invented instances of calling me and writing to me and claimed that these charges were incured.

 

in light of this trading standards hit a brick wall, so i went to the financial ombudsman, he accepted that these were the charges to which i agreed since i could offer nothing to prove otherwise except my claim that i wouldn't have taken out the agreement if i saw those charges on the front page.

 

fast forward and i now have solid eviedence to prove this, appart from when they were not attempting payment there was only one late payment, again, days not weeks late, this was when i changed banks and my direct debits were being transfered, they sent me a letter, which the recreated agreemnt states would be charged at £35, i found this letter and it states in it that "in accordance with the terms of your agreement you have been charged £12 for this letter" (whoops)

 

in addition to this i recieved a log of all charges levied against my account in response to the SAR i mentioned earlier and it shows that i the level of the charges was alot lower than the re created agreement stated and less frequent than stated to trading standards and the FOS, the total is not enough to take me below 1/3rd.

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So what you are saying is that if they allocate some of your payments not to the instalments payable but to late payment charges, you might be less than one third paid? Given that you say you were up to date when the car was repo'd and they had not previously terminated the agreement, did they issue a default notice (never mind whether you received one or not, does the SAR information show one was issued)? If they didn't, ironically you might be better off dropping the third paid point and suing for damages for failing to comply with s87 of the Act. You might get more.

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no, what i'm saying is that they said some of my payments included charges, which they did, however even with those i had still paid 1/3rd, so they claimed to have lost my original agreement and then altered the level of agreed charges to make them chargable at higher rate then they lied about how much i had been charged, its this that i can now prove.

 

i got a default notice in the post the morning that the guys turned up to repo the vehicle, it was dated around two weeks before the date it arrived, i suspect deliberately posted out late given the notes on the account. termination notice came about a week later.

 

no copy default notice or termination letter were sent to me in response to my SAR.

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So what you are saying is that if they allocate some of your payments not to the instalments payable but to late payment charges, you might be less than one third paid? Given that you say you were up to date when the car was repo'd and they had not previously terminated the agreement, did they issue a default notice (never mind whether you received one or not, does the SAR information show one was issued)? If they didn't, ironically you might be better off dropping the third paid point and suing for damages for failing to comply with s87 of the Act. You might get more.

 

having thought about this i may consider pursuing for failure to comply with section 87, i wasnt in any monthly arrears at the time of reposession, only the most recent payment was two weeks or so overdue and i can prove that this is because the firm repeatedly did not attempt payment in the hope i would go behind, which i didnt the first two months, but they quite clearly conspired to breach our contract.

 

what damages are recoverable for such a breach? anyone know

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I wonder how many people are declining to get involved with this because of your churlish remarks towards Gaston? Me for sure.

 

if the fact that i took exception to gaston's crude description of any money i may recover in relation to this reposession as a "windfall" and that i took offense at his implication that in the event of my recovering all sums paid i should be grateful at the prospect of having effectively diddled the finance company into providing me with a "free vehicle" when in actual fact even if i did get all sums returned i would still be thousands of pounds out of pocket due to the fact that the vehicle was essential to my job and therefore i lost my job upon the unlawful repossession taking place, if that offends you, the fact that i expressed my objections to his flippant manner, don't offer any advice, but please dont clog up my thread with childish and pointless posts designed to do absolutely nothing more than provoke a negative response.

 

if you post again, unless the content of your post has any value to the case in hand, dont be suprised if you are ignored as a wise man once told me don't argue with fools, as people from a distance can't tell who is who.:lol:

 

Edit: the above is just a joke by the way, yea me and Gaston had a slight failure to see eye to eye but we expressed our different perspectives in an adult manner without decending into child like name calling and i really didn't consider it to have been a major issue nor do i think that Gaston did either (correct me if i'm wrong) we put our points accross and moved on, so please, lets not try and drag it up and make it into something it wasn't.

Edited by cyril1982
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I have no truck with the OP - thick skinned, me. Actually I don't think a contractual remedy or claim for wrongful enforcement in absence of proper default notice will get the OP any more money than a claim under section 91. The major element appears to be loss of earnings and those are going to be too remote.

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i think it might be worth stating at this point that the the title of this thread shoul not be read as "how much can i screw the finance company for" but "what should i be asking for" because i have to write to them detailing my complaint and the eviedence i have and asking for the compny to take action to rectify their breaches (and there are several contractual breaches, not all of them explained in this thread).

 

i was asking the question just to get some indicators but i'm going to sit down with a solicitor in the next week or so to get some real professional legal advice.

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Gaston's hit the nail on the head.

 

A breach of s90 casues:

 

- the agreement to terminate

- you to be relased from all liability under the agreement

- you to able to recover all sums that have been paid under the agreement

 

In addition it *may* be possible for an award for damages to cover extra transport costs incurred - if you can convince the court.

 

if you feel that the firm has acted unprofessionally you may be able to consider getting the FOS involved.

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its looking more likely that i will pursuing them for a breach of contract under section 140A of the consumer credit act as i have internal notes obtained in relation to a SAR which show discussuions between staff where they are instructing one another not to attempt any payment on the account and not to notify me if i don't realise then if i fall behind they can terminate and repo, this is going on for three months before their plan actually works and i forget to ring in a payment after them repeatedly failing to send out a direct debit mandate.

 

it is stated several times that they want the vehicle and not payment, why is anyones guess but i beleive it to be because i enquired about paying up to half and VT'ing and they didn't like that, but consipiring to do all you can to increase the likelyhood of someone missing a payment, then not following their own standard proceedure of telephoning and writing to the customer when a payment is missed because they do not want to alert them to the fact it was missed as they do not want the payment, then shortening their normal collection/default proceedure to further reduce the customers oppotunity to rectify the situation, plus admitting in a telephone conversation that the default notice upon which they terminated the agreement was only sent out at the time of repossession, (i.e witheld and posted late because they didn't want me to get it and then make payment) in my opinion would all amount to the creditor executing their rights under the agreement unfairly, a breach according to Section 140A(1-b).

 

then there are Multiple, repeated and serious breaches of the DPA which i will have to report to the ICO. the list of issues i have with them is quite long, it is likely that i will be taking court action for the section 140A breach plus making a report to the ICO and possibly the OFT regarding other serious issues i have with the company.

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Guest repo threat

I had a case where the HP Co was adamant that the deposit paid to the garage did not form part of the 1/3rd paid, I am talking a significant provider of HP Finance in the UK. So the burning question from me is, had you paid more than 1/3rd prior to any arrears/termination ?

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well, the deposit definately does count, i paid a reasonably large deposit in relation to my agreement, thankfully the finance company are not trying to dispute that fact.

 

regarding the 1/3rd this is a dispute that has been running a long time, the short answer is i had paid the finance company in excess of £600 more than the 1/3rd over the time i had the agreement, they disputed that i was over one third claiming i had a gap policy which replaced the first finance payment i made, then that i had incured charges on the account which left me slightly below.

 

the gap policy i am disputing, i dont think it was ever put in place, the insurance company and finance company both say it was, but it has took four years to get insurance documents from them, which i'm not satisfied prove the policy was ever in force, plus the insurance company sent me a document which had zero amounts where payment was supposed to be recorded and a blank acceptance date, the insurance company say this is because they were never paid a penny in relation to my policy, they also claim that the are just the underwriter and the insurance product is that of the finance company and is nothing to do with them, they are simply the people who would pay out in the event of a claim, and they claim that the finance company kept all of the premium, though they still claim they would have covered me, yea right! but the finance company dispute this saying my whole premium was paid to the finance company and they are nothing to do with it because they made no money on it.

 

so both claim the other had all of the money, and both parties claim that the other is totally responsible for the policy.....something is wrong so i'm still digging, the finance company have promised to send me a copy of the invoice where they paid for the policy so i'm waiting to see what comes of that right now.

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Guest repo threat

If your credit agreement clearly states that the first instalment is apportioned to the GAP Insurance. Is it not the case that the Insurance forms part of the total price of the goods ?

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If your credit agreement clearly states that the first instalment is apportioned to the GAP Insurance. Is it not the case that the Insurance forms part of the total price of the goods ?

 

it doesnt work like that, the premium for the gap insurance policy is a single lump sum premium, equal to one months finance payment. if you agree to the gap then this payment is taken in place of your first finance payment and the finance payment is then deffered meaning an extra finance payment is added to the back end of your agreement.

 

that is what the finance company say happened, however they dont seem, at least from what i can determine, to be able to prove the policy's existence and the finance company and insurance company both say they never received a penny claiming the other kept the full premium, and both company's say they are not responible for the policy. it seems both company's want to distance themselves from this policy, but why?

 

thats what i'm trying to get to the bottom of right now.

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Where's the credit agreement?

 

i havent had time to scan it, minus all personal info, and upload it.

 

what is is it in the agreement you want to check? if its anything to do with the GAP insurance it isn't in there as it doesn't form part of the fianance agreement.

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The GAP insurance "policy" is a red herring. Whether or not a policy was actually implemented doesn't really matter - if the agreement said something like your first payment is due 1 month after the date of the agreement, or 2 months if you have chosen to buy GAP insurance, and you did tick the GAP insurance box, you had GAP. Fact. It's quite possible the finance co self-insured and didn't buy a policy, in which case there is nothing for them to disclose. You never had to claim so it doesn't matter. In that case your first payment did not go towards the purchase of the car so needs to be excluded from the thirds calculation.

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