Lender unable to locate original application form, What now?

[gem-100]

Due to being out of work for three years after forty years in full time employment and losing my last job role after 22 years due to office closure, I could only pay the absolute minimum payment of £1.00 a month to each of my lenders.

 

I originally had a Goldfish credit card which then went to Barclays, I paid Barclays £1.00 a month for around a year and then they passed the debt onto Link, the debt is currently around the 6k mark, Link started to put pressure on so I requested from them a true copy of the agreement, this I had previously asked Barclays for but they were not able to provede it, I asked for the true copy back in July and have now received a letter from Link stating:

 

" We write further to your letter of ******. We had requested the original application from Barclaycard on more than one occasion, and they recently informed us that they are unable to locate a copy. Although no other reason has been provided, this may possibly be down to the age of the account. We return your payment of £1.00 for the fee for this request."

 

What I need to know now is do I continue to pay Link the £1.00 per month, or put the account into dispute, or what action if any I need to take to be in my best interest?.

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Happyhippy1959]

Entirely up to you, if the account was opened before 2007 then it is un-enforcable in court. My personal view would be to put it in dispute and then after six years it will drop off your credit file. By the way I had the same with Morgan Stanley Card and others. Have not paid a penny until they produce that is three years now and counting. They can continue to ask you to pay but that is all.

[Bazooka Boo]

Without the original agreement they will be unable to take any legal action, you could send them the failure letter and stop paying, OR you will now be in a very strong position to be able to offer them a drastically reduced F&F offer solely on your terms, you now hold all the aces.

[gem-100]

Thank you for your replies Happyhippy & Bazooka Boo, much appreciated.

 

I think the action I will now take then will be to place it in dispute. Once I have done this, is it correct that I must not enter into any correspondence with them in order for the six year no contact to take effect? I am not sure that if I keep in correspondence with them that the six years only counts from my last contact with them so once placed in dispute do I then ignore any correspondence from them unless of course they manage to produce the original agreement?

[mpaforall]

from my experience.. Stop paying them and put the account into dispute. I have done so successfully with 3 accounts/2lernders and am 11 months from it being statute barred because of their lack of proper record keeping.

[Bazooka Boo]

Dispute if you like then stop all payments.

 

The only way for the limitation period to be reset is if you start paying them again, or you acknowledge this debt in writing, so yes once disputed ignore them.