Admiral Leasing, Guarantor received Court Paperwork without any other correspondence

[Plated]

Hi,

 

This is a frustrating situation and time is pretty limited so hopefully someone may be able to help.

Lol due to the fact that i'm the family banker this post is on behalf of my partner

 

last year our daughter acquired some equipment and used Admiral Leasing, (my partner was the guarantor).

The equipment was not proving to make the profit that was required and our daughter contacted Admiral Leasing, explained that she could not afford to keep up the repayments and asked for a solution.

 

She was informed that they would collect the machine and it would be resold.

She was then told that they would negotiate a payment plan for the balance after the machine was sold.

 

In August 2016 our daughter and my partner received a letter of termination, this included the outstanding amount.

Our daughter phoned and enquired about the letter and was informed that this was a default template generated by the computer and that there was nothing to worry about, they would negotiate the balance as soon as the equipment was sold on.

 

On December 29th 2016 both parties received a letter for a county court summons from Admiral Leasing for the amount of £6,479.48.

 

 

We were a little bemused because on reading the Plaintiff comments:

- have contacted parties on numerous occasions to resolve outstanding balance,

have supplied all necessary paperwork, no resolve.

 

Prior to the court summons my partner received no correspondence what so ever from Admiral Leasing or their acting solicitor.

 

Our daughter did not receive any correspondence either.

She contacted their acting solicitor and was told that he had sent her numerous emails,

she said that she had not received them and could they resend,

to date she has not received them.

 

 

She also pointed out that she had phoned several times to check on the situation with the machine sale,

she was told not to worry as they would contact her as soon as it was sold.

 

 

Furthermore she offered to make a payment plan which they would only accept if we put a voluntary charging order against our property. We were not prepared to do this.

 

We spoke with a solicitor and explained the situation,

they contacted the Admiral Leasing acting solicitor and offered payment of the outstanding amount which was left after the machine sale £5577.26, they stated that we would not pay costs as we had not received any correspondence.

 

 

The acting solicitor refused and said they wanted the whole amount.

Our solicitor then just said pay it as its not worth the cost of proceeding.

(should we just give in and pay the extra £1000.00?)

 

We do not dispute the machine balance and have offered to pay,

we do dispute the costs on the assumption that had they sent a request of payment to us after the machine was sold, we would have paid.

 

 

Also should they not have sent us a default notice or a letter before action rather than a court summons?

does the credit agreement not protect us against this?

 

It seems like their solicitor has just jumped the gun to stuff an extra 1000.00 in his back pocket!

 

Any advise would be grateful,

unfortunately due to the time it has taken to process information with the parties involved we now only have until Thursday to reply.

Thanks in advance

Edited January 24, 2017 by Andyorch
Paras

[AndyOrch]

Thread moved to General Legal Issues.....Welcome to CAG Plated...please continue to post here to your thread.

 

 

Regards

 

Andy

[BankFodder]

I suggest that the first thing you do is stop using the telephone until you have read our customer services guide, printed out a copy for your partner, printed out a copy for your daughter, make sure they have read it, test them on it, get them to sign that they will follow all of the recommendations in it – and then you can start using the telephone again.

 

It seems to me that a lot of the problems here would not have occurred if you had evidence of the conversations and agreements that you had reached on the phone. I'm not joking about the customer services guide. You must do it – it is extremely important. Although I expect that you probably realise that now.

 

I think the next thing to do is to send an SAR to Adml leasing requiring copies of everything they have got including all correspondence, telephone records, screenshots, memoranda – the lot. Included in the SAR should be a specific request for all correspondence which has apparently been sent to you either by letter or by email relating to the alleged debt sent either by them or by their legal representative. In particular, any correspondence which they claim has complied with the pre-action protocol contained in the Civil Procedure Rules.

 

It would help now if you would post up the claim form in PDF format so that we can see exactly what has been said. I'd like to know more about the basis upon which they say they want to charge you £1000 fees. If this is a small claim then they would not normally be entitled to add these kinds of costs.

 

You received the claim form on 29 December. Presumably you acknowledge the claim with an intention to defend. Is that correct? Just as a matter of interest, what were you intending to do – and how have you spent your time since 29 December?

[Plated]

Hi and thank you,

 

'customer services' very good, will definitely take this on board and do as you suggest.

 

I will prepare a SAR and get it posted.

 

The claim form has been posted with the intention to defend as advised by our solicitor,

this was so the solicitor would have time to correspond with the Admiral Leasing solicitor regarding the process and in the event that they would accept the payment.

 

I will see if my daughter has copied her claim form as we just gave ours to the solicitor. (can we get a copy from anywhere)

 

As for intentions,

we just wanted to pay the outstanding balance with no further action,

however we don't intend to be duped and will do what is right as to not let this happen,

(could really do without a CCJ as it may impact our business plans)

 

Since the 29th we contacted our solicitor,

explained the situation and left it with them,

 

 

I believe our we lost a week due to the fact our solicitor was poorly.

We received correspondence yesterday from the solicitor stating that the Admiral Leasing solicitor would only accept full payment.

 

Our daughter phoned Admiral directly yesterday to offer payment and they refused.

they said they would have to contact their solicitor first to see what is what.

(another 'customer services' moment!)

[BankFodder]

I'm sorry but I have to say that this is not the kind of work that solicitors are good at. They are good at taking £1000 to do almost nothing, and they are good then inventing delays including feeling poorly when time is of an essence because when the 28 day deadline runs out, "poorly" doesn't cut it.

 

Your solicitor should have advised you to send an SAR ages ago. It would have been a very simple and important step to establish that the pre-action protocol has not been followed.

 

I'm still waiting for you to put up your claim form in PDF format please. Please imagine that you're paying us £1000 and you don't want to waste your time or your money nor our's. Please put up the PDF

[Plated]

Unfortunately it does seem that way.

Ok I have tended to the SAR's, they just need signing and posting recorded delivery.

It turns out that the forms were not posted but done online.

so I have requested our claims form back from the solicitor, actually asked her to scan and email so will attach pdf as soon as it is received.

I will see my daughter tonight and collect her form also.

Thank you.

[BankFodder]

Okay. Once we see it, we can decide what action to take. It seems to me that your solicitor simply wants you to put your hands up. I see a possibility of admitting the sum owed and defending on the costs on the basis that they haven't invoke the pre-action protocol and that these costs could have been avoided with a little simple negotiation.

 

Of course, there is a risk that you might not succeed in this in which case you would also lose the hearing fee which is currently over 200 quid, I think. Maybe somebody will come along and tell us what it is.

 

I think it will be up to you. You can either put your hands up and take your medicine or else you can defend simply on the issue of costs – as I have said – partly because some of the costs available to be claimed and because the rest of the costs have been incurred needlessly as a result of unreasonable litigation because the pre-action protocol has not been applied.

 

At the end of the day you will have to decide. Your solicitor should have told you all of this and quite frankly it would stick in my craw having to pay him out. How much is he charging you for this little treat?

 

I wonder if they'll let you have it back – or whether they'll ask for payment of the bill first

[Plated]

Hi

I have attached the pdf, on reading the particulars only points 1 and 2 are correct.

 

point 3, agreement was terminated in august 2017 (to which our daughter was told that they would negotiate a payment plan when the equipment was sold and not to worry, she may have emails to support this, she is checking).

 

point 4, a breakdown of costs and no documents have ever been received.

 

point 5, The claimant has never corresponded with us regarding repayment.

 

It appears I was a little zealous with the 1000.00 costs,

the difference between the balance 5577.26 and 6479.48 is made up of court cost, professional fees and interest.

 

 

Even so had we been notified in a timely manner there would be no interest.

 

the SAR's are sent and in addition have sent a letter to Admiral-Leasing explaining that we are still prepared to pay the original balance.

claim form 2.pdf

Edited January 25, 2017 by dx100uk
pdf properly redacted..dx

[dx100uk]

claimform in above post

[BankFodder]

I'm afraid that I think that it is in your best interests to pay the money and to avoid any further action.

 

I'm afraid that the entire way that this has been handled has been extremely poor and that includes the treatment from your poorly solicitor.

 

You received a letter relating to the termination in August – so you have had even longer to deal with it then we might be led to believe from the facts stated in the claimant's particulars of claim. Despite the receipt of this quite serious correspondence, and despite the fact that clearly the instalments must have ceased at least a couple of months or longer earlier than that date, it seems that nothing was done in writing. It was all done on the telephone, verbal assurances were received and believed without any confirmation in writing by either side, and I wonder whether things didn't largely go silent for quite a while with your daughter rather burying her head in the sand and hoping that it had gone away.

 

The solicitors certainly should have invoked the pre-action protocol and written to you and sent you a letter before action – but they might even want to say that their letter of August 2016 amounted to exactly that.

 

Although the 14 day pre-action protocol is in the Civil Procedure Rules, it is not strictly binding and it is more of a technicality. It would have been useful if the solicitors had been trying to charge you £1000 costs in addition to their legitimate claim – as you first told us, because the lack of protocol might have persuaded the court to make them suffer their own costs. However, it seems that we are getting Chinese whispers here and the costs that they are claiming are entirely correct for this kind of action and so I don't see any real basis for challenging them seeing that you are putting your hands up to the principal sum anyway.

 

There is the question of interest of course, but they seem to be saying that this is contractual – and you haven't provided us with the information here that they say that they have already given to you. However, this figure for interest at £3.66 per day forms such a small proportion of the entire claim – as well as the £150 contractual costs that I scarcely think that they are worth quibbling about – given the rest of the story and given that it has all been left to the last moment.

 

If you wanted to defend this, I would advise you at the very least to pay immediately the admitted principal sum and then defend on the small change. However, the risks of losing the case are fairly substantial and you would then be left with the additional cost of the claimant's hearing fee which would be between £200 and £300 in addition to having to pay the disputed sum in any event.

 

If you take that together with the time and trouble that it is going to take over quite a few months including attendance at court, along with having to manage this on behalf of your daughter and your partner as they don't seem to be very involved at the moment, additionally I think it might be best simply to put your hands up and to walk away a wiser man/daughter/partner. Additionally, if your poorly solicitor continues his involvement in the case, then you have to deal with his costs as well. Presumably you have racked up some poorly solicitor's fees anyway. You had better make sure that these are paid because you will be amazed at how quickly your poorly solicitor's runny nose clears up when it comes to the business of getting his own money off you.

 

I'm not sure what else can be done. I think that we have probably wasted £10 of your money on the SAR – but this was done on the basis that the solicitors costs were much greater then they have turned out to be.

 

I would say that it would be in your best interests to phone the other side straightaway, tell them that you are settling the entire claim – costs interests everything by BACS transfer – and that they won't need to apply for judgement. Of course, you will do exactly that and you will confirm your conversation and their agreement in writing – because this is the way you will be doing things in future, won't it. That way, you avoid a court judgement and the possibility of a mark on your credit files – although that normally wouldn't happen anyway if you pay off the judgement within 30 days. However, better to call a rapid halt to it all if you have the money.

 

If you don't have the money then I'm afraid that you will have to negotiate an instalment, that there will be a judgement against you and it will reflect on your credit files and stay there for six years.

 

Incidentally, the result of this is that you will be left with the equipment which you can then take steps to sell in order to cover some of your losses.

If you had returned the equipment, they would probably still be asking you for shortfall which in the end probably wouldn't be a whole lot less than what they are claiming against you now.

 

Make sure that when you tell them that you are paying the entire claim by immediate transfer, that it is agreed that this is in full settlement of all claims relating to this matter. (Confirm in writing)

 

I hope this helps

[Plated]

Hi

Good News and Bad but just!

 

We have just been notified that they will accept 5577.26 from the guarantor as full and final settlement of liability based on the information put forward.

 

 

However they will pursue the costs and interest from my daughter.

 

To a large extent I do agree with what has been posted but without being biased, my daughter didn't quite bury her head in the sand but was naïve in taking on board what they said to her.

 

 

The emails I referenced in my previous post,

she has confirmed she has them and they confirm that she didn't need to pay anything until the equipment was sold (which they did collect and sell, the balance being 5577.26) and when it was they would give her a breakdown and renegotiate a payment plan.

 

 

It was at this point she left it with them.

 

She will have to file her defence by tomorrow but based on what you have posted will advise her to contact them in writing and try to negotiate the settlement.

 

I'd like to thank you for all your input and advice,

 

 

quite bazaar how something has been dragging on is sorted within a couple of days.

 

Thank you

[BankFodder]

Okay, as long as you are happy with the outcome then that's good.

 

I suggest that if she's going to put in a defence that she references the conversation and the agreement.