Guidance please on whether the 6-year rule is still in force, and if it has any relevance for me.

[Hannay100]

Could someone please advise on the “6-years and it lapses” rule, I want to know if it still is in place, and also if it then has relevance for the following.

 

5 years ago I acted on advice from the wonderful people on this forum. I had previously retired at 65 after a business collapse, and was facing constant letters/calls from debt collectors regarding some related debts amounting to £36K across 5 business credit cards, 1 personal card, and a small-business loan.

 

As a result of great advice I was able to hold my ground and even go on the attack, and after a year or so 4 of the debts were wiped out and a 5th “will not be pursued until we can furnish a copy of the original agreement”. That DCA was a total shambles, so that seems extremely unlikely 4+ years later still.

 

My query today relates to the personal credit card, which was being dealt with by DCA 1st Credit. I offered a token payment of £5/mth because at that time I had not discovered this forum and had no idea that the financial sector worked in such heavily self-serving ways, nor that I had options.

 

The offer was accepted and I made 3 payments, though by that point I had found this forum which opened my eyes wide!

 

I wrote to 1st Credit notifying them that the credit card issuer had not dealt acceptably/completely with previous concerns (long story!), that I would not be making any more payments, that they should return the case, and that I would be contacting their client seeking proper action and that they would be included in any subsequent formal complaint themselves if they continued collection processes in the meantime. Other than asking for details once, which I ignored, I never heard from them again.

 

I have now received two letters a few weeks apart advising “1st Credit has now become Intrum UK Ltd”, requesting a payment arrangement for that debt. I don’t know whether 1st Credit just changed their name, or Intrum Justitia (one of ‘my’ earlier DCAs) has bought their book, but either way it seems 1st Credit just shoved it to the back of the shelf 5 yrs ago, not returned it nor done anything with it themselves.

 

My knee-jerk is that if the 6-year rule still applies, they are now trying to resurrect the case before it lapses. Part of me says to ignore them and see where it goes, though another part of me wants to snap-back setting a line of defence advising Intrum to return the case to the card issuer who I am contacting requiring them to deal properly with already-notified matters that they have yet to complete, with a warning of a formal complaint should they continue to chase.

 

I’d greatly prefer getting to a 6 year cutoff however and just washing my hands of the whole stressful matter, than opening a level of formalities all over again and having all the stress for a year at least and most likely on in to our mid-70s. I’d just like to get on with living, as all was extremely upsetting to my wife who was/is not a strong woman after losing all our assets, our house and a second property, and living hand-to-mouth on just our state pension in rented accommodation and not the comfortable retirement we had expected.

 

So regarding the “6-years” rule, is it still in force?

 

If so, would contacting fresh-face Intrum with a stand-down notification letter end the 5 year lack of any contact just a year before it could help close the door?

 

Or maybe has that already been ended with the appearance of Intrum asking for an arrangement, beginning a fresh 6-year requirement?

 

 

So … should I ignore Intrum’s contact for a while longer, or get in quickly with a defence by going in to attack mode which no doubt would drag out for at least a year … by which time the 6 year rule would apply anyway if it is still in place as a potential backstop as long as I don’t break the silence?

 

I would welcome some focus so I can see more clearly what makes the best sense … and also any pointers to new or changed legislation/codes-of-conduct /proper forms-of-words/etc that may be keeping me unknowingly out of step with things these 5 years later.

 

Many thanks if you can guide me at all.

[dx100uk]

you do nothing

intrum is just a name change for 1st credit.

 

unless or until you received a letter of/before claim '

or a claimform sit on your hands

 

when exactly was your last payment...??

 

theres never been a change in the SB' rules.

[Hannay100]

Thanks dx100uk, for the clarification and for the guidance. Greatly appreciated Do nothing it is!

 

Last payment made was in Apr or May 2013, so right around exactly five years now. I am still digging through tons of paperwork, correspondence and more on an explosion of things from that time, to tie that down precisely.

 

In the event that there's more correspondence/claim form from them I'll post back if I may, as I will need guidance how then to respond ...

 

Again, many thanks.

[AndyOrch]

 

theres never been a change in the SB' rules.

 

There should be.... it should be made law on 3 years

[dx100uk]

too right!

[Hannay100]

Dx100uk - Just for info.

 

After some digging I now have all the correspondence, and I have never made any payments at all to 1st Credit/Intrum.

 

The timing is slightly different, 1st Cred came in to the picture in August 2013 not around May time as I had remembered. Around May was when I stopped trying to get sense out of the CC issuer after they had gone silent a while before.

 

A letter early Sept '13 advises 1st Cred bought the debt in Aug and would be “taking over from Progressive Credit Ltd”. But PC Ltd’s name had never been mentioned before, and did/does not appear in any correspondence. Maybe they were already in place with the CC issuer and were their admin.

 

In any event they could only have been involved for a very few months before it was sold-on to 1st Cred in Aug.

 

Either way, any last-payment towards the debt via Issuer/ProgCred before I knew better than that, would still have been around May/June - not much different to my recollections - with 1st Cred arriving late Aug instead and no payment ever having been made to them then or since.

 

So my 6-year limit is reached in Aug next year not May/June.

 

 

Next …

 

My letter to 1st Cred notifying of an unsettled dispute was sent in Sep 2013 as soon as they arrived on the scene.

 

They got around to acknowledging it in Aug 2014 (!), adding a small query quoting part of an earlier rebuttal from the card issuer. I advised that that was way-old, had been wrong at the time and shown as such before all communication ceased. I restated that I could not deal with them further.

 

I had forgotten about that brief exchange, and hope it didn't break the acknowledgement-silence and reset the 6-yr countdown? I suspect not as it only re-stated my rejection even more positively. I hope!

[dx100uk]

https://cse.google.co.uk/cse?cx=partner-pub-8889411648654839:6449422593&ie=UTF-8&q=Progressive+Credit+&sa=Search+CAG#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=Progressive%20Credit%20&gsc.page=1

 

What was the original debt who with and what type?

[Hannay100]

£2,813 - Aqua credit card, taken out 2004.

 

I requested a copy of my CCA 2012 on advice from here, received a reconstituted copy that appears legit.

 

Included was a copy of the original T&Cs and the T&Cs from that time. One was between self and Halifax, the other self and Progressive Credit.

 

Other than recent correspondence this is the only appearance anywhere of PC's name, probably why I had never heard of them. T&Cs were both 4 pages of small-print jargon clipped together with Halifax first and PC underneath, and I expect I wouldn't have bothered to scan them for irregularities as I was only interested in the CCA. So I didn't see reference to PC, but even if I had looked them through I would have missed PC's name as the way those papers were fastened together kept the top inch or so covered unless you separated them - which I probably wouldn't have done either for *just* T&Cs.

 

I can't imagine this was deliberate concealment however as there would be no point, just unfortunate and kept me unaware of PC til now.

 

So thanks for the search link for PC, that has filled in some blanks.

 

Disturbingly it seems to be telling a tale of shady behaviour too. I am no longer a night person (sigh, though in my younger days ... ) and I found it at breakfast time this morning and started to go through what is linked there to familiarise myself with PC. And suddenly it is over an hour later and I have barely scratched the surface, and have stopped to add this quickly and also because I have other things to get on with just now .. I'll read more later.

 

Anyway, per your guidance I am doing nothing for now to see what happens, so I should have enough reading-time

[dx100uk]

Halifax sold lots of dodgy aqua cards to progressive.

there's never an enforceable agreement behind them, PG just did cut n paste jobbie to con people.