Lowell demanding payment for a debt purchased from Hoist that was discontinued at court.

[uub]

Hi there,

I'm looking for some advice, I have spent years trying get myself sorted financially and off the credit doodoo list and now I have 0 defaults and a credit score over 900 and was recently accepted for a mortgage for the first time.

I've received letters recently from Lowell regarding a debt that they have purchased from Hoist for in excess of £5000.

Hoist issued a claim form in the county court and I engaged the services of a solicitor to deal with the case which ended with Hoist discontinuing the claim.

I have communicated with Lowell advising them of the above and that I also consider the matter to be statute barred.

Account opened 2015, defaulted 2016, court action and discontinuance in 2020.

Lowell are claiming that the amount is not statute barred as I communicated by way of a 3rd party writing to Hoist requesting information ie the solicitors and also there was further acknowledgement by way of court fees.

At no point have I ever acknowledged that I owe the amount in writing or otherwise and so obviously I disagree with their assessment of the situation.

The whole thing is very stressful given that I am in the middle of purchasing a house.

What is the best way of dealing with this?

[dx100uk]

nothing they can do ignore them

which is what you should have done in the 1st place.

lowells recently purchased hoist uk and been sending out automated letters on 100'000 of dead debts even those SB'd for 15yrs.

people are mugs sadly and even if one in 1000 cough up its profit free money to go down the pub or on holiday.

 

dx

 

[unclebulgaria67]

Lowell will say anything to see if someone is daft enough to pay.

So take no action at this point.

What type of debt was this originally e.g. credit card ?  What was the amount of debt at time of default ?

[uub]

It was ignoring Hoist that led them to issuing small claims action in the first place.
 

It was a credit card debt just over £5000, they are demanding payment of the original amount from Hoist before court fees/legal costs was added.

There is absolutely no way I will pay it, I would rather instruct solicitors again than give a penny to these vultures, the whole thing has just got me in panic mode right now.

[unclebulgaria67]

Then requesting of information following a court claim and paying a court fee is very unlikely to be acknowledgement of the debt, but it depends on what was said at the time.  Did any document issued by you or on your behalf admit to owing the debt ?

[uub]

After looking back at documents that I still have I can see that the solicitors made a GDPR request to Hoist and Barclaycard and a CCA request to Hoist.

Also I can see in both witness statements and defence statements that no admission was ever made to the sums claimed, I have attached these for reference.

In fact the defence explicitly states the following.

Quote

I make no admission to the sum claimed by the Claimant. The Claimant has not
provided any evidence of sums outstanding and the Claimant is put to strict
proof of the sum claimed.

Defence.pdf Witness Statement.pdf

[dx100uk]

the claim was discontinued by the issuance of an N279 by the claimant.

the same debt cant be re litigated - end of. doesn't matter even if you wrote saying you owe it at anytime.

as i said IGNORE THEM.

which is what you should have done with lowells etc from day one instead of entering into silly letter tennis.

as for the original hoist claim you got BECAUSE you ignored them...well thats just daft, you dont ever ignore a letter of claim from a solicitor nor a country court claimform from northants bulk court.

 

WISE UP!

##dx# 

[uub]

I didn't know it can't be re-litigated, that makes me feel somewhat better. I'm just fed up of the letters from them.

I will ignore any further correspondence now, thanks for the help everyone.

[dx100uk]

only one bite of the cherry for the same debt for the same amount

 

[AndyOrch]

Quote

On 20/08/2023 at 07:45, uub said:

I didn't know it can't be re-litigated,

 

It can,  the claimants simply requests permission of the court pursuant to CPR 38.7

https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/part38#38.7

Although very rare it ever happens.

 

Andy