Old capital one debt and lowell solicitors....

[Coasternut]

Hi,

Many years ago (Jan 2011) I had a capital one credit card, cutting a long story short I had issues repaying the card due to a technical hitch their end (my online access to make the payments wouldn't work and it took 3 months to send out a paying in book) so I queried the late payment charges etc applied to the account etc. During this time some serious medical issues occured and I forget about the debt as they left me alone for a good 10-12 months until it was passed to Lowell Portfolios Ltd. Again they sent a few letters, never spoke to them as I was told (probably incorrectly) that as I put some of the debt into dispute that it couldn't be sold to Lowell....

Anyway, moving on a good 4-5 years Lowell have suddenly popped up again, this time a letter from Lowell Solicitors stating I have 30 days to make full payment or arrange a repayment plan. They state they have had the account since 2014 and no payments have been made since.

What should my next step be? is this potentially a statute bared debt? should I just suck up the few hundred fees that they applied back in like 2012/13?

Thanks

[davenewbergr]

The Limitation Act says that you cannot commence proceedings to enforce a contract (a loan is a contract) more than six years after the cause of action arose. A cause of action will arise when a loan repayment is not made. And again when the next one isn't made. You state that you had a credit card in Jan 2011, which is of course over 7 years ago, but you don't say when you made your last payment, when the first payment due was not made, when you were in correspondence with Capital One and/or Lowell about the debt. If you defaulted after June 2012, then the debt is not 'statute barred'. If you bought things or took money out with the card after July 2012, then payment of those amounts isn't statute barred. If you acknowledged the debt in correspondence with Capital One or Lowell after July 2012, then possibly the entire debt is not statute barred.
There may be some mileage for you in complaining that the additional charges were unreasonable if a) they were partly responsible for some late payments, but "my online access to make the payments wouldn't work" could be just as much your fault as theirs. Again, there may be some mileage for you in complaining that they were unhelpful about your "serious medical issues" but it rather depends on what the issues were and how much the lender knew about them.