BW Legal (PRAC Financial/Payday UK) vs jayb1239, Help

[jayb1239]

Received a claim? Yes/No: Yes
Issue Date: 05/07/2018
Have you Acknowledged the Claim?: Yes
Total Amount Claimed: £327.30
Claimant’s Name: PRAC Financial
Solicitors Firm: BW Legal
Original Creditor: Payday UK
Original Debt (eg. Credit card/Loan/Overdraft) : Payday Loan
Particulars of Claim: Please type out in full excluding names/account numbers:
The Claimant's claim is for the sum of £223.65 being monies due from the Defendant to the Claimant under a loan agreement regulated by the Consumer Credit Act 1974 between the Defendant and Instant Cash Loans Limited t/a Payday UK under account reference xxxxxxxx and assigned to the Claimant on 09/12/2016, notice of which has been given to the Defendant. The Defendant Failed to maintain the contractual payment under the terms of the agreement and a default notice has been served and not complied with. The claim also includes statutory interest pursuant to section 69 of the County Courts Act 1984 at a rate of 8% per annum (a daily rate of £0.05) from the date of assignment of the agreement to 04/07/2018 being an amount of £28.65

Is the debt Statute Barred (have you had any contact with the creditor or claimant over the last 6 years?): Possibly

List any letters you have sent (eg: CCA/ CPR ): Several, See below


Hi, I'm just looking for a bit of advice with a claim form that arrived this morning.

I am not sure if this debt is real or not however I have been through some difficult times in the past and have used this kind of company so it is entirely possible. I have corresponded with BW Legal several times over the last few months (not admitting liability) and initially they responded however they started ignoring my letters. Initially I wrote claiming that I believed the debt would be statute barred due to being over 6 years to which they responded by sending me a statement of account showing very small repayments over a period of time. This is where my issue lies, at that point in my life I wasn't very financially responsible plus I was also constantly broke, however they show that starting in November 13 I began making seemingly 'token' payments to the account and did so monthly until July 14. I have no recollection of doing this with any creditor. I also know that if these were manual payments by card it is highly unlikely that I would not remember spending over half a year doing so and that I wouldn't 'forget" for a month. It is also unlikely that at such a small amount I would stop paying. That then lead me to think that it must have been a direct debit but the amount goes lower part way through but not by much and the payment dates also vary quite a bit so it also seems unlikely that it was an automatic payment. When asked to provide some kind of proof that these payments were made by me such as partial card number, originating bank account etc BW Legal stopped replying and ignored all further letters.

My main question is whether debt collectors/creditors have been known to fabricate this kind of information in the past and what is the likelihood of this being the case, or is it more likely that I have simply forgotten about this. Any other advice on dealing with this claim would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance
(I have attached all letters incase anybody wished to see them, due to forum limits I have split them across two posts.)

Timeline:

25/09/17 - Received Default Notice from PRAC Financial
24/01/18 - Wrote to BW claiming Statute Barred
30/01/18 - Confirmation BW has received previous letter
02/02/18 - BW responded with statement of account disproving statute barred status
05/02/18 - Wrote to BW requesting proof of payments and a copy of the credit agreement
08/02/18 - Confirmation BW has received previous letter
13/03/18 - Response from BW providing an unsigned credit agreement only
28/03/18 - Wrote to BW requesting Signed agreement and again proof of payments
30/04/18 - Letter from BW containing Notice of Assignment and Welcome to PRAC letter
03/05/18 - Wrote to BW advising still no response and I will consider the debt statute barred if none received
24/05/18 - Received Letter of Claim from BW Legal
06/07/18 - Received County Court claim form

[jayb1239]

Continued from above, here are the remaining letters.

[jayb1239]

I don't know whether it will change anything however I have written to BW Legal again mentioning my previous requests hadn't been answered and re making those requests under the CCA (enclosing the fee) or CPR depending which was relevant and throwing in a request for a copy of everything held under the DPA. Probably pointless however it was worth a try and if I do get a response it should help with writing a defense.

I also today submitted an affordable and irresponsible lending complaint to PaydayUK on the grounds that had any checks whatsoever been done at the time then it would have been blatantly obvious that the loan was unaffordable. I don't really expect to get anywhere with this as the loan was so long ago and they can just argue everything however I was hoping that even though BW had issued court papers already CONC 7.14.1 would still apply and they would do the right thing and cancel/stay the proceedings until the outcome is decided to basically give me more time to negotiate or gather information.

Any advice greatly appreciated

[Debt Camel]

it's a shame you didn't put in the affordability complaint before you got the Claim form

Now you have to defend this case - you can ask them to stay it but don't assume they will even if they say they will... you have to get a defence in on time.

PDUK are paying on out on older cases, do you know how often you borrowed from them before this last loan? If you don't you need to send them a Subject Access request asap. Also you need to get your bank statements for the period you were borrowing - PDUK will ask for them and the Ombudsman will require them, so ask for these now if you don't have them.

And put in affordability complaints to any other payday lenders you were using!

[Amethyst]

Have a read through the first steps and work through those with regards dealing with the court claim. If you come to filing a defence you can adapt that to state the previous disputes you had relating to the debt.

The agreement is for MEM Consumer Finance - at the time you took out the alleged loan. I believe Instant Cash Loans took over PayDayUK but there are some assignment issues to be dealt with... there should be notice of assignment to Instant Cash Loans from MEM as well as from Instant Cash Loans to PRAC. A SAR should assist there.

First Steps


Check dates


Acknowledge Claim


CCA Request - to PRAC


CPR 31.14 Request - to BW LEGAL


Subject Access Request Letter - send one to MEM and one to Instant Cash Loans.


Example Defence

[jayb1239]

Thank you.

Debt Camel,
This was the one and only loan from Payday UK so my affordability complaint was solely based on the fact that a cursory glance at my credit report, and also the insolvency data held on there, plus any verification of my income and expenditure would have shown that it was unaffordable. However to be completely honest to me it was a long shot and I was hoping that it would serve more as a delay tactic than anything.

Amethyst,
I think that I should have all of the above covered other than the SAR letter which I will deal with later today/tomorrow, is this to get details of loans or is it to get default/assignment notices? To my knowledge I have never received anything regarding this loan until a year or so ago so I doubt that I received an assignment letter MEM to Instant Cash Loans or when it was originally assigned to PRAC however I did move house not long after taking the loan which does complicate matters as they could have been sending these letters to my old address (although I did have a Royal Mail divert for 12 months).

The thing that bothers me though is that I am usually quite good at remembering these kind of things yet I have no recollection of any payment arrangement made for this debt nor do I see why I would enter into one when I had much higher priority debts. The amount doesn't make sense either, why would I make payments of £2.74 monthly and then drop it to £2.53. a reduction of 21p isn't likely to have helped my situation and DCA's generally want to put them up not down. However after looking on google I can only find the odd mention of strange goings on with repayments with this type of thing but nothing proven.

To be honest I should have probably just paid it on first contact but their attitude annoyed me and their timing was bad which prompted me to challenge it, with the view that once dialogue was open depending on their answers and if I was in a position of strength, make an offer to settle the debt as I have done on numerous occasions before. When they didn't respond I maybe foolishly assumed that they couldn't provide the information and had crawled back to where they came from, and when they sent the letter before claim I assumed that it was an idle threat, however I was wrong.

If this goes through court, and the court finds in their favour do I get chance to pay before a CCJ is issued and avoid the credit file damage? Also (I did try a quick search) does anybody have any experience of how likely BW would be to accept a settlement at this stage and also the kind of settlement they usually accept as I know all DCA's are different. As if I can get the amount reduced to the original loan amount or below then I would happily pay it to save the hassle.

Thanks again

[jayb1239]

Just a quick update. BW responded declining to fulfil both the CPR and the CCA requests stating that if I want access to these documents then I need to include that in my defence. Such nice people they seem to be.

[jayb1239]

Also BW advised that PRAC wont be fulfilling the CCA, I just realised that my above reply implied that BW wasn't fulfilling it. According to them once court proceedings commence I must submit a defence requesting any documentation that I would like sight of.

[Amethyst]

Oh yes lovely people. Sorry I missed your previous post - when is your defence due in ? Before 5th August... okay doesn't sound like you're going to get any info out of them so may as well make a start putting your defence together.

however they show that starting in November 13 I began making seemingly 'token' payments to the account and did so monthly until July 14. I have no recollection of doing this with any creditor. I also know that if these were manual payments by card it is highly unlikely that I would not remember spending over half a year doing so and that I wouldn't 'forget" for a month. It is also unlikely that at such a small amount I would stop paying. That then lead me to think that it must have been a direct debit but the amount goes lower part way through but not by much and the payment dates also vary quite a bit so it also seems unlikely that it was an automatic payment. When asked to provide some kind of proof that these payments were made by me such as partial card number, originating bank account etc BW Legal stopped replying and ignored all further letters.

It is a good idea if you can get hold of statements from bank account to cover those dates ( or transaction lists )to see if you have anything going out at all. It'd be an odd thing to make up though, even to try and claim it isn't statute barred, so I expect there will be something somewhere. The amounts seem like pro-rata debt management plan type figures. nothing you can recall on that side of things? no visits to CAB or Stepchange etc ? Anyway if you can get transaction list or statement from your bank and these figures don't show, then you can make a positive assertion you did not make the payments and the debt is stat barred.

[Amethyst]

If this goes through court, and the court finds in their favour do I get chance to pay before a CCJ is issued and avoid the credit file damage? Also (I did try a quick search) does anybody have any experience of how likely BW would be to accept a settlement at this stage and also the kind of settlement they usually accept as I know all DCA's are different. As if I can get the amount reduced to the original loan amount or below then I would happily pay it to save the hassle.

If you pay within 28 days of the judgment then it wouldn't ever go onto your credit file or the register of judgments. They do have a tendancy to want the full amount at this stage ( ie before defence ) but later they might go to the original debt amount if they still haven't produced documents.

[jayb1239]

Thank you for your reply Amethyst,
The repayments angle would probably be quite a long shot, I was just asking about it as it bugs me and I was curious if it had been heard of before as I would have thought that no company would do such a thing over such a small amount, however nothing surprises me with debt collectors. The time that those payments were apparently made was during a switch over time between bank accounts so could have been on the old account which I have no information about. I have never however been in any kind of DMP or had any agreements negotiated/paid for me. So that was more a curiosity/annoyance than a defence.

Over the last few years I have been trying to resolve both my wife's and my own old debt issues and was in my opinion making decent progress, tackling them one by one as they came out of the woodwork, corresponding with them, negotiating and ultimately clearing them. However BW don't seem to play by the same rules as the others that I have had experience with, however looking online this doesn't seem to be an isolated case and they seem to prefer to get the full amount or a CCJ with no negotiation in a pretty aggressive manner.

I actually called BW yesterday (and recorded the call incase I was accused of admitting/agreeing to anything) with the view to settling the matter and avoiding the hassle of court ideally with the added costs removed from the balance however I would have begrudgingly paid the whole amount as to me its not worth receiving a CCJ over a few hundred pounds therefore undoing the work that I have put in so far to dealing with these things and repairing my credit file. However immediately I was greeted by an employee with the worst attitude imaginable. He constantly spoke over me and talked down to me, he hadn't read anything on the account as in his words "there was a lot and he didn't want to". He then just kept reiterating that I have no options now that it has gone to court and I had to either defend or admit via the court and that no documentation would be provided unless ordered by the court, that due to the fact that it was in the courts hands they did not have to comply with CCA or CPR and neither did PRAC, and also that they wouldn't respond to my SAR until after the defence deadline. He was clueless about the whole process other than what was obviously a scripted response and then claimed that he an BW know best as they are "A reputable solicitors firm". At that point due to his attitude I decided it was wise to end the call before I said something that I may have regretted. I don't usually call and keep everything in writing but was just in the mood to seek a quick and easy resolution, I don't think I'll be doing that again in a hurry.


For my defence obviously there is the 'template' on here which covers the basics, should I add into that about me contacting them on 3 separate occasions, and them ignoring it, as well as the whole MEM > Instant Cash Loans thing or should I just stick to the template defence saving the other arguments for a 'full' defence at a later date when they have provided the documentation requested? Also do you think that without access to historical bank statements I should leave the whole statute barred/false repayment thing alone? Or should I include that in the hope that they respond with more information about the repayments.

Finally do you know whether BW usually accept mediation and if so do they usually come down on the amount or do they stand firm? and are they likely once defence is submitted, to accept a save as to costs offer to settle the matter?


Thank you for your time taken in reading/replying to me, it is greatly appreciated.

[Amethyst]

I think we can amend to make it a bit stronger - bringing my those payments into doubt will help - so although it isn't a defence in itself - it forces them to evidence the payments as without such evidence the debt would be statute barred ( which is a defence )

On top of that they are refusing to send documents which indicates they don't actually have them, which is also a defence.

Do a SAR to both banks requesting transactions from the relevant dates - it could help later.

Ill find something re this MEM / instant cash loans issue we put in someone else's defence that we can adapt for yours

[Amethyst]

I'll have to find that later but we will also include the lack of assignments and notices from mem to instant cash loans to prac - and also the lack of default notice. BW legal don't seem to like these debts much.

[Amethyst]

Did you get anything at all back from these ?

Quote "

Subject Access Request Letter - send one to MEM and one to Instant Cash Loans.

"

[jayb1239]

Did you get anything at all back from these ?

Quote "

Subject Access Request Letter - send one to MEM and one to Instant Cash Loans.

"

Thank you, I haven't had anything back from MEM/Instant Cash Loans, or even an acknowledgement. I will write a reminder letter and re-iterate my request later on today unless you don't think that this is worth doing? Also is it still just the assignment notice that I am looking for from both of them?