Lowell Pre legal Assessment

[afqr2007]

Hi,

I was just after some advise please regarding letters i receive from Lowell. Around 5 Years ago i got a provident loan, the company stopped coming to collect the repayments from me because the person i had always dealt we retired and no one seemed to replace him. The i received letters saying the debt had been sold. Now after all these years of receiving letters from Lowell today i have received one with Pre-Legal Assessment on it.

It lists 2 debts on it the provident loan listed as Vanquis? and another one which i know about. Now what i am wondering is, is this letter another scare tactic or is the next step court? I have always ignored the letters from Lowell in the past. Another thing which is confusing me is i have logged into my Lowell Account in the past and there are 4 accounts listed there but they arent mentioned on this letter. Trying to log into the account now the website doesnt want seem to want to log me just keeps loading.

Thanks for any help

[Amethyst]

Hiya,

When you say 'Pre-Legal Assessment' - it that the title that Lowell have used on their letter - or is it a 'Letter of Claim' ?

Have you ever had a Vanquis credit card account ? ( not sure why you say it is the Provident Loan but labelled as Vanquis ?)

Do you have access to your credit files at the moment ? Could be worth checking there's nothing untoward on there.

If you can post a picture of the letter ( remove / cover personal details ) that will help forumlate a response - - if you do it with a phone camera you might have to do a screenshot as they come up a bit large straight off the camera.

[afqr2007]

Please see attached letter.

No ive never had a Vanquis card but the amounts add up, ive never understood why it was called that.

I have got a clearscore account which says

• You don't have any court judgements, bankruptcies or Individual Voluntary Arrangements
• You have no accounts in default or repossession
• You've made very few applications for credit in the past year
• You have held at least one of your accounts for several years
• Very few/none of your accounts have overdue payments
• Your largest credit card limit is relatively high
• You have stayed within your credit card limit in the past year
• Your current Telecoms balance is relatively low

i cant see anything else that shouldnt be there, is there another one or better one to check?

[Amethyst]

Sounds like these might be pretty old, as you've no defaults on your credit file, they may have fallen off already so being over 6 years old. On clearscore you should be able to see a list of the actual accounts being reported. The others to check on are Noddle and MSE Credit Club ( free access to Callcredit(transunion) and Experian - clearscore just covers Equifax )

They give very minimal information in that letter - it seems to be a pre-cursor to a letter before action and may simply be to entice contact before the debts go statute barred.

Do you recall how much you borrowed from Provident originally ? The amount seems high for a provident doorstep loan. Vanquis are part of Provident of course, but if it's a provident loan it should come under Provident as Vanquis is a subsid for the credit card side of things... bit odd. If you can find a bit more about the dates you could look at responding the Lowell with a 'prove it' type letter ( a CCA request for the agreement ) just want to be careful not to acknowledge the debts in case they are just on the cusp of being time barred.

[afqr2007]

In regards to provident im not sure how much was burrowed.

Having just check noodle it is showing that i have 6 Lowell showing defaulted with the date of default being 26/11/13 and 09/06/14. 4 of which are the provident loans which add up to the amount on the letter received today.