Lowell/Shop Direct

**Amethyst** · 7th November 2018, 22:04:PM

Hiya xxx Welcome to the forum

Glad to hear you are in a better place and things are getting sorted out, sounds like these are the last things to deal with and you can move on from a crappy period in life.

So…. there's 2 debts, both happen to be with Lowell - but we need to look at them individually.

1) Very ( Shop Direct ) £3k - there is a CCJ already in place.

2) Littlewoods ( Shop Direct ) £1.4k - there is no CCJ.

You are paying Lowell £60 a month - is that for both the debts ?

**Sarahlbx** · 7th November 2018, 22:13:PM

Hi Amethyst

thank you for the welcome

£3k to Littlewoods and £1.4k to very.

£60 at the moment each month but they will want to review it soon I think, every 6 months ☹️

**Amethyst** · 7th November 2018, 22:18:PM

Put complaints in for the PPI on both accounts ( treat this separately to dealing with the debts owned by Lowell )

Littlewoods - https://ppiquestionnaire.littlewoods...me=littlewoods
Very - https://www.very.co.uk/help/en/onlin...elp-contact-us

**Amethyst** · 7th November 2018, 22:23:PM

Originally posted by Sarahlbx View Post

Hi Amethyst

thank you for the welcome

£3k to Littlewoods and £1.4k to very.

£60 at the moment each month but they will want to review it soon I think, every 6 months ☹️

6 month reviews are pretty standard.

So Littlewoods £3k is under the Judgment ?

And Very £1.4k hasn't gone to court.

Okay so lets have a look at Littlewoods ;

- was it a Judgment in Default ? ( ie you didn't respond to the court claim )
- when was it obtained ?
- was it a forthwith order or an instalment order ?

**Sarahlbx** · 7th November 2018, 22:29:PM

Littlewoods was at default, the court papers went to my old address and I was given them when it was too late to respond. It was in 2015. I did speak to Lowell about the situation after I received the ccj with the relationship and they just ceased all contact for about two years and if i’m Honest I just carried on as normal, it gave me a break and the opportunity to get the smaller debts cleared but they made contact again around 10 months ago

**Amethyst** · 7th November 2018, 22:43:PM

Ok, that's a bummer but never mind. You might have been able to have the judgment set aside so you could have defended the case - but sadly it's a bit late now - you have to act promptly once you know about the judgment to do that. As it stands it will stay on your file for another 3 years ( 6 years in total ). So it was a forthwith order and they simply haven't taken any enforcement action ( possibly as you explained your circumstances at the time ) and you have now negotiated a monthly affordable instalment - but it's not set by the courts.

Probably not a great deal to do with this one - keep affordable instalments until your circumstances improve - if you get a PPI refund on this account you might be able to use that to negotiate a full and final settlement to get the CCJ marked as satisfied and stop having to make monthly payments. When you get the SAR information ( presumably that's how you have requested transaction lists ) then you can make a complaint to Shop Direct about interest and charges if there was any unfairness, and potentially take that through the FOS, but you'll need to deal with the Judgment debt with Lowell separately now.

Is the whole £60 you are paying Lowell going to this or is it split between this and the other debt ?

Have Lowell made noises about taking the Very £1.4k debt to court at all ?
Again, any PPI refund you can use to try negotiate a full and final settlement if at all possible.
Do you know when the Very account was opened and when it defaulted at all? ( does it show a default date on your credit file?)

**Sarahlbx** · 7th November 2018, 22:57:PM

The very debt went off my credit file two weeks ago, and the Littlewoods debt is due to go off in the next week. Just the Ccj is showing.

the £60 is split between both, not equally, £39 on Littlewoods and £21 on very. They haven’t said anything about court, in the sense of payments they have been quite fair and easy to deal with. It’s just the value of the debt that it’s almost double. Lowell have never added any fees from when they purchased the debt from shop direct, only what was added via the CCJ

i’ll send the ppi form tomorrow thank you for your help xx

**Amethyst** · 8th November 2018, 00:42:AM

Okay the £39 Littlewoods is the important one to keep up as that's a CCJ and you don't want them to resort to enforcement. If they threaten it at all then you can apply to court for redetermination ( so the court sets the payments that are affordable based on your income and expenditure, and any change would have to go back through the court )… but you only need do that if Lowell do try to get you to increase payments to more than you can afford under threat of enforcement ( things like attachment of earnings, bailiffs, charging orders etc ). But I'm afraid other than settling it and having it marked as satisfied you are stuck with it on your credit file for the remaining 3 yrs from judgment.

The £21 on Very... that's keeping the status quo at the moment - you don't want that to go to a CCJ, so you want to keep up payments on that until you've gone through the complaints process with Shop Direct, and if/when you get a refund, go back to Lowell and make a full & final settlement offer ( as this isn't a Judgment you MIGHT be able to get them to around 30% settlement figure ). As you started making payments within 6 years from the default it won't go to statute barred so settlement at a reduced amount is the only option ( unless you stop paying and let them take you to court then successfully defend it - which is unlikely as it was opened after 2007 and Very/SD are pretty good at providing documents )

When you get your transaction lists from ShopDirect on both you'll be able to see the interest and charges and can consider whether to make a complaint about fairness to SD.

So basically if the £60 a month isn't hurting too much, you're making progress on the debts and not risking a second CCJ, so keep that going, review 6 monthly or so with your income/expenditure sheets, and work towards settling them with any PPI/charges refunds.

Oh, and it's good to hear Lowell have been decent to deal with. The industry is changing for the better, taken a long time to get this far with them, but fingers crossed it carries on improving.

**Sarahlbx** · 29th November 2018, 12:44:PM

Hi me again!

So lowell have come back and advised they can’t provife the information requested for the little woods £3k debt and have written it off. It’s not on my credit file but the Ccj is still there, the balance from Lowell is £0, but the CCJ balance is £3k on my credit file. Is there anything I can do to get this balance changed or removed?

**Amethyst** · 29th November 2018, 13:10:PM

Have Lowell referred to the CCJ in their letter? If they have written it off and basically zero'd the balance then I should think they should inform the court the judgment has been satisfied, but I'm wondering if they actually realise they have already got a CCJ on it.

The only way to have it removed entirely is to apply to set the judgment aside, whch I think you have missed the boat on as you've been making payments for quite a while. Have Lowell said to stop making those payments?

Maybe do a pic of the letter they've sent you and email it to me admin@legalbeagles.info

**Sarahlbx** · 29th November 2018, 13:19:PM

Hi Amethyst,

They have said shop direct couldn’t provide the details so they had closed the account, but if shop direct do provide the details they may be in touch to request payment.

This balance is the one I queried most because the balance is almost double what I owed them when I went into difficult times. They have sent the documents for the very account, which I am waiting for now in the post. I just find it odd as they went into default at exactly the same time but they can’t give details for the littlewoods account at this time so cleared the balance.

i will send over the letter once I get home, thank you for all your help x

**Amethyst** · 29th November 2018, 22:58:PM

It's confusing them both being Shop Direct - is that reference on the letter for the Very or the Littlewoods account? I'd guess it's the Very one as the Littlewoods one has the CCJ in place already and they don't mention the Judgment at all or say anything about the payments your making.

They're basically not going to bug you about payment for the debt unless/until Shop Direct do produce the documents... so it's on hold.

**Sarahlbx** · 30th November 2018, 14:02:PM

Hi Amethyst,

It’s the Littlewoods one, the one with the CCJ, I logged onto my Lowell account this morning and it just says closed.

The very one which has no Ccj is still open and shows payment plan set up as the status, I was mis informed on the documents I requested being sent, they still haven’t been sent. Lowell haven’t received them for this account either and Shop Direct haven’t sent them, I requested the info from both Lowell and shop direct and I received a letter from SD saying I would receive the statements and info I requested within 30 days and the 30 days is up tomorrow.

**Amethyst** · 30th November 2018, 14:10:PM

Hmmmm, have they said stop making the payments ? It sounds like they have just forgotten there is a CCJ which worries me. The payments aren't set by the court, they were just by negotiation with Lowell, and the original default judgment was a 'forthwith' judgment ( to pay the full judgment debt within 30 days etc ). I think, because if they have arse/elbow syndrome and you stop making the negotiated payments due to this letter they might pop up in 6 months/a year and try to enforce the judgment through other means ( either installment again or bailiff/charging order/attachment earnings etc ) so I think you have to ( to draw a line under it ) respond to them along the lines of ' can you tell court the CCJ is satisfied then pls'.

I'm going to redact and post the letter see what others think to it - but there's no reference to the Court Judgment at all on it.

If they knew they had a CCJ on it they'd have said more like "we haven't got the docs but it doesn't matter, we don't have to provide them as there's a judgment "

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Lowell/Shop Direct