County Court Judgement Defence

[snottyscotty]

Hi,

I think I may have made a bit of an error and would be grateful for any pointers/advice.

I received a County Court Claim unexpectedly through the post, which I believed to have been previously sorted with Vodafone (due to their errors). I completed an Acknowledgement of Service form, allowing extra time to respond in the hope that a SAR response would be returned from Vodafone to back up my defence. However, this didn't arrive prior to the deadline, so I submitted a defence with the evidence that I did have - emails admitting fault and a further email confirming there was no further issues.

I would also note, I have had no communication from either Lowell or their Solicitors since I raised the issue with Vodafone back in May 2020 until I received a letter from them dated one week post Court Claim arrival and arrived four weeks after the date of the Court Claim.

I have now stumbled upon this forum and feel that I may have vastly underestimated that my defence would be sufficient and have missed several steps. I would be grateful if anyone could advise if there is anything else that I can do now following submitting the defence and what steps I should expect next as I a worrying I have not followed the due process.

[echat11]

Hi Scotty

Copy and paste your defence on here, removing all personal details.

When you received the Claim, you could of asked for the Documents they are relying to make the Claim, by requesting documents under 31.14, no doubt you will get them in your SAR request.

[snottyscotty]

Hi ECHAT11,

Thanks for taking the time to respond. Below is the defence that I submitted.

In regards to requesting the documents under 31.14 am I able to do this post submitting defence, just in case the they prove difficult with the SAR ?

DEFENCE
The amount is as a result of a termination of service. However, this termination of service was as a result of an error by Vodafone when they were trying to fix issues I was experiencing with service in December 2019.

The first I was aware of this is when I had an overdrawn notification due to a deduction of £xxx.xx on xx/01/2020. Upon contacting Vodafone, they confirmed that this was an error on their part and the earliest they would be able to return the funds was 5-7 working days. After explaining that this then left me unable to pay other bills and several call backs, I was advised by Vodafone to contact my Bank and request to use the direct debit guarantee process to recall the funds as this would be the quickest route for the funds to be reimbursed. Vodafone would then make the necessary amendments to my account and then deductions would carry on as usual. Unfortunately, I did not check this had happened and assumed payments resumed the following month. As I was still not receiving service, I decided to revert to a pay as you go sim card as Vodafone were no closer to fixing the issues.

Several months later, I received a letter from a debt collection agency for the amount, so I contacted Vodafone again to clarify and rectify the situation. After lots of conversations during late May/early June 2020, Vodafone confirmed that the charges had been applied incorrectly and offered to rectify the situation. I initially received an offer of removing the termination charge
(£xxx.xx), pay as you migration cost (£xxx.xx)and halving the line rental charges (£xxx.xx). This left £xx.xx to pay, plus the remaining £xx per month from xx/04/2020 until xx/05/2020 even though the service was still not working.

When I raised this with them and clarified that under their terms and conditions it states that if I wanted to end the agreement I was able to due to the quality of their services. If the service is materially degraded for an unreasonable period of time you maybe able to leave the Agreement early without paying a termination charge (although you’ll need to pay for the equipment subsidy). Where applicable, all the information required to calculate your equipment subsidy is set out in your Welcome Letter.

After some further backwards and forward, Vodafone conceded that they did not hold (or have any record of) the Welcome Letter issued to me, so could not confirm the equipment subsidy required.

As a gesture of goodwill, they agreed to waive the charges on the account and it would not be reconnected. Unfortunately, I didn’t receive an email confirming this, so followed up in July 2020 to confirm that there were no outstanding issues on the account – I have an email confirming.

Roll around to February 2022 and I receive the court notification papers in the post, which was a huge shock as I had had no further contact from Lowell following what I thought was the resolution in July 2020. I have subsequently received one letter from them dated xx/02/2022 notifying me that they had proceeded with a county court claim, but this was not received in the post until xx/03/2022.

Having looked through my credit history there is no default payments registered by Vodafone (or any account showing at all), only one from Lowell, with a date of default listed as xx/08/2020 but the default showing from April 2020, so I am assuming that the resolution was not communicated from Vodafone to Lowell.


I have requested a SAR from Vodafone, however, to date this has not yet been received due to identification issues. I have transcripts of the initial issue in December 2019 and Customer Services advising that they would reset the account, an emails showing the offer and also confirming that there was no outstanding issues. Unfortunately, most of the communication was over the phone, to try and rectify the situation as soon as possible, but I am hoping the recordings of these will be provided with the SAR from Vodafone.

I have to say, I am hugely upset that this has progressed to such a stage, through no fault of my own. I have had no communication from the company until a month after the Court have issued the papers – albeit it was dated 6 calendar day after the papers were issued. Should I not have received something prior to this, rather than receiving such a shock I the post? I pride myself on my credit history and the implication this has on me both personally and professionally is causing huge anxiety, so I look forward to this being resolved at the earliest convenience.

[echat11]

You can't request the CPR 31.14 as the Defence has been filed (but they should send you the SAR data, they have 30 days). Your Defence shouldn't contain that much detail (it looks more like a Witness Statement). It should just address their claims in their Particulars of Claim. Your Defence should look as follows, just as an example (removing all the CCA 1974 stuff).

https://legalbeagles.info/library/gu...-court-claims/

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents/Guidance/A_Handbook_for_Litigants_in_Person.pdf

But don't panic.

jaguarsuk