Urgent help needed please -"NOTIFICATION OF ACCOUNT TRANSFER TO RESTONS SOLICITORS"

**Amethyst** · 16th August 2017, 21:28:PM

Re: Urgent help needed please -"NOTIFICATION OF ACCOUNT TRANSFER TO RESTONS SOLICITOR

Evening xx

Do you think you made the payment to metropolitan? Maybe sent a cca request or had a DMP ? Otherwise it isn't unheard of for these amount to be internal payments and nothing to do with you. How does the payment show - any codes next to it?

When HSBC changed the account to a graduate account did they notify you / ask you etc and did you complain about it st the time? We'll have to find the old student account terms I think and see what the terms were about changing to graduate account. There is another claim on the forum with a similar issue at the moment, which also involved an unsolicited credit card... will have a look tomorrow see what info is on there.

Do do you recall much about how you came to default on the account ? Charges piling up so you just left it and went elsewhere?

So so if you were doing your masters in 2009 did you open the student account in 2006 ?

Did the SAR turn up anything interesting - terms ? - agreement ? Default notice ? Transaction lists ( do they show where it changed from student to grad and is there a marked difference in the account charges etc from that point? )

I think get ducks in a row, work out your position before Restons send an introduction letter, so you're ready to respond. Excellent that you've already done the SAR so there's something to work with

**leehardy83** · 16th August 2017, 21:34:PM

Re: Urgent help needed please -"NOTIFICATION OF ACCOUNT TRANSFER TO RESTONS SOLICITOR

Thank you very much for your help. I have already done the SAR to HSBC to all that is here. I shall look through this enormous pile that is the SAR and get some answers over to you tomorrow.

I am aware they are just saying they passed it on to Restons but I am expecting the threaten of court action letter from Restons going by the posts ive researched on here in the past couple of days.

Thank you very much for your swift reply and I shall give you those answers tomorrow when I have them all at hand.

**Amethyst** · 16th August 2017, 21:49:PM

Re: Urgent help needed please -"NOTIFICATION OF ACCOUNT TRANSFER TO RESTONS SOLICITOR

Yep, sadly it is likely a precursor to court action, so best thing is to work out how you want to play it before it happens - proactive rather than reactive

xx

**leehardy83** · 17th August 2017, 18:59:PM

Re: Urgent help needed please -"NOTIFICATION OF ACCOUNT TRANSFER TO RESTONS SOLICITOR

Originally posted by Amethyst View Post

Yep, sadly it is likely a precursor to court action, so best thing is to work out how you want to play it before it happens - proactive rather than reactive

xx

Sure enough today a letter arrived from Restons Solicitors. I have summarised what the major parts of the letter say:

"We act n behalf of Arrow Global Limited who has referred your account to us for legal action. This means that we are instructed to issue court proceedings against you."

"Our client is prpeared to consider repayment of the balance by isntallments..... Please complete the financial statement and offer to us by Monday 21st August 2017(not left me much time)"

"Alternatively, please contact us by Monday 21st August 2017 to discuss your account..."

"Our client may be prepared to accept a short settlement of the balance dependant on your circumstances..."

@Amethyst - Here are some answers to your questions:
Do i believe i made the payments to Metropolitan? I believe i was making token payment of £1 to Metropilitan Services. According to the statement of account in the HSBC SAR it seems to indicate I made these token £1 payments from 13/10/2010 to 10/11/2011 by Standing Order Faster Payment.

When HSBC changed the account to a graduate account did they notify you / ask you etc and did you complain about it st the time? Yes, in the SAR there are countless letters where I am complaining to them that it is unfair that they changed my account to a graduate account despite my complaints and proof of letter that Im a student.

Do do you recall much about how you came to default on the account ?Charges piling up so you just left it and went elsewhere? Yes, I was studying for my Masters at the time and public funding was cut at the time leaving me unable to pay live and pay for fees. I wrote to HSBC for months before they eventually defaulted me in july 2010 telling them about my situation and that I was unable to keep up with payments. I asked them to freeze interest and charges and please accept a token payment until I graduate. They refused to do this and defaulted me on my overdraft, personal loan and credit card at the same time. I had to drop out of my Masters degree and suffered my first bout of depression and anxiety in my life that is also on record.

So so if you were doing your masters in 2009 did you open the student account in 2006 ? It was a student account since 2001. I changed courses and things during my undergraduate and then went on to an MSc so i was at uni a while.

Did the SAR turn up anything interesting - terms ? - agreement ? Default notice ? Transaction lists ( do they show where it changed from student to grad and is there a marked difference in the account charges etc from that point? )
It just seems to be:
•an enormous list of historical transactions
•all letters I sent them (including arguing about charges and changing my account to a grad account etc)
•It has details of all accounts including default dates, statements of account and diary comments of when we last made contact.
This is how I can see I supposedly was still paying £1 via standing order until 10/11/2011.

Questions I now have?

If i choose to defend this claim and they CCJ me, if i pay it in full within 30 days, will it be removed from my credit file? My concern is I am applying for a mortgage in the near future probably and this could hamper that.
Is this letter indicating they are about to send me a court summons? Is that the stage it is at? What should I do next? Should I call Restons Solicitors (I read that you cannot be considered to admit the debt verbally, only in writing)
If i feel i can afford it, should I try to come to an installment or make an offer of repayment. My concern here is they then try the same with the credit card and personal loan I had with them, and I end up having to pay a lot of money.
I am next planning to probably seek legal advice face-to-face. Would you advise this as my next port of call?
Should I post this in another manner or is this current thread fine as it is?

THANK YOU so much for your help and anyone who chooses to contribute to this thread. I am trying to remain calm and look at my options but am obviously concerned at the timing of this when I am thinking about getting a mortgage and my life is on the up.

**Amethyst** · 17th August 2017, 19:24:PM

Re: Urgent help needed please -"NOTIFICATION OF ACCOUNT TRANSFER TO RESTONS SOLICITOR

Shame about the £1 token payments, never mind.

Good to hear about the huge paper trail of complaints. Is there any sign of the original terms of the student account in that pile ?

Current student terms only say

Student Bank Account terms and conditions
1�
When you reach the end of your course (according to the date held in our system) we’ll
give you two months’ personal notice that we’ll convert your account to our Graduate Bank
Account (see below

Doesn't say anything about if you don't want to, or that you have to... We don't have any terms that cover it in the 'library' http://legalbeagles.info/forums/foru...-Terms-Library
One of the leaflets in there that does cover student account does say

List of qualifying courses
• Postgraduate degree (for example PHD, MBA,
MSc, PGCE, MPhil, M.ED, M.ST, LL.M).

Might be worth a quick look over Foster Burnell v Lloyds ( http://legalbeagles.info/judgment-fo...-bank-charges/ ) regarding unfair terms / charges as it seems your case would fit into that quite well, along with this upgrade of account that wasn't requested/required etc. [MENTION=551]pt2537[/MENTION] .

1. If i choose to defend this claim and they CCJ me, if i pay it in full within 30 days, will it be removed from my credit file? My concern is I am applying for a mortgage in the near future probably and this could hamper that.
2: Is this letter indicating they are about to send me a court summons? Is that the stage it is at? What should I do next? Should I call Restons Solicitors (I read that you cannot be considered to admit the debt verbally, only in writing)
3: If i feel i can afford it, should I try to come to an installment or make an offer of repayment. My concern here is they then try the same with the credit card and personal loan I had with them, and I end up having to pay a lot of money.
I am next planning to probably seek legal advice face-to-face. Would you advise this as my next port of call?
Should I post this in another manner or is this current thread fine as it is?

1. Yes if you pay within 28 days it won't be recorded on the register of judgments so your credit file should be unscathed.

2: Yes - probably a week after their deadline it is likely they will issue a court claim. No I wouldn't call Restons at least till you've worked out what to do. Just hang fire a bit. Calling / Writing same thing and writing is better as if any agreement is made on the phone you have no evidence if they backtrack.

3: Do you know if the amount they are chasing includes any of the card/loan debt ? Sometimes things get mashed together and called 'overdraft' when infact they are made up of various products held with the same bank.

4: This thread is fine

and yes we always would recommend proper legal advice - with all the documents and history of the case - on a forum of course we can only ever know what you tell us and you might not know what's important to mention ( hence we tend to bombard you with questions).

**leehardy83** · 17th August 2017, 20:05:PM

Re: Urgent help needed please -"NOTIFICATION OF ACCOUNT TRANSFER TO RESTONS SOLICITOR

Personal Student Terms - I haven't seen any but i'll look through the SAR and report back. It was opened in 2001, perhaps they do not have it.

No I wouldn't call Restons at least till you've worked out what to do. Just hang fire a bit. Calling / Writing same thing and writing is better as if any agreement is made on the phone you have no evidence if they backtrack. - The debtline people I spoke to for a while today said that speaking to Restons on the phone would not indicate admitting the debt. You disagree with this then? I am just worried by their tight deadlines of mentioning Monday August 21st. I wanted to indicate that I am at least not ignoring them. Do advise if you agree I should do something else / not contact them.

Do you know if the amount they are chasing includes any of the card/loan debt ? No, they are 3 seperate debts that were all defaulted. Interestingly, I made no token payments within 6 years for the other 2 products - the credit card and personal loan. They are currently with Capquest and Robinson Way. My concern is if i come to a settlement with these guys, it encourages the credit card and personal loan to try the same. They are both a fairly chunky £1500 and £2700 respectively.

My new questions:
1. Can you point me towards anywhere I can get local legal advice / representation for this? I am aware of your sister site justbeagles as i've just been looking on it.
2. What would be your next move if you were me and whilst I am only working from home (so have more spare time than the average full time worker), what would you spend your time doing in the next few days about this situation if you were me?
3. Is there any reason you think I'd be better off just paying them a settlement figure or by installments (ie because it could scupper the mortgage application I plan to make in the next few months) or would that not matter because at the worst, I lose this in court and pay the figure and therefore the CCJ is removed within 30 days?

Thanks for all this super advise Amethyst

**leehardy83** · 18th August 2017, 10:56:AM

Re: Urgent help needed please -"NOTIFICATION OF ACCOUNT TRANSFER TO RESTONS SOLICITOR

[MENTION=6]Amethyst[/MENTION]. Hi, did you get a chance to see any of my answers last night. I have a ltitle update on them anyway below:

Personal Student Terms - Looked againt this morning and cannot see any. Perhaps its because it became a student account in 2001.

No I wouldn't call Restons at least till you've worked out what to do. Just hang fire a bit. Calling / Writing same thing and writing is better as if any agreement is made on the phone you have no evidence if they backtrack. - The debtline people I spoke to for a while today said that speaking to Restons on the phone would not indicate admitting the debt. You disagree with this then? I am just worried by their tight deadlines of mentioning Monday August 21st. I wanted to indicate that I am at least not ignoring them. Do advise if you agree I should do something else / not contact them.

Do you know if the amount they are chasing includes any of the card/loan debt ? No, they are 3 seperate debts that were all defaulted. Interestingly, I made no token payments within 6 years for the other 2 products - the credit card and personal loan. They are currently with Capquest and Robinson Way. My concern is if i come to a settlement with these guys, it encourages the credit card and personal loan to try the same. They are both a fairly chunky £1500 and £2700 respectively.

My new questions:
1. Can you point me towards anywhere I can get local legal advice / representation for this? I am aware of your sister site justbeagles as i've just been looking on it.
2. What would be your next move if you were me and whilst I am only working from home (so have more spare time than the average full time worker), what would you spend your time doing in the next few days about this situation if you were me?
3. Is there any reason you think I'd be better off just paying them a settlement figure or by installments (ie because it could scupper the mortgage application I plan to make in the next few months) or would that not matter because at the worst, I lose this in court and pay the figure and therefore the CCJ is removed within 30 days?
4. If they can see the last token payment was 11/2011, does that constitute all the proof they need and hence years of my asking Arrow Global (before they passed it to Restons) to prove that I owe the debt is irrelevant?

If I am likely to lose in court due to the above, I assume I should consider offering them a payment.

Would like to find myself some legal representation ASAP so please point me towards any resources you know of.

Thank you.

Thanks for all this super advise Amethyst

**Amethyst** · 18th August 2017, 11:46:AM

Re: Urgent help needed please -"NOTIFICATION OF ACCOUNT TRANSFER TO RESTONS SOLICITOR

4. If they can see the last token payment was 11/2011, does that constitute all the proof they need and hence years of my asking Arrow Global (before they passed it to Restons) to prove that I owe the debt is irrelevant?

Pretty much, for time barring purposes anyway. You can include your constant requests for evidence/documentation in your defence and any application you might make to strike out/ get summary judgment on the claim if they continue to fail to provide documents.

Legal Advice - there's two good firms on here [MENTION=551]pt2537[/MENTION] and [MENTION=7765]Joanna C[/MENTION]; (if you click on their names there's more info in their profiles) I don't know where in the country you are, so face to face wise, you want someone who is experienced with consumer debt litigation, and preferably who, when you mention potentially defending on unfair terms and bank charges don't immediatley quote the OFT v Abbey case and say no chance. However it's not a set on defence and only really suitable if you want to take the risk of losing.

I think there should be more terms relating to the student account that give them the right to change it without consultation to a graduate account. Also need to compare the terms of both accounts to see if the graduate account was actually more detrimental in terms ( higher charges etc ) than the student account and check through transaction lists to see if it is obvious that changing from student to graduate account was the start of the downslide in your financial circumstances.
In that SAR are there replies to your complaints about the change? Overdrafts are the hardest to defend on as you don't have the same arguments on non provision of documents like CC's and loans, so I'm just thinking out loud really.

With the Card & Loan - do you recall when you defaulted on those ? 2010 too ? If you've not been paying token payments and they aren't on your credit file then it could be they are statute barred. Have you made any acknowledgement of those debts at all ? You could send CCA requests to them but if they are silent I might let them stay that way and be reactive if they start up.

You can also look at assignment of the debt, from HSBC to Arrow - did they sell it direct to Arrow, were you notified properly, can they show the chain of assignment and evidence they have the right to claim the debt from you.

3. Is there any reason you think I'd be better off just paying them a settlement figure or by installments (ie because it could scupper the mortgage application I plan to make in the next few months) or would that not matter because at the worst, I lose this in court and pay the figure and therefore the CCJ is removed within 30 days?

Well, it would be less stress if you can afford it and you might be able to get a good settlement figure if you get in before any court action - maybe 40/50%. The court claim wouldn't affect your credit file if you successfully defended, or if you lost, but you'd then have to pay the full amount plus any costs within 28 days. TBH if you can afford a 50% settlement then you could get that confirmed in writing , pay it off, and that would be the end of it, and potentially save you months of dealing with litigation. I guess it depends how strongly you feel that the way HSBC acted when you were having difficulties has affected you and whether not having to pay anything back to them would make up for it/give you some satisfaction or would just be a phyricc victory ( ie they won't care one way or the other as its not in their hands anyway )

They have only just transferred the debt to Restons so you should get a hello letter from Restons really before they do a pre-action letter. It is, though, likely they would bring court claim before November to keep it from becoming time barred.

If you do get a claim you'd basically respond by sending a request for information under the CPR 31.14 for probably agreement/contract, default notice and notice of assignment... then see what goes from there before putting in a defence. Once a claim is issued it is less likely you'd get a decent settlement.

**leehardy83** · 18th August 2017, 12:17:PM

Re: Urgent help needed please -"NOTIFICATION OF ACCOUNT TRANSFER TO RESTONS SOLICITOR

Thanks again for the reply Amethyst. OK - I thought the fact that they cant produce any of the documentation I have found that people ask for with overdrafts (via research on here) but will consider that irrelevant for now as I made that stupid token payment in November 2011. I do have a list of the requests I've sent them without being sent any documentation.

In that SAR are there replies to your complaints about the change? Looking through the SAR they eventually agreed to change it back to a student account but I was soon defaulted on all the accounts anyway after they refused to freeze interest and charges after I'd kept telling them I was in financial difficulties during my MASTERS

With the Card & Loan -Both are defaulted at the same time. July 2010. The difference with these two is that I was not making token payments on them in the past 6 years. Not according to the statement of account anyway.

The only thing the SAR brings up for these 2 is that there seems to say "Letter In" on the personal loan in Nov 2011 as though I sent them a letter at that date and hence acknowledged the debt. That letter is not in the SAR anyway though.

Robinson Way have the personal loan and are currently chasing me for it. I keep asking them to provide me proof using the templates on here and they keep replying saying they will not enter repetitive communications with me via internet based templates.

Interestingly, I've heard Robinson Way refer to this debt on more than one occasion as an overdraft when I know for a fact this debt is a personal loan. They definitely have their information wrong in that respect. I was going to write a seperate thread on the Robinson Way loan debt to not get it mixed up with this thread.

Summary - I may consider offering a settlement figure for this one to risk not losing and having to pay the full amount plus court costs. I could pay those too but not ideal when i'm looking at a mortgage.

If the credit card and personal loan attempt to CCJ me in the coming months, I think I can say the credit card is statute barred and I am yet to see any of the documentation for the personal loan so don't believe they have yet proved that I owe the debt.

Thank you very much for your help Amethyst!

Lee

**leehardy83** · 18th August 2017, 12:22:PM

Re: Urgent help needed please -"NOTIFICATION OF ACCOUNT TRANSFER TO RESTONS SOLICITOR

Also, one thing I forgot to ask. If I try to ask for a settlement of 40 or 50%, is there anything you recommend / tactic people have used to say to them so that they do not try make me agree to pay a higher amount? Obviously, the lower the agreed amount, the better.

**leehardy83** · 30th August 2017, 15:40:PM

Re: Urgent help needed please -"NOTIFICATION OF ACCOUNT TRANSFER TO RESTONS SOLICITOR

******

**leehardy83** · 31st August 2017, 13:39:PM

Re: Urgent help needed please -"NOTIFICATION OF ACCOUNT TRANSFER TO RESTONS SOLICITOR

[MENTION=6]Amethyst[/MENTION]. Im sorry if you're busy mate. I have until Monday 4th September to speak to these guys. I offered them 40% of the balance (to clear in full) today and the best they go to is 90%. Any reason for her stance in playing that hard?

My other alternative is to pay £190 a month. I also feel that is a LOT of money. I didnt expect Restons to stance to be like this? Any advice? Should i try and negotiate again? I really didnt expect them to be this difficult if i wanted to settle it before court.

**Amethyst** · 31st August 2017, 13:41:PM

Re: Urgent help needed please -"NOTIFICATION OF ACCOUNT TRANSFER TO RESTONS SOLICITOR

Hiya xx Good timing - Let me have a little read back see where we're at xxx

**leehardy83** · 31st August 2017, 13:45:PM

Re: Urgent help needed please -"NOTIFICATION OF ACCOUNT TRANSFER TO RESTONS SOLICITOR

Thanks mate. With this one...i do think i have a leg to stand on here but i dont really want the hassle of court so wanted to make a settlement. i offered 40% and the best they say they can go to is 90% or 190 a month. I have until Mon 4th to reply.

I assume at that point they issue court proceedings. Is there still time for them to offer me less like 50%?

My other battle with Robinson Way http://legalbeagles.info/forums/show...245#post748245 is one that i do want to contest. Its the one that is a flexiloan but they keep calling an overdraft for some reason.

Urgent help needed please -"NOTIFICATION OF ACCOUNT TRANSFER TO RESTONS SOLICITORS"