Poor service from solicitors

[Bomber99]

Hi all
i employed a firm of solicitors to challenge all my debts. All 6 debts were challenged under s77 or s 78 of the credit consumer act. None of the creditors supplied a credit agreement. The firm of solicitors deemed 4 unenforceable due to the creditors no supplying agreement. 2 were deemed as enforceable due to the debt still being owned by the original creditor. I disputed these two debts with the solicitors, but they remained of the opinion these debts are enforceable. I put a complaint in stating they have given me false information because the debts cannot be enforceable without the agreements, but again they are adamant these debts are enforceable.
The debts were for loans and credit cards

As well as this I also put in a complaint regarding a letter they sent to me. It was in regards one of the 4 debts they have deemed unenforceable.
In the letter it states; arrow global have informed us they have no civil rights at this present time to enforce the debt and if arrow global continue to contact you we would deem this as harassment and you should contact the police and show them this letter.
My concern is as arrow global have made no such statements that are within the letter. if I was to show the letter to the police I may be open to a charge of given the police false information or wasting police time.

I have done a SAR with the firm of solicitors and the emails sent within the firm show the were prepared to send me documents just to satisfy me and also pacify me when I was complaining about the two debts they deemed enforceable.
My question should I take this further.
I must also state when I received the SAR it had other persons documents included in it

[pt2537]

Hi all
i employed a firm of solicitors to challenge all my debts. All 6 debts were challenged under s77 or s 78 of the credit consumer act. None of the creditors supplied a credit agreement. The firm of solicitors deemed 4 unenforceable due to the creditors no supplying agreement. 2 were deemed as enforceable due to the debt still being owned by the original creditor. I disputed these two debts with the solicitors, but they remained of the opinion these debts are enforceable. I put a complaint in stating they have given me false information because the debts cannot be enforceable without the agreements, but again they are adamant these debts are enforceable.
The debts were for loans and credit cards

As well as this I also put in a complaint regarding a letter they sent to me. It was in regards one of the 4 debts they have deemed unenforceable.
In the letter it states; arrow global have informed us they have no civil rights at this present time to enforce the debt and if arrow global continue to contact you we would deem this as harassment and you should contact the police and show them this letter.
My concern is as arrow global have made no such statements that are within the letter. if I was to show the letter to the police I may be open to a charge of given the police false information or wasting police time.

I have done a SAR with the firm of solicitors and the emails sent within the firm show the were prepared to send me documents just to satisfy me and also pacify me when I was complaining about the two debts they deemed enforceable.
My question should I take this further.
I must also state when I received the SAR it had other persons documents included in it

You what!"!!! Harrison v Link Financial, its an unfair relationship if you get contacted by phone after telling them not to!!

[Amethyst]

When you say solicitors - are they actually a solicitors firm regulated by the SRA?

What service had you engaged them to undertake ? And on what payment basis ?

The creditors that haven't ( yet ) complied with the CCA requests - have they written off the debts ? or are they on hold until such time as they locate/provide the agreements ? Had you already defaulted on the debts ?

The sending other people's data in your SAR is reason for a complaint to the firm and the ICO. The rest, could be grounds for complaint to the SRA, but really depends on what basis you engaged them. When you say prepared to send you documents to pacify you, do you mean actual documents from the lenders or that they'd create documents ?

The CCA applies as much to the original creditors as it does to the debt purchasers, of course.

[Bomber99]

When you say solicitors - are they actually a solicitors firm regulated by the SRA?

Yes they are regulated by SRA

What service had you engaged them to undertake ? And on what payment basis ?

I engaged the firm to challenge my debts at a cost of £3000

I was introduced to this firm of solicitors in 2016 by the debt management company who were dealing with my creditors at this particular time. The DMC decided they were no longer going to carry out advising and dealing with debts and thought I would benefit by employing the solicitors to challenge my debts.



The creditors that haven't ( yet ) complied with the CCA requests - have they written off the debts ? or are they on hold until such time as they locate/provide the agreements ? Had you already defaulted on the debts ?


No debts written off, debts all on hold until creditors provide agreements with the exception of one which does not comply with s78 CCA


All debts have defaulted but none are statue barred


The sending other people's data in your SAR is reason for a complaint to the firm and the ICO. The rest, could be grounds for complaint to the SRA, but really depends on what basis you engaged them. When you say prepared to send you documents to pacify you, do you mean actual documents from the lenders or that they'd create documents ?


Company have reported breech of data to ICO

The documents they were prepared to send me were letters stating the debt is unenforceable and the creditors has stated they have no civil right to enforce this debt.

The manager in the challenge debt team office sent a email to an apprentice solicitor asking if she could just send these letters out to me in the hope it would satisfy me. (by the way these are template letters).
This of course is at the time I was complaining they had not challenge the two debts they deemed enforceable to my satisfaction.

When they deemed the two debts enforceable they also advised me to set up payment lans to pay the debts back.

the firm of solicitors is a multi national company and I feel extremely let down by them.

during there complaints procedure they have offered a refund of my fees, but I feel there advice and actions needs looking into more seriously.


The CCA applies as much to the original creditors as it does to the debt purchasers, of course.

[Amethyst]

I feel there advice and actions needs looking into more seriously.

I think so too.

Did the Debt Management Company you were with go into administration ? shortly before/after they sold you over (sorry, recommended you ) to this solicitors?
Was the £3k fee around the same amount your were paying annually through your DMP ?
( Just checking if it's a similar issue to a couple firms that went under around 2014/15)

A CCA request is a simple letter with a £1 statutory fee. If they respond with an agreement that complies ( complete with prescribed terms and whatnot) then its enforceable, if they can't get a copy of the agreement it's unenforceable until such time as they can. Not entirely sure it's something I'd pay £3k for.

Did you get terms of the service or full details of what the service was in a client care letter etc? ( ie. what was 'promised' for the £3k fee ?)

[Bomber99]

Did the Debt Management Company you were with go into administration ? shortly before/after they sold you over (sorry, recommended you ) to this solicitors?
Was the £3k fee around the same amount your were paying annually through your DMP ?
( Just checking if it's a similar issue to a couple firms that went under around 2014/15)

Not sure if it was before or after.

Yes it was same amount

A CCA request is a simple letter with a £1 statutory fee. If they respond with an agreement that complies ( complete with prescribed terms and whatnot) then its enforceable, if they can't get a copy of the agreement it's unenforceable until such time as they can. Not entirely sure it's something I'd pay £3k for.

If I knew then what I know now I certainly wouldn’t have paid that fee but at that time I suppose I was panicking.

Did you get terms of the service or full details of what the service was in a client care letter etc? ( ie. what was 'promised' for the £3k fee ?)

yes

(1) scope of work; you have engaged us to, confirm and challenge the enforceability of your debt to your creditors, by, correspondence, negotiation and arbitration where required

(4) we will exercise reasonable competence,skill and diligence in the work we undertake for you

I think the DMC was Lawrence charlton

[Amethyst]

Just having a mooch about someone elsewhere said this

Actually just been on the phone to Lawrence Charlton who have offered me a year long deal with Kingfisher solicitors at £150 a month. The hard selling guy on the phone said they have a success rate of around 80-90% of "significantly reducing or writing off debts".

and

Their pitch is that they are "World class" solicitors (I wouldn't be in a DMP for the year) who would work on my behalf to write off a load of debt after which I could go back to a regular DMP for whatever is remaining and pay it all off a lot quicker.

does that ring any bells with you? same 'solicitors' ?
Do your solicitors have an SRA ID ?

[pt2537]

When you say solicitors - are they actually a solicitors firm regulated by the SRA?

Yes they are regulated by SRA

What service had you engaged them to undertake ? And on what payment basis ?

I engaged the firm to challenge my debts at a cost of £3000

I was introduced to this firm of solicitors in 2016 by the debt management company who were dealing with my creditors at this particular time. The DMC decided they were no longer going to carry out advising and dealing with debts and thought I would benefit by employing the solicitors to challenge my debts.



The creditors that haven't ( yet ) complied with the CCA requests - have they written off the debts ? or are they on hold until such time as they locate/provide the agreements ? Had you already defaulted on the debts ?


No debts written off, debts all on hold until creditors provide agreements with the exception of one which does not comply with s78 CCA


All debts have defaulted but none are statue barred


The sending other people's data in your SAR is reason for a complaint to the firm and the ICO. The rest, could be grounds for complaint to the SRA, but really depends on what basis you engaged them. When you say prepared to send you documents to pacify you, do you mean actual documents from the lenders or that they'd create documents ?


Company have reported breech of data to ICO

The documents they were prepared to send me were letters stating the debt is unenforceable and the creditors has stated they have no civil right to enforce this debt.

The manager in the challenge debt team office sent a email to an apprentice solicitor asking if she could just send these letters out to me in the hope it would satisfy me. (by the way these are template letters).
This of course is at the time I was complaining they had not challenge the two debts they deemed enforceable to my satisfaction.

When they deemed the two debts enforceable they also advised me to set up payment lans to pay the debts back.

the firm of solicitors is a multi national company and I feel extremely let down by them.

during there complaints procedure they have offered a refund of my fees, but I feel there advice and actions needs looking into more seriously.


The CCA applies as much to the original creditors as it does to the debt purchasers, of course.

S78 cannot ever lead to a debt being written off, that is fundamentally wrong. It can leave the debt unenforceable while the breach continues but that is it.

You should have got solicitors on board who deal with these cases and have a track record of doing so.

[Amethyst]

Unfortunately there are a plethora of these companies about doing the same 'non' thing.

The Challenge

The aim of the Debt Write Off process is to confirm and challenge the validity and enforceability of debts arising from Consumer Credit Agreements. We will also review and challenge any unfairness associated with the debt and any poor lending/enforcement activities.

The Solution

We will review the documents provided by creditors against any relevant legislation, case law and regulatory duties the creditors are subject to. Upon further review (which may take anywhere from 2-10 months) we will issue a complaint in regards to any issues we have identified. These may then be referred to the Financial Ombudsman for judgement if necessary.

[Bomber99]

Hi Amethyst

you said

Just having a mooch about someone elsewhere said this
Actually just been on the phone to Lawrence Charlton who have offered me a year long deal with Kingfisher solicitors at £150 a month. The hard selling guy on the phone said they have a success rate of around 80-90% of "significantly reducing or writing off debts".
and
Their pitch is that they are "World class" solicitors (I wouldn't be in a DMP for the year) who would work on my behalf to write off a load of debt after which I could go back to a regular DMP for whatever is remaining and pay it all off a lot quicker.
does that ring any bells with you? same 'solicitors' ?

most certainly does, same hard sell but not the same solicitors

Do your solicitors have an SRA ID ?

They do
Can I email you their number?

I am thinking of going to SRA with a complaint that they knowingly gave me false information regarding my debts. But the thing that worries me most is, they were telling me to show their letter to the police if a certain creditor started to harass me, but in this letter were statements supposedly coming from the creditor. The solicitors have agreed the creditor never gave them any of the statements, but my concern is, if I had showed the police the letter I may have been charged with giving the police false information or wasting police time.

The wording in their letter is,

we have been investigating the above account and have since been informed by (creditor) that the debt is unenforceable against you. This is an excellent result.

The creditor has confirmed they have no civil right (at this stage) to pursue you for the debt so they cannot take any court action to recover monies from you.

However, dispute the debt being unenforceable, the creditor has stated they will continue to contact you. This contact could be constituted as being harassment. We will endeavour to send correspondence to the creditor stating that any such contact may be a criminal offence but we would advise you to contact the police and show them this correspondence.

We must repeat that the creditor Cannot pursue you via a court process for this debt at this stage. We cannot, however, stop this debt appearing on your credit file.

As you can see they were saying the creditor has informed them about certain things and I have evidence that the creditors made no such statements.

Would you consider they gave me false information something which goes against The Solicitors Code of Conduct.

[Amethyst]

Course - admin@legalbeagles.info xxx

While emailing - if you can do a pic of letter from sols ( blank personal details), and the letter that the creditor HAD sent to the sols - to see if they blatantly lied or just slightly misrepresented the situation ... I'm going to dig out a couple standard ' unenforceable at the moment ' letters for ref. Here's a general one

"We have been unable to get the information requested from the original lender. If this information ever becomes available to us we will complete your request, but until we are able to supply this your account is unenforceable. This means we are not permitted to obtain a judgement or decree against you in Court, but we can still request that you repay your outstanding balance. We will still try to contact you to help you repay this outstanding balance. If this account is on your credit file it can affect your ability to get credit, obtain a mortgage or a mobile phone contract. Repaying this account could have a positive effect on your credit file as it will show that you are making regular payments. We would like to talk to you about a Personal Payment Plan where you can arrange to repay your account at a rate that you can afford. For more information on what could happen now that we've been unable to reply to your CCA request there is further information available on the National Debtline website on their 'Credit agreements - getting information' factsheet."

[Bomber99]

Hi Amethyst

The creditor never sent a unenforceable letter to the solicitors, that’s why I believe the solicitors gave me false information when they sent their letter out with the statements they were saying the creditor had made.

I will email you the letter the solicitors sent me tomorrow along with their SRA number

[Amethyst]

Okay, well, good gracious.

First they are a regulated solicitors firm. So that's all fine. It sounds like they might have taken on a paralegal assistant or somesuch who has taken on this side of the business, basically chucking out CCA requests and passing on the replies ( or making stuff up as they go along ) or they may have gotten involved with the 'scheme' being flogged about...see bottom of this post (I've separated it as it isn't directly related to your issue).

during there complaints procedure they have offered a refund of my fees,

of the whole £3k you paid them? I would take it if there's no terms of confidentiality etc attached to the offer?

So, it's a little odd, but the essence is that they have stated a creditor has specifically stated something to them but are unable/unwilling to send you a copy of what the creditor actually said.

Even reading through the complaint response, I still have no idea whether the creditor did or didn't actually say anything to the Solicitors. I really can't get my head around the solicitors behaviour here at all, it's quite bizarre - I'll type out a couple excerpts in a while.

I'm not sure the internal email disclosed asks them to fabricate any documents though - I'm not sure if you received a copy of any reply to that email, but I suspect it would have said " I can't as one doesn't exist / misplaced it " or similar.

The only way to find out what actually happened is to SAR the creditor specifically requesting any comms with third partys acting on your behalf / re your account etc. However you don't really want to nudge them into looking harder at your account at the moment so really depends on the actual status of the account - it won't be statute barred as you were paying them via a DMP ( although I don't know if you actually have any evidence that the DMC was actually making any payments to that creditor?)

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By the by, I knew it rang bells, I did actually make a complaint to the SRA, MOJ and FCA about the solicitors in your case, and a number of other firms doing the same thing, back in August 2017. They are so opaque though although I had responses that it was being investigated I have no idea what happened with them. These were the one you are dealing with ( which I won't name), Seth Lovis, Fairpoint, Clarke Green and Jonas Financial - Seth Lovis and Fairpoint have now gone into Administration. Clarke Green has dissolved. Jonas still seem to be an active company but their website goes to some data farm. There were also Abbey Solicitors,

Compare Finance ltd, G

LM Legal ( Rowan Rose ) and Consumer Reclaim Ltd ( Queensbeck ) which I haven't looked into recently.

However you might find this document published by Jonas of interest. Debt In Contention Legal Audit Presentation 8th March 2017 Master (1) (1).pdf

They seem to be CONSUMER DEBT LEGAL SERVICES LIMITED (08378179) now.

[Bomber99]

Hi Amethyst
thank you for your response.

The document published by Jonas makes for an interesting read.

I made a mistake about the internal email. The internal email was in regards the 2 debts they had deemed ‘enforceable’ so I presume because I was complaining about their decision, no1 was asking no2 to send me the ‘unenforceable letters’ just to try and satisfy me and hopefully stop me complaining lol

In the DSAR I received it mentions Paralegal but I am not sure what it concerns.


can I email you their offer of a settlement.

[Amethyst]

Course xxx

It might be worth you doing a SAR to Arrow Global - What is the actual current status of that debt?