Bought a car with outstanding finance, finance company going to repossess it

[R0b]

You would have to make an application to the court for an interim injunction and to deliver up the car pending the outcome of your claim. Where you make an application for an injunction, you need to also file a claim as soon as possible after that. It is possible to get an urgent injunction but in any event
injunction hearings can be heard as soon as 7 days providing all relevant documentation if correctly filed and served on Money Barn.

You may be wise to see if you can speak to a solicitor and get a fixed fee for making and issuing the application for an injunction. I've also tagged pt2537 who might be able to assist you in the first instance.

If injunction isn't the route you want to go down, then it would be the usual letter before action and then issuing a claim for delivery up and/or damages for trespass to the vehicle.

In the meantime, you might want to draft up an email to Money Barn and put them on notice of your intended legal action (whichever route you take). Their website lists a number of email addresses, presumably it is the recoveries email but I would probably suggest you also copy in customer service and complaints one - https://www.moneybarn.com/contact-us/

Just so they take notice, the subject line should be headed something along the lines of "Urgent: Immediate Legal Action Against Money Barn" followed by any reference number and details of what has happened and the intended action you are going to take.

It could very well be the case that the person with the tow truck is simply bluffing and waiting for you to hand over the keys or maybe there is another recovery vehicle on its way. Either way, I can't see how Money Barn are going to win this one and will most likely look to settle if a claim is issued. This is exactly the reason why you needed that letter from the seller as evidence in case something like this happened.

End of the day, if Money Barn were so confident of their ownership, they would have threatened you with legal action but they appear to be going through the back door, in the hope (perhaps) you'll do nothing about it. I don't like Money Barn, they are very underhand.

Also tagging Amethyst in case I am not around tomorrow.

[2222]

If you don't want the car taken, you could wrap up warmly and spend the night in it. They definitely shouldn't take it with you sitting in it, but take a phone just in case.

[hello405]

They weren't bluffing. The car is gone. So what is the fastest thing we can do to win the car back? We need it for work. We have a signed statement from the previous owner plus his receipt, as well as our receipt. How do we find a solicitor and initiate proceedings? Is there any point in contacting Moneybarn? They seem intractable.
Can you imagine going from working at Citizens Advice to Moneybarn? I can't imagine what sort of person this woman is who is in charge of this. She didn't even reply to our last letter.

[2222]

If you need a car, should you hire one?

[hello405]

If you need a car, should you hire one?

Thanks. Very helpful.

[R0b]

Do you have any legal expenses cover?

[2222]

Thanks. Very helpful.

Not sure whether you are being ironic, but my point was that, if you are going to court anyway, you may as well crystallise your losses into ones that have an obvious monetary value, rather than having the inconvenience of struggling to work on 3 buses or whatever would be involved, for which you would get no compensation.

[R0b]

Just taking a step back a moment, applying for an injunction is going to be expensive in the first place and the you also have to issue a claim as soon as possible after the injunction which might leave you a bit strapped for cash depending in your circumstances.

2222 is right although I would say cost of travel would be recoverrecovbut the difficulty is actually quantifying that amount. If you cant quantify then it becomes an unspecified claim leaving it up to the court to decide and the cost to file unspecified claims is £10,000.

Rather than hiring a car and in lieu of an injunction, you may want to limitoand show you mitigated losses by just buying a very cheap run around, tax and insure it and the claim those costs back as losses which can be quantified. Sure there will be some losses for alternative travel until a car can be found ut if you can afford to buy a car, it could be a cheap fix until this is resolved.

I would expect it to take at least 6 months before it gets to court so it's not going to be fast. Also in my last post I would suggest you put Money Barn on notice but before you do that you need to work out how you want to approach this.

I'd also be inclined to claim extra compensation for aggravated damages on the basis that they have deliberately arranged for someone to remove the car rather and depriving you of the right to use it but potentially causing hardship instead of taking the civil claim route.

[hello405]

Do you have any legal expenses cover?

We paid for the legal cover with our insurance, but I think that just means that they will represent us if we get sued in a car accident.

I'm still very unclear on how to enact our next steps. As in, literally what do we do next? Go to the Law Society Find a Solicitor and hire someone and have them do it? Or is there something we can do ourselves? I am not from the UK and I do not know the procedure for this sort of thing here.

I am looking for concrete steps to take.

I feel like I'm caught in a Kafkaesque British nightmare in which you can buy a car with the paperwork in one person's name and someone else can say they own it and without providing any evidence of that fact, turn up at your house and take it. We requested information from DVLA a month ago and still haven't heard back from them, so it's literally impossible for us to find out who owns the car that we thought we owned. But actually, if you look at this page https://www.gov.uk/get-vehicle-information-from-dvla, DVLA can't even provide information on owners, just "registered keepers." This is insane.

[R0b]

There are a number of ways you can do this as we have mentioned in our previous posts. If money is not an issue, then go find a solicitor who will be able to write to moneybarn and demand the car be returned otherwise there will be consequences.

If you are limitedlby your means, then you either do it yourself in which case an injunction could be costly alone, or you mitigate the issues and buy a cheap car then recover the cost by issuing a claim against money barn. Your claim would be trespass to goods and or conversion and or delivery up of the vehicle.

You need to choose which route you want to take and will assist you wherever we possibly can.

[hello405]

There are a number of ways you can do this as we have mentioned in our previous posts. If money is not an issue, then go find a solicitor who will be able to write to moneybarn and demand the car be returned otherwise there will be consequences.

If you are limitedlby your means, then you either do it yourself in which case an injunction could be costly alone, or you mitigate the issues and buy a cheap car then recover the cost by issuing a claim against money barn. Your claim would be trespass to goods and or conversion and or delivery up of the vehicle.

You need to choose which route you want to take and will assist you wherever we possibly can.

Thank you for your help. Do you have any idea what sort of costs we would be looking at for the various options?

[2222]

You should ask a couple of solicitors what they would charge, but my guess is around £2-3k. If you go it alone, your costs would just be the court fees, which amount to hundreds. If the lenders defend the action, their costs will be similar, no doubt. I'm not sure how much the car is worth, but you may reasonably not feel like being bullied, even though the combined legal fees could exceed the value of the car.

The court has different tracks, and the expenses position in the small claims track is that you cannot claim your costs back, except to a very, very limited extent. This works in your favour if you represent yourself, as you won't be at risk of paying the lender's costs if you lose. As long as your claim is just for money and is under £10k, this will probably be allocated to the small claims track. It's up to the court to allocate, and you get quite a way into the case before that happens.

Tactically, small claims works for you, if you are unrepresented. It means that the lender is looking at forking out thousands in costs defending a claim of a few thousand, and they lose those costs even if they win the case. So, hopefully, they'll stop being so arrogant and offer to settle early on.

The case could go to fast track, in which case the loser pays all of their own costs and most of the winner's. If it goes to fast track, you'd be better off being represented in my view.

If you ask for an injunction, this may alter the allocation decision, but I am not sure. It's likely someone here knows the answer to that.

[hello405]

The car was bought for £3000 and is worth something in that range. So am I understanding correctly that it will end up in the small claims track whether or not we have a solicitor? In which case we wouldn't be liable for their legal fees regardless? (but we won't be able to claim our solicitor fees, either?)

The problem really is that they know our entire case, ie. they know all of the information and evidence we possess and we know nothing about theirs. We don't know the name of their client, or when that client had the finance order or whether they tried to recover it from the last buyer. We know nothing. So it's very hard for me to assess our case and likelihood of winning to make a decision of what to do.

But frankly, in this moment I feel like I'd rather go bankrupt than give Moneybarn anything, so maybe we should just hire a solicitor and get started. I guess there's no chance of a no win-no fee thing here?

[hello405]

Are you still there R0b?

[R0b]

Hello,

Sorry I'm not always around an weekends hence the lack of response.

Nobody can ever guarantee a win at court but based on the value of your claim I would say that it is likely it will fall into the small claims track. Theres nothing complex about your case and ultimately it is up to them to prove that the person you bought the car from was not an innocent purchaser.

Have you decyoud which route you want to take? The longer you sit on it the more likely MoneyBarn are to sell the vehicle and your only cause of action would be damages. Either way, you need to be prompt in putting them on notice about your intention to issue a claim by sending a letter before action.

Also it would be helpful to know how long you've had the vehicle and how much use you got out of it.