PCP balloon payments

[Amethyst]

Posted on behalf of new user.



Good Morning

I'm in dire need of some help/advice.

I bought a car on PCP and when the contract came to an end they sent me a letter informing me that the balloon payment is almost due for payment but the letter stated that 'should you wish to keep the vehicle' they can offer us a refinance option etc. We replied that we wished to return the car and end the contract. The bank did not reply and then all hell broke loose.

Now they have taken us to court and their solicitors have said that that letter is not valid as we had some missed/late payments and due to this we did not keep to the T&C's.

Since the letter was sent to us in 2009 and the contract was taken out in 2005 where do we stand. If the bank didn't wish to keep to the contract surely they wouldn't have sent us that letter. I did inform them of our difficulties and offered solutions at the time of our financial difficulty but no replies came.

Could someone offer us some guidance and let me have the legal jargon so that we can tell their solicitors what we have found, as I can't afford to have a solicitor at the moment.

[Guest]

Re: PCP balloon payments

This sounds like a common ploy that creditors use in order to short circuit the hirer's right to terminate a HP agreement.

what they do is say that the account had already been terminated previously on default and so the option to voluntarily terminate is no longer available.

If they had terminated the agreement on default then they would have had to have issued a default notice and subsequent termination notice, if these documents were not sent the the agreement was not ended and you are perfectly within your rights to terminate yourself under section 99 of the consumer credit act.

Really we need more detail, particularly, when the payments were missed and the amount due at that time, also the total sums paid and the total amount due under the agreement.

A time -line would also be useful.