Claim form

[Guest]

Received a claim form from PRA Group regarding a Lloyds credit card debt.Payments have been made throughl payplan but due to no work and financial difficulties this has stopped . Request has been made for ccj from claimant which could be a problem for re employment. I have defended by acknowledging I had a contract with Lloyds but had non with the claimants and have requested the original contract, deed of assignment and I also stated I did not receive any notice of assignment which they claimed to send. Pra group sent me a generic account sale agreement for debts between themselves and Lloyds for sale of debts and various letter templates stating that is the deed of assignment and later sent a letter they claim was from Lloyds bank dated 2017 which I never received notifying me of the assignment. I noticed that this letter bore the same contents and same signature as one of the letter templates that were in the account sale of agreement pack. I believe that the letter is not authentic. PRA have informed me they believe they have strong prospects of being successful and intend to proceed with the claim.They have stated they will pay for the consent order and I could make an arrangement of repayments directly with them to avoid judgment. I don't believe there is any valid assignment . From this point could you kindly give an opinion on how I could respond to PRA's letter ?

[Celestine]

Hi and welcome

Although assignment is a very important element of debt sale, it is not the strongest argument on its own when disputing the sale of an account. £4.7 Billion of debt is assigned in the UK every year. We agree that it is disconcerting for an old account to pop up with a new owner, but once you become familiar with the industry, you realise it is very usual. Some would even say preferable because the banks were pretty dreadful at debt collection.
Defending the claim on the basis that you had a contract with Lloyds but not with PRA will not end well I'm afraid. You need a lot more than that.
However with all cases like this becoming 'stayed' currently, it is likely this will sit on hold for a while in any event.
Have they complied with your CCA request? What year was the Lloyds credit card opened?
We just want to make sure you are focussing on the right element of this dispute and not end up with a CCJ because of a weak assignment when you could do an updated income and expenditure assessment and get your Payplan back in order? Come back to us if you have any further questions.

[Shooe]

Hi,
Thank you for your response.The claimant has informed me that I made the agreement with Lloyds in 1999. I do not remember the date I have requested a copy of the agreement from Lloyds bank and from the claimant and I have not received from either yet.

[Celestine]

1999 Lloyds agreement huh? You have definitely been focussing on the wrong angle for defending this claim. It will be very interesting to see what they can produce to comply with your s.78 CCA request. We will need to see the wording of your defence to see whether you need to seek permission to amend.

[Shooe]

Hi,

Apologies for late response as I did not see it on time. Please see my defence below. I have since received a letter from the court acknowledging receipt of defence and have been contacted by PRA for informal resolution before going to court

DEFENCE

1. I deny that I owe the amount of £XXXX for a debt to the claimant

2. I agree that I willingly entered into a credit card agreement under reference XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX with Lloyds bank plc.

3. Upon default I had an arrangement with Pay plan to pay the owed amount to Lloyds bank plc

4. I disagree that a debt of £XXXX was assigned to PRA Group (UK) LTD

5. I did not receive any notice of assignment according to S136 Law of property Act 1925 as stated by the claimant neither am I aware of the other conditions of S136 of the Law of property Act 1925 being fully satisfied as I did not receive a Deed of Assignment from the claimant as requested by me when I received the claim form.

LETTER BEFORE CLAIM

6. My first communication with the claimant was when I called upon receiving the claim form as I did not receive a “letter before claim” from the claimant.

7. The claimant claims a payment of £XXXX has been received by them, all payments regarding Credit Card XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX were intended for Lloyds bank plc (the organisation that I willingly went into an agreement with) if payments of £XXXX have been mis-directed to PRA Group plc then I kindly request the claimant to return the said amount of £XXXX inclusive of adjustment of £XXXX applied as I have no contract with them.

8. I deny that I owe or am obligated towards PRA to pay a debt of £XXXX as my request for the original contract and Deed of Assignment has been ignored by the claimant. I do not have any obligatory contract with them or owe the sum of £XXXX plus £XXXX costs bringing a total cost amount of £XXXX

[Celestine]

Okay, we might just scrape through because you do make reference to the request for the original contract in point 8 of your defence. Ok, PRA will think you are depending heavily on the assignment issue; which is a red herring. The real issue in your case will be CCA compliance. What date did you send the CCA request? Did you send it recorded? Have they acknowledged receiving it?

[Celestine]

This our example defence. I'll see if anyone else comments on whether we need to amend yours.
https://legalbeagles.info/library/gu...-court-claims/

[Shooe]

The sample defence is very strong and detailed sadly I did not know about Legalbeagles before I sent in my defence and may not have followed the CCA request exactly as it should have been as I only requested as follows:

I write regarding the above reference number for Claim Form no: xxxxxx
You have stated in your claim that I owe money for an unpaid debt can you kindly send me the following:

1. The original agreement
2. The deed of assignment demonstrating your right to bring a claim.

I did not include £1.00 for the cost as I was unaware of this and did not request for the default notice however the request letter was registered sent on the 20/03/20 and this was responded to by PRA sending:

1. Account sale agreement for the sale of debts
2.PRA stated that they confirm a copy of the agreement has been requested and once received a copy will be sent to me.

I note that they mentioned a copy of the agreement and not original as requested,

I have not received the agreement and it was not mentioned by them in the last letter I received from them dated the 8th of April after I filed the defence from what you have said I can now see they are avoiding this matter of the agreement being brought up again this is because in this letter what was only mentioned was a copy of the Notice of Assignment being sent to me and the account sale agreement for the sale of debts being sent me which they actually refer to as the deed of assignment and there is no mention of my name or any of the credit card particulars in this account sale agreement for sale of debts.

[Shooe]

Continued from above:: In summary of the PRA letter they have said they have sent

1, the notice of assignment
2. Deed of Assignment

and consider the points raised in my defence satisfied

There was no mention of the original contract.

[Celestine]

20th March CCA request sent. Acknowledged receipt by PRA who have requested a copy of the original agreement from Lloyds. (It will be a copy, that's normal.) Technically they are now in breach of CCA and cannot enforce, this will remain the case until they provide that agreement. Your case is strengthened by the age of the account. Any credit agreements taken out after 2007 can be sent a 'reconstituted agreement' but all earlier accounts must be sent a copy of the original itself.
I don't think we need to amend your defence, but you do need to move on from the assignment issue!
Following submission of your defence, PRA will probably let the court claim become 'stayed' (on hold until they find those documents) This could go on for months. After around six months of waiting, you could consider an application to lift the stay and strike out their claim for non compliance of CCA.
IF the original agreement does turn up, please do give us a shout. For the time being, just hold tight.

[Shooe]

Thank you so much. This is much appreciated

[Shooe]

Hi,

I got a document from the claims company which they claim to be the contract. It is a copy of a document that seems quite suspicious looking but it has my details on it. Any marks in blue are the boxes that I have had to remove private information. The document is barely legible so I can hardly read any of the typed words the only legible things were mainly hand written private information. I can see that my self and a family member signed the document but I'm not too sure why the family member's information was there and had to sign as I couldn't read the typed information, also I noted my signature seemed a bit blurred and the date showing that I signed was on New Years day which also seemed odd that I would be doing a thing like signing a document that day.

Reference number of the credit card being claimed is the same to the one that I have blotted some of the numbers out with x.. That number and the one above it seems to be the clearest part of the document

I can just about see that in this document Payment Protection Plan was ticked which means this product had PPI on it.

I could not see who else signed the document as that seemed to be blotted out including the date that the person signed.

Please see document attached. Document called contract from claims company.pdf

This document which they say is a copy of the Credit agreement was also sent with a letter before claim (I had raised in my defence that this letter had not been sent when I first got the claim form from them )These documents were sent to me two days ago 18/06 this is after I had filled and sent back the form for small claims track.
They have also sent me a reply form that I must fill in and return to them within 30 days or they say it could result in court proceedings if I don't.

I'm wondering if you can read this document and whether it seems legible enough, also I would like to know your thoughts and maybe the best way to go about this matter.

Thank you for all your help.

[Celestine]

Nope, that won't do. It is truly illegible, so it does not contain the core terms such as interest rates, repayment, cancellation etc. It should have been supplied together with a statement of account also.
pt2537 - Nice illegible credit agreement for you to take a peek at.

[pt2537]

Nope, that won't do. It is truly illegible, so it does not contain the core terms such as interest rates, repayment, cancellation etc. It should have been supplied together with a statement of account also.
pt2537 - Nice illegible credit agreement for you to take a peek at.

If that document was supplied due to a section 78(1) Consumer Credit Act request then they have issues there. Id point out too that you took ppi on the card, so they will need the ppi terms too, this was clarified by the Court of Appeal in Kotecha, where LJ Lloyd gave lead judgment. Id be very surprised if they could produce the terms of the PPI policy

[Shooe]

Thank you so much