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HP car finance Voluntary Termination "refused"
I am hoping someone can advise on where we stand legally with this.
We are with Specialist Motor Finance, we took out a HP agreement with them in October 2018 and always made our payments. However, over the course of the pandemic, we opted to take a 6 month payment holiday as my partner was furloughed, and I ended up on really reduced hours.
Due to our financial circumstances not improving and a health condition affecting me working, we decided to Voluntary Terminate the agreement. Obviously, we are not 50% of the way through the agreement, but we researched and felt confident we would be able to do this and arrange payment to make up to 50% of the agreement. We sent a letter off to them on 12th October tracked, so we know they signed for it on the 13th of October. Over the course of the next few days, we received Default Notices in the post, which we were pretty confused about as they hadn't acknowledged receipt of the letter.
My partner then received a phone call from them telling us that "They had received our letter and our intent to surrender the car" - to which my partner replied, "No, we said we are Voluntary Terminating." The person on the phone then acknowledged that this is the "one where we pay 50%", my partner agreed, and the phone call ended with them assuring him they'd be in touch.
Cut to last night, they phoned my partner after he had finished work and told him they were "refusing our voluntary termination request" because we weren't 50% of the way through the agreement, and because we had "refused to pay for damages" when we said nothing of the sort. They said we need to view section 100 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 because it says we need to have paid 50% of the agreement before we can terminate. They were also very keen to recommend surrendering as an alternative option for us.
I stayed up late last night drafting a letter which we sent via email, based off advice on another post on this forum, explaining how Section 99 and 100 of the CCA are to be viewed together and that you have to have terminated under section 99 before section 100 kicks in. All we have received is an acknowledgement of our complaint and been told they will be in touch in 8 weeks.
What are we to do in the meantime? They are threatening us because our account has "fallen into arrears" and threatening repossession of the car, which I feel they surely cannot do as we have already sent our termination letter? Are they allowed to reject the termination on the basis we haven't paid 50% and then proceed to repossess the vehicle? We don't want to keep the car in our possession for 8 weeks, so should we push them to collect our car regardless? Or could this go down as a repossession as well? Is our termination letter dated 12th October valid given they have "refused" it? Or would it hold value if this were to be reported to Financial Ombudsman/FCA/go to court?
We feel this company didn't like we have tried to terminate, tried to trick us into admitting a surrender on the phone, and because we were clued up and caught them out there they are just trying to do anything they can to force a repossession and/or surrender of the car.
R0b
We are with Specialist Motor Finance, we took out a HP agreement with them in October 2018 and always made our payments. However, over the course of the pandemic, we opted to take a 6 month payment holiday as my partner was furloughed, and I ended up on really reduced hours.
Due to our financial circumstances not improving and a health condition affecting me working, we decided to Voluntary Terminate the agreement. Obviously, we are not 50% of the way through the agreement, but we researched and felt confident we would be able to do this and arrange payment to make up to 50% of the agreement. We sent a letter off to them on 12th October tracked, so we know they signed for it on the 13th of October. Over the course of the next few days, we received Default Notices in the post, which we were pretty confused about as they hadn't acknowledged receipt of the letter.
My partner then received a phone call from them telling us that "They had received our letter and our intent to surrender the car" - to which my partner replied, "No, we said we are Voluntary Terminating." The person on the phone then acknowledged that this is the "one where we pay 50%", my partner agreed, and the phone call ended with them assuring him they'd be in touch.
Cut to last night, they phoned my partner after he had finished work and told him they were "refusing our voluntary termination request" because we weren't 50% of the way through the agreement, and because we had "refused to pay for damages" when we said nothing of the sort. They said we need to view section 100 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 because it says we need to have paid 50% of the agreement before we can terminate. They were also very keen to recommend surrendering as an alternative option for us.
I stayed up late last night drafting a letter which we sent via email, based off advice on another post on this forum, explaining how Section 99 and 100 of the CCA are to be viewed together and that you have to have terminated under section 99 before section 100 kicks in. All we have received is an acknowledgement of our complaint and been told they will be in touch in 8 weeks.
What are we to do in the meantime? They are threatening us because our account has "fallen into arrears" and threatening repossession of the car, which I feel they surely cannot do as we have already sent our termination letter? Are they allowed to reject the termination on the basis we haven't paid 50% and then proceed to repossess the vehicle? We don't want to keep the car in our possession for 8 weeks, so should we push them to collect our car regardless? Or could this go down as a repossession as well? Is our termination letter dated 12th October valid given they have "refused" it? Or would it hold value if this were to be reported to Financial Ombudsman/FCA/go to court?
We feel this company didn't like we have tried to terminate, tried to trick us into admitting a surrender on the phone, and because we were clued up and caught them out there they are just trying to do anything they can to force a repossession and/or surrender of the car.
R0b
