Excel Counselling Services

[Rickosa]

We had a secured loan with Picture taken out in 2007. At that time, they sold it to us with all sorts of promises and maximised the loan to us by over-valuing our property by £15000 - we bought it for £69K in Sep 06 and they mysteriously had it valued at £84K just 6 months later. 4 years ago they removed the security on the property and it took almost a year before they took court action on us to attempt to re-enforce it claiming they'd done it "by accident". We refused, and subsequently the loan became unsecured. After almost 10 years we'd paid back around £30K but still owed £45K according to them. Last year we were forced to surrender our home to the bank due to violent and abusive neighbours, long story but we could not afford to rent and have a mortgage at the same time and had to bite the bullet for the sake of our own safety. We had a visit from a "field agent" of Excel in April last year and had agreed to pay back a reduced amount of £100 per month after the field agent promised to speak to Picture regarding the inhibition placed on the property by Target (who had taken on Picture's porfolio after they went bust for a 2nd time). However, events overtook this and we were as I said forced from our home - I'd also cancelled the payment to Target as they had failed to keep their promise of reviewing the inhibition. I've had occasional text messages, phone calls from them since then but nothing threatening. Then this same field agent turns up at the door of our privately rented property whilst we were on holiday and put a letter through the door "to discuss the arrears on the 2nd mortgate account that we have with them". I suspect we have only two avenues open to us, to resume payments (which will take us until we are about 90) or seek bankruptcy protection. Would appreciate any advice anyone can give me, and if anyone has any questions I would quite happily answer them. I know some may say we shouldn't have ignored them, but honestly, the lies we were told to take on this loan you wouldn't believe. It's been an utter millstone round our necks and the last 10 years have been an utter nightmare. Many thanks.

[jules2008]

Re: Excel Counselling Services

Hello I hope that someone on here can help you unfortunately I am not an expert on these matters and am waiting for some advice myself regarding another matter. my question to you is how did the loan company try to take court action to get the loan secured against your property did they issue you with a B132 form as I have a query relating to this? Also how did you prevent them from doing this?

thanking you in advance

[Rickosa]

Re: Excel Counselling Services

It was done through the Court Of Session in Edinburgh and we were told that, according to the law here in Scotland, we had to approve the request and could deny it - which we did - meaning the security did not go back on the property. Picture ( or Target as it is now) then secured an inhibition preventing us from selling the property, however, they could not prevent us from surrendering the property which were were ultimately forced to do by some rather nasty folk.