credit agreement

[pacluc27]

In 05 I was a motor dealer. In the december I arranged finance for a couple to buy a car which belonged to an acquaintance of mine, and friend of theirs. The loan was 12k, and the lender was the Funding Corporation. The loan was arranged by a broker I used regularly, and they paid me a commission for the business. The woman of the couple had made only 3 or 4 payments, when they had a bust up, and parted. Neither wanted to pay for the car now, and it was reposessed and sold for only 7k at auction. When judgement was made against them, the guy made no defence, and disappeared. The woman, however, claimed she had not signed the agreement on my licenced premises, and consequently the funding Corp took me to court along with her, knowing one or other of us would pick up the bill. The only witness to the signing was the car owner, who being her friend, she assumed would not give evidence against her. However, he went to court as my witness and did testify that she had signed in my office.
Apart from signing the agreement, she also signed a seperate document stating that she knew and understood what she had signed, and had signed on the dealer's licenced premises. Thirdly, she signed a d/debit mandate for payments on the loan from her account.
In court, she claimed she had no idea she was involved in a credit agreement, because the documents had been hidden from her when she signed, and she had no intention of being part of any agreement. Incidentally, her partner had applied on his own initially and was declined, which is why she then joined the application and put her name to it. This woman was no fool, she was/is the director of her own ltd co. dealing with contracts and agreements regularly.
Despite her lack of any evidence/witness whatsoever, the judge decided in her favour, and I subsequently copped a 20k+ charge on my home and a legal bill of over 4k. Despite the outrageous decision, my solicitor said without an overlooked point of law, an appeal would most likely fail. The car owner was so appalled by my predicament, that he instructed/paid for an appeal, which was declined of course.
I closed my business in 08 and apart from some part time work have been largely unemployed and broke. I do not get any benefits. This nightmare has ruined our lives. We dont have much, and now there is a charge on our equity increasing at an unrealistic interest rate. The stress this has put on my family has been very damaging indeed.
Now that many unenforceable agreements are being exposed, I wondered if the agreement that has been enforced effectively against me could be unenforceable, and would this give me the loophole I desperately need to escape this nightmare and put our lives back together.
We need a knowledgeable and tenacious representative, who can fight our corner.....trouble is, we are broke.
Anyone else out there suffering something similar?

[Londoneye]

Re: credit agreement

Sounds to me like your solicitor could have done better there, If you are able to show that the agreement was unenforceable, it may be possible to mount an appeal, do you have a copy of the agreement? If not, the problem you face is the lender will be under no obligation to supply a copy as the agreement is terminated and the balance is now the subject of a court judgement, on the other hand, the court may not allow an appeal because you have no new evidence to produce as yet!

I can't believe that an agreement in someone elses name could have been enforced against you! Do you have the transcript of the judgement, alternatively, parties, court & date. I really think you will need professional legal advice here, but let's try and find out if you have any grounds for compaint first.

[pacluc27]

Re: credit agreement

Hello Londoneye, and thankyou for showing an interest in my case. Yes I do have a copy of the agreement, but the many audit agencies that offer cfa help, are not prepared to check it over as it is not in my name.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said my solicitor should have done better, or to be more specific, my barrister. There was no preparation with myself and my witness, save for a brief few minutes on the morning of the hearing. To be honest, if it were not for the nerves, I could have done better myself!
I am no lawyer, but I would imagine that had my solicitor found the agreement to be unenforceable before going to court, the case could have been binned! I guess there must still be a chance, if we can show it to be unenforceable even now?
The original case was held at Thanet County Court. The claimant was The Funding Corporation, and the defendants were, 1) Blair Papworth, 2) Ruben Groenewald, and 3) myself, Paul Courbot,trading as P&P Car Sales. The case was heard on 20/06/08 under claim number 6CH03689.
I can't tell you how grateful I will be for some sound advice and information.

[Londoneye]

Re: credit agreement

OK, I'll try and dig out the transcript, might be a little while, pretty busy at the moment. Can you paste the agreement up here with personal details obscured, should be able to tell you if the agreement is enforceable or not anyway.

[pacluc27]

Re: credit agreement

Hi Londoneye, unfortunately, try as we might, we dont seem to be able to copy and paste the agreement onto this message space. Perhaps you could privately send me an email address where we can send it to you? We have no problem sending it as an attachment. regards Paul.

ps.thankyou so much for giving your time to this for me.

[Londoneye]

Re: credit agreement

I'm nothing to do with the site, try sending to amethyst she will get it up.

[Curlyben]

Re: credit agreement

pacluc, if you click Go Advanced (near the bottom of the box) this will open up further tools.
On of which is an attachment option.
Look for the Paper Clip icon on the top row.

This will give you a popup and attachment options. This allows you to place a copy of documents on the site.

Remember to remove your personal details first, and I'd recommend files in PDF format as the size restrictions are generous..

[pacluc27]

Re: credit agreement

Hello Londoneye.
Curlyben has kindly given me instructions on how to send attachments. So thanks to him, and here goes..............

However, just before that, I would like to say that someone in the know took a very quick look at this agreement, and said he suspected there was an interest on charge issue..whatever that might be. Also...from my own research, I understood that broker commissions had to be declared if paid.....and there does not appear to be any mention of them on this document !
Thankyou all so much for your time.....Pacluc27.

Unfortunately we are unable to upload the second page as we have exceeded our quota......the 2nd page is the declaration page, which does have signatures from both borrowers and the lender.

[Tools]

Re: credit agreement

Try to upload the other page again now pacluc. If it still does not work then email it to admin@legalbeagles.info and we will add it for you.

[Amethyst]

Re: credit agreement

Second page should be uploaded here now

[Londoneye]

Re: credit agreement

Hi Pacluc I think you may have something here, firstly if there is an undisclosed commission you have a good argument for unenforceability. You need to be able to prove the commission existed and that it was paid. The prescribed are there but, I think there is a problem with the calculations; the agreement term is stated as 50 months, the norm is that the first repayment is due one month after the agreement date, this agreement defers the first payment for three months, which adds two months to the agreement term. there are 49 monthly repayments in the schedule, if you add this to the two month deferment period the agreement term should be 51 months by my reckoning. A quick stab at the calculations tells me that the total repayable at the apr stated, should be £19790.23 (this may not be exactly right) the agreement states £20,945.16. The arrangement fee, credit facility fee and purchase fee are covered in the repayment schedule therefore, the apr may be calculated incorrectly, it appears the apr is about 28.38% by my calculations. You would need to verify these figures as I have massaged them a bit to get an easy calculation, the exact calculation needed here is quite complex and time consuming. Anyway, the APR needs only to be out by 0.1% in the lenders favour to render the agreement unenforceable. So it appears that there is a discrepancy amounting to about £1255. How much was the undisclosed commission?

[pacluc27]

Re: credit agreement

Hello Londoneye, I sent the application for the finance to a specialist motor finance broker, called London and Surrey Finance. They placed the deal with The Funding Corporation, and I guess they shared the commissions with me. I received £150, but have no idea what they got. I had used them for years, and know one of the directors there, so if they still have a record, I feel sure I could get the information.
With regard the agreement, I really have no idea about the calculation of APR, and was not aware there was a 3 month deferment of payments. In this case, it may be that the borrowers never actually paid anything.....as the car was reposessed very early on.

Thanks again for this Londoneye, please let me know if there is any information you need me to get for you to consider this further. What do we do next?

regards Pacluc27

[Londoneye]

Re: credit agreement

Pacluc, what we do next is really the problem. You would need to apply to the court for permission to appeal on the basis that new information has come to light, as this case was in the county court, I think the appeal fee would be around £120, you may be able to get this fee waived or reduced if you can prove hardship. If you obtain leave to appeal, you would then need to carefully construct the appeal or employ a solicitor, this would be very time consuming and/or expensive. I can't imagine a law firm taking you on "no win no fee" at the outset because there's no certainty of getting leave to appeal so you could be in for initial costs of around £5-600 if you went down that route. Most of the information required to get the process underway is probably available on this site but you would need to ask someone from site admin where to find it. Sorry, but I really don't have the time to help with the day to day stuff that you'll need to do.

[pacluc27]

Re: credit agreement

I guess what I meant was, do I need to verify the information you have given me regarding the calculations, or whether the abscence of a statement on the broker commissions has rendered the agreement unenforceable? Or can I assume that it is indeed unenforceable?
Can I just say also, that I cannot thankyou enough for the time you have spent, and help you have given me, it's just so frustrating that it allways comes down to money, and therefore if you are poor, you cant get justice! I guess legal aid is out of the question? I asked my solicitor about this before, and he seemed to think it would not be available.....pacluc

[pacluc27]

Re: credit agreement

Hello again Londoneye...I dont know why I didnt do it earlier really, but I have taken a closer look at the agreement myself. I was a mortgage broker 20 years ago, so not a total dunce. Sadly I dont see anything wrong with it, the 1st payment of £260 is due one month from signing, followed by 47 @ £385.42 commencing 3 months from signing.....so nothing to pay month 2, then a final instalment of £580.42.....49 payments, and a free one, so 50 all together.
The flat rate of 13% quoted , does equate to a charge for credit of £6500 over 50 months, and according to a couple of on line APR checkers this does equate close to 25%.
There is a £10 discrepancy between the total of the payments and the total shown to be due, but the total payable does agree with the total calculation lower down the page, so sadly my hopes are dashed, re the maths.
What is not shown seperately on the agreement, was the 2k deposit paid, which may have thrown you a little.
Is the exclusion of the broker commissions sufficient in itself to render the agreement unenforceable? I fear that is all I have left !
Do you, or indeed anyone else on the forum know where I can find reference to the commissions aspect in the CCA ?
Thanks again for all your effort londoneye...

pacluc27