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I don’t want to name names on here right now but I had a Hire Purchase agreement a few years ago that went wrong, it’s a long story but to get to the point the HP company ended up repossessing the vehicle. (edit; I apologise now this got longer than I intended but hopefully its worth a read)
At the time of repo I was up to date with the payments but the most recent one was 3 weeks overdue, so not even a month in arrears at time of repo.
No court order was obtained, two goons just turned up at 10pm one night demanding the keys, which i refused to hand over, so they smashed the window to access the vehicle and towed it, police were called, were pretty useless (but that’s another story).
I was obviously livid at the time but even more so when I checked my payment history and realised that I was quite a way over the 1/3rd payment threshold at the time of repo and no court order had been obtained.
I raised this issue with the hp company who duly informed me that my figures were wrong though declined to explain how or why.
I took the matter to my local trading standards who took up the fight for me, they wrote to the hp company requesting repayment of all sums paid in accordance with the CCA 1974 as I had paid over 1/3rd and no court order was obtained prior to repo.
The hp company responded that I had not paid one third because my first instalment was gap insurance and there had been approximately £400 worth of charges levied against the account which, rather conveniently brought the amount paid to just five pounds under the one third marker.
I had never received any documentation for the gap policy though I had agreed to it in a telephone conversation with the hp company so I questioned whether or not it had ever actually been put in place.
The hp company were adamant that it had but repeatedly failed to provide any policy documents to support this despite several request from trading standards over two or three months, all the hp company eventually offered in the way of proof of the policy was a recording of the telephone conversation where I agreed to it, but since I had not disputed that I had agreed to it in a telephone conversation I didn’t see why they sent this as proof of the actual policy, I expressed my concerns to trading standards but they decided that this was sufficient to prove that I “more than likely” did have a policy for gap.
So I go along with TS and give the hp company the benefit of the doubt and concentrate on the charges, a breakdown was sent to trading standards which was hand written not a computer print off which claimed I had paid silly sums such as £50 for them telephoning me and £35 for the odd letter they sent. I disputed the charges stating that I did not agree to them and that in my credit agreement they were stated as being much, much lower.
First problem; I didn’t have my original agreement paperwork to prove it. So I request a copy from the HP company as per my rights under the CCA 1974 and what do you know, it turns out they have lost it, but they very kindly provided a recreated copy which just happened to contain the inflated charges in the key information box.
I’m livid at this point because I know they have altered the agreement but I can’t prove it, trading standards accept their “evidence” and wash their hands of the matter advising that if I still wish to pursue the matter I go to the financial ombudsman service, which I do, but the HP company use the same argument to dispute my complaint and it is not upheld.
But I know I’m right so I don’t give up, I wait a while, over a year, then I make a Subject access request to the hp company and this is where things get interesting.
In the subject access request I specifically reference insurance products and that I require copies of all policy documents and underwriting sheets etc but, despite their claims of the GAP policy being in place, they again fail to provide any documents relating to it in response to my SAR though they do send a covering letter with the documents that they did provide telling me that one was in place though offering no explanation as to why no copy documents have been forwarded to me.
So I write to them demanding the missing documents be sent to me or I will seek to obtain a court order requiring them to comply with my subject access request in full.
In response to this a gentleman from the company’s compliance department rings me and tells me that they are not obliged to provide the insurance docs because they are not the underwriter.
So I ring the information commissioners office helpline and ask them if the HP company are obliged to provide this documentation as part of my SAR and the ICO’S office tell me that they 100% are obliged to supply the documents and what’s more when I explain that the hp company had repeatedly failed to supply the documents despite numerous requests over more than 18 months the person I’m speaking to informs me that as long as I can prove they have repeatedly failed to comply (which I can, I have copies of all requests sent with all responses and tracking details showing that I sent the requests and they were received by the company) then this would constitute a possible serious breach of the data protection act and would be referred to their “investigations team” rather than getting the usual “please comply” letter that the ICO usually send out.
Before sending over details to the ICO I decide to ring the guy back at the HP company’s compliance department and relay the ICO’s office’s comments , seemingly not too keen on being “bothered” by the ICO he promises to get me the documents, though still protesting that it’s not their responsibility to do so.
I agree to wait 14 days and, sure enough, as promised, a “copy” of my gap insurance policy arrives.
So you’d think that’s the end of that then, right? But there was one major problem with this GAP insurance policy, you see it was not “recreated” it was stated as being a direct copy of my original policy document but, and it’s a big but, the start date of the insurance policy was more than a year BEFORE I took out the Hire purchase!
Surely this is a blatant forgery? How could I have had GAP insurance on a finance agreement A full year before I ever had the finance agreement?
Whats more in the documents provided in response to my SAR they again sent the “recreated” copy of my agreement, but rather surprisingly, they also sent a transaction history of my account showing all charges applied and where as the recreated agreement states I’ll pay £50 for a phone call my transaction history states that I was charged just ten pound for a phone call, and where the recreated agreement states I’d be charged £35 for an arrears letter I was only ever sent one arrears letter and it was charged at just £12,and whats more I actually managed to find the original letter and it clearly states that I had been charged £12 “in accordance with the terms of your agreement”
With the lower charges I remain over 1/3rd paid even if the gap policy ever did exist!
But just to ice the cake, the hp company also provided a screen cap of my agreement summary and there is a sub category which references the 1/3rd rule and the half rule, obviously referring to the CCA 1974 and next to the half rule there is a status which reads “no” in reference to the fact I had not paid this amount yet, but next to the third rule the status reads “paid”
In this same document there is a summary of all payments received and they match my figures which the hp company told me, trading standards, and the financial ombudsman that I had got wrong and show that I had paid over £600 over the 1/3rd threshold, so even taking off the alleged gap payment and the total of all charges levied against my account in the transaction history it leaves me over £200 over the 1/3rd which would explain why their system says “paid” next to the 1/3rd rule.
Whats more there is a list of entries made by staff on my account notes which show that the HP company were planning to repo the vehicle for two months prior to the date that they actually repo’d despite payments being up to date (I was making payments by debit card) with entries stating “hirer close to 1/3rd suggest we don’t pursue payment and terminate and repo if payment not made” but I pay each month until an entry is made in capitals reading “ hirer close to 1/3rd last chance to get vehicle back before 1/3rd is paid suggest do not pursue payment then terminate and repo if payment not made” the problem here is that the staff members writing these comments have got their sums wrong and I’m actually already over the 1/3rd as the documents mentioned above clearly show.
So in summary what I now have is;
· proof that the charges stated in my “recreated” agreement were not the level of charges that I agreed to in my real, original, agreement or the level at which the charges were ACTUALLY applied to my account.
· Proof that the HP company’s own computer systems state that I had paid over 1/3rd .
· A supposed GAP insurance policy document that supposedly started a year before I took out the HP
· Evidence to show that by the company’s own (and mine) records I had paid over 1/3rd even after the deduction of all recorded charges in my transaction history and the deduction of the GAP payment (if it actually ever existed)
· Proof that the HP company did not want payment but rather wanted the vehicle back instead.
So what I’d like to know is how do people think I should proceed with this?
Take it back to the FOS? Or employ a solicitor and take legal action?
Is the above sufficient to prove to a court that a deliberate and intentional effort to avoid the contractual obligation to repay all monies paid due to an unlawful repossession has been made by way of deliberate forgery/alteration of original documents.?
Any views or advice on this would be very gratefully received.
And I’m sure many people reading this would be asking themselves, if the payments were up to date why the HP company want the vehicle and not payment? Well, I believe that the reason for this was due to my telephoning them to enquire about paying the agreement up to half and voluntarily terminating the agreement in accordance with my rights under the consumer credit act, I was naive at the time in not realising that this was something HP company’s had to include but did not like, the guy I spoke to got quite angry at my enquiring about VT’ing which was when the realisation that they do not like customers exercising this right dawned on me, for the record I had already decided not to VT before the repo but had not told them that.
At the time of repo I was up to date with the payments but the most recent one was 3 weeks overdue, so not even a month in arrears at time of repo.
No court order was obtained, two goons just turned up at 10pm one night demanding the keys, which i refused to hand over, so they smashed the window to access the vehicle and towed it, police were called, were pretty useless (but that’s another story).
I was obviously livid at the time but even more so when I checked my payment history and realised that I was quite a way over the 1/3rd payment threshold at the time of repo and no court order had been obtained.
I raised this issue with the hp company who duly informed me that my figures were wrong though declined to explain how or why.
I took the matter to my local trading standards who took up the fight for me, they wrote to the hp company requesting repayment of all sums paid in accordance with the CCA 1974 as I had paid over 1/3rd and no court order was obtained prior to repo.
The hp company responded that I had not paid one third because my first instalment was gap insurance and there had been approximately £400 worth of charges levied against the account which, rather conveniently brought the amount paid to just five pounds under the one third marker.
I had never received any documentation for the gap policy though I had agreed to it in a telephone conversation with the hp company so I questioned whether or not it had ever actually been put in place.
The hp company were adamant that it had but repeatedly failed to provide any policy documents to support this despite several request from trading standards over two or three months, all the hp company eventually offered in the way of proof of the policy was a recording of the telephone conversation where I agreed to it, but since I had not disputed that I had agreed to it in a telephone conversation I didn’t see why they sent this as proof of the actual policy, I expressed my concerns to trading standards but they decided that this was sufficient to prove that I “more than likely” did have a policy for gap.
So I go along with TS and give the hp company the benefit of the doubt and concentrate on the charges, a breakdown was sent to trading standards which was hand written not a computer print off which claimed I had paid silly sums such as £50 for them telephoning me and £35 for the odd letter they sent. I disputed the charges stating that I did not agree to them and that in my credit agreement they were stated as being much, much lower.
First problem; I didn’t have my original agreement paperwork to prove it. So I request a copy from the HP company as per my rights under the CCA 1974 and what do you know, it turns out they have lost it, but they very kindly provided a recreated copy which just happened to contain the inflated charges in the key information box.
I’m livid at this point because I know they have altered the agreement but I can’t prove it, trading standards accept their “evidence” and wash their hands of the matter advising that if I still wish to pursue the matter I go to the financial ombudsman service, which I do, but the HP company use the same argument to dispute my complaint and it is not upheld.
But I know I’m right so I don’t give up, I wait a while, over a year, then I make a Subject access request to the hp company and this is where things get interesting.
In the subject access request I specifically reference insurance products and that I require copies of all policy documents and underwriting sheets etc but, despite their claims of the GAP policy being in place, they again fail to provide any documents relating to it in response to my SAR though they do send a covering letter with the documents that they did provide telling me that one was in place though offering no explanation as to why no copy documents have been forwarded to me.
So I write to them demanding the missing documents be sent to me or I will seek to obtain a court order requiring them to comply with my subject access request in full.
In response to this a gentleman from the company’s compliance department rings me and tells me that they are not obliged to provide the insurance docs because they are not the underwriter.
So I ring the information commissioners office helpline and ask them if the HP company are obliged to provide this documentation as part of my SAR and the ICO’S office tell me that they 100% are obliged to supply the documents and what’s more when I explain that the hp company had repeatedly failed to supply the documents despite numerous requests over more than 18 months the person I’m speaking to informs me that as long as I can prove they have repeatedly failed to comply (which I can, I have copies of all requests sent with all responses and tracking details showing that I sent the requests and they were received by the company) then this would constitute a possible serious breach of the data protection act and would be referred to their “investigations team” rather than getting the usual “please comply” letter that the ICO usually send out.
Before sending over details to the ICO I decide to ring the guy back at the HP company’s compliance department and relay the ICO’s office’s comments , seemingly not too keen on being “bothered” by the ICO he promises to get me the documents, though still protesting that it’s not their responsibility to do so.
I agree to wait 14 days and, sure enough, as promised, a “copy” of my gap insurance policy arrives.
So you’d think that’s the end of that then, right? But there was one major problem with this GAP insurance policy, you see it was not “recreated” it was stated as being a direct copy of my original policy document but, and it’s a big but, the start date of the insurance policy was more than a year BEFORE I took out the Hire purchase!
Surely this is a blatant forgery? How could I have had GAP insurance on a finance agreement A full year before I ever had the finance agreement?
Whats more in the documents provided in response to my SAR they again sent the “recreated” copy of my agreement, but rather surprisingly, they also sent a transaction history of my account showing all charges applied and where as the recreated agreement states I’ll pay £50 for a phone call my transaction history states that I was charged just ten pound for a phone call, and where the recreated agreement states I’d be charged £35 for an arrears letter I was only ever sent one arrears letter and it was charged at just £12,and whats more I actually managed to find the original letter and it clearly states that I had been charged £12 “in accordance with the terms of your agreement”
With the lower charges I remain over 1/3rd paid even if the gap policy ever did exist!
But just to ice the cake, the hp company also provided a screen cap of my agreement summary and there is a sub category which references the 1/3rd rule and the half rule, obviously referring to the CCA 1974 and next to the half rule there is a status which reads “no” in reference to the fact I had not paid this amount yet, but next to the third rule the status reads “paid”
In this same document there is a summary of all payments received and they match my figures which the hp company told me, trading standards, and the financial ombudsman that I had got wrong and show that I had paid over £600 over the 1/3rd threshold, so even taking off the alleged gap payment and the total of all charges levied against my account in the transaction history it leaves me over £200 over the 1/3rd which would explain why their system says “paid” next to the 1/3rd rule.
Whats more there is a list of entries made by staff on my account notes which show that the HP company were planning to repo the vehicle for two months prior to the date that they actually repo’d despite payments being up to date (I was making payments by debit card) with entries stating “hirer close to 1/3rd suggest we don’t pursue payment and terminate and repo if payment not made” but I pay each month until an entry is made in capitals reading “ hirer close to 1/3rd last chance to get vehicle back before 1/3rd is paid suggest do not pursue payment then terminate and repo if payment not made” the problem here is that the staff members writing these comments have got their sums wrong and I’m actually already over the 1/3rd as the documents mentioned above clearly show.
So in summary what I now have is;
· proof that the charges stated in my “recreated” agreement were not the level of charges that I agreed to in my real, original, agreement or the level at which the charges were ACTUALLY applied to my account.
· Proof that the HP company’s own computer systems state that I had paid over 1/3rd .
· A supposed GAP insurance policy document that supposedly started a year before I took out the HP
· Evidence to show that by the company’s own (and mine) records I had paid over 1/3rd even after the deduction of all recorded charges in my transaction history and the deduction of the GAP payment (if it actually ever existed)
· Proof that the HP company did not want payment but rather wanted the vehicle back instead.
So what I’d like to know is how do people think I should proceed with this?
Take it back to the FOS? Or employ a solicitor and take legal action?
Is the above sufficient to prove to a court that a deliberate and intentional effort to avoid the contractual obligation to repay all monies paid due to an unlawful repossession has been made by way of deliberate forgery/alteration of original documents.?
Any views or advice on this would be very gratefully received.
And I’m sure many people reading this would be asking themselves, if the payments were up to date why the HP company want the vehicle and not payment? Well, I believe that the reason for this was due to my telephoning them to enquire about paying the agreement up to half and voluntarily terminating the agreement in accordance with my rights under the consumer credit act, I was naive at the time in not realising that this was something HP company’s had to include but did not like, the guy I spoke to got quite angry at my enquiring about VT’ing which was when the realisation that they do not like customers exercising this right dawned on me, for the record I had already decided not to VT before the repo but had not told them that.
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