link Financial pursuing me

[hotcat]

Hi, I had a small overdraft and a large loan with HSBC. The next thing I new the loan had been dumped onto the overdraft and sold to Link Financial. This was about 4 years ago and Link are now hounding me withheld calls, card to say agent calling round. My credit file show a default recorded by HSBC and Link, but link never sent any notice of default and the HSBC loan does NOT show as satisfied

Please let me know What should I do next, cca, sar. any help would be much appreciated to get these people off my back

[Caspar]

Re: link Financial pursuing me

Hi, I had a small overdraft and a large loan with HSBC. The next thing I new the loan had been dumped onto the overdraft and sold to Link Financial. This was about 4 years ago and Link are now hounding me withheld calls, card to say agent calling round. My credit file show a default recorded by HSBC and Link, but link never sent any notice of default and the HSBC loan does NOT show as satisfied

Please let me know What should I do next, cca, sar. any help would be much appreciated to get these people off my back

There are a few issues here which need separating out.

Firstly an overdraft and a loan should not have been bundled into one debt as they are governed by separate pieces of legislation. This immediately casts doubt over the legitimacy of any assignment to Link.

I assume you have not paid anything towards this debt for the 4 year period. You will be aware that if you do not acknowledge the debt for a period of six years and make no payment it becomes Statute Barred.

As regards the phone calls you can put a stop to these. Start making a log of the times they call you so you know just how frequent they are. Too many constitutes harassment which is against the law, so you need to send them the Harassment by telephone letter.

Finally you can only be defaulted once for any debt. Get a screen print of the original default from HSBC and the second default placed on your CRF by Link. Send copies of these screen prints with an accompanying letter to all three Credit Reference Agencies and they should remove the second default. If they don't, then you report them to the ICO. Once you have the later default removed, you can then challenge the legitimacy of the first one as there was no default notice. I would suggest that you do a SAR to the owner of the debt to see if there is a DN on file for you.

[CleverClogs]

Re: link Financial pursuing me

Finally you can only be defaulted once for any debt. Get a screen print of the original default from HSBC and the second default placed on your CRF by Link. Send copies of these screen prints with an accompanying letter to all three Credit Reference Agencies and they should remove the second default. If they don't, then you report them to the ICO. Once you have the later default removed, you can then challenge the legitimacy of the first one as there was no default notice. I would suggest that you do a SAR to the owner of the debt to see if there is a DN on file for you.

Mightn't those constitute acknowledgement of the debt?

[Caspar]

Re: link Financial pursuing me

Indeed it would. That is precisely why I separated out the issues. Only the OP can decide what they want to do given the debt is 2/3 of the way to being SB. However, this site does not condone debt avoidance.

[Pinky69]

Re: link Financial pursuing me

If they lumped the debt together then they have snookered themselves because a new agreement would have been required for that and no such agreement exists.

[Caspar]

Re: link Financial pursuing me

If they lumped the debt together then they have snookered themselves because a new agreement would have been required for that and no such agreement exists.

Indeed - spot on, as I mentioned as the first point in my first response. They really have slipped up there, though it is becoming increasingly common practice to do thiis, and judges have been siding with them a fair amount recently as they consider it a reasonable thing to do. How it can be deemed reasonable when it is illegal is beyond me.

[CleverClogs]

Re: link Financial pursuing me

There's no justice at law;
It's the bidding that counts
And the job of the judge
Is to fix the amounts.

[hotcat]

Re: link Financial pursuing me

Many thanks for your replies.

I had another letter from them today. The heading says re Your agreement with HSBC bank PLC relating to account number xxxxxxxxx/xxxxxxxx

The account number is the bank current account that I had with them.

Then further in the letter they say

' HSBC has of xxxxxxxx assigned to Link Financial the outstanding balanve due under the Personal Loan Agreement.

Can they claim under a Personal Loan Agreement relating to a current bank account?

[Pinky69]

Re: link Financial pursuing me

A loan is a loan and an overdraft is an overdraft - one can never be the other. Your simple answer is that you never had a personal loan with the bank for that amount. Let them find out why.

[CleverClogs]

Re: link Financial pursuing me

HSBC is generally reckoned to be a wunch of utter bankers.

[hotcat]

Re: link Financial pursuing me

I have just gone through my paperwork relating to all this to try and make any sense of it as it is all just thrown in a file so that you have all the background knowledge so you can guide me step by step please.

There was originally a loan agreement with a loan number but that number is not mentioned. The current account number is the number they are using There are say Loan Agreement under Account Number xxxxx.

I did SAR link a couple of years ago (I had forgotten about that) and sent a postal order for the fee. On looking at the documentation I have from them, they applied this amount to the account (they wrote in a letter "No administration charge has been applied to your account at this time and therefore any payment made with your request has been applied to reduce your outstanding debt").

It appears that HSBC closed the Loan and added the amount onto the current account and then sold it.

You didn't have the above information when you replied to my first post. In light of this, should I still SAR HSBC and what should I do with link so that stop trying to collect it as I guess court action will be their next step?

Your help is very much appreciate as I am well out of my depth now with this

[Caspar]

Re: link Financial pursuing me

My gut instinct is that they still cannot do this. They can close a loan and demand full repayment from you. They can close a bank account and demand full repayment of any overdraft. I'm not aware that they can close one and add it onto the other unless they can somehow do it through their right to offset a debt.

[hotcat]

Re: link Financial pursuing me

If I SAR HSBC the original creditor does this stop Link FInancial from taking any court action until SAR is received. Basically how can I stop Link Financial from starting court action?

Your help would be much appreicated.