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Debt owed to once friend now trying to take me to court
It's quite a long silly story really but I'll give you all the information. Basically a friend of mine who lived in the room I now live in. When he was moving out all three flat mates were desperate for me to move in there however at the time I had only just started my job with ..................... and hadn't been payed. He was adamant that it was me that moved in there so he came up with the idea of me giving him the deposit money when I moved out.
Basically the set up in our contract is the incoming tenant pays the deposit to the outgoing tenant and so on. He had already at that point paid the rent and the bills for that month so I agreed to move in on the basis of paying him in installments for that months rent and bills and giving him the deposit money when I moved out. (However there is no clear deadline for when this would be)
For a while in my first months of being there I had not paid anything which he had been fine with due to other debts that I had gained from uni which he fully understood. I started paying him £50 a month installments from around September/October. One payment was missed in Decemeber due to having a large ammount of money stolen from my account but he was fine with this and I paid him money in January.
However unfortunatly the problem seems to of arisen when me and his girlfriend fell out and I then received an email from him asking for all the money I owed him in full within 14 days.
The letter from his solicitor states that I agreed to pay interest and charges on his credit card. This is not what I had said in my email, he told me he had received charges on his overdraft because I had not paid the £50 into his account in December. So I said if he sends evidence of the fact that charges were incurred due to me missing that months payment into his bank account that I would happily pay for this. However no evidence was ever sent and I certainly did not agree to pay his credit card bill.
He then agreed to the payments each month to go up to £100 a month and that I should pay the deposit in April if that's when our tenancy runs out etc. He closed the email off by texting me to say hope all is well etc. So as far as I was aware this was a new agreement that both parties were happy with. Then randmomly out of the blue I recieve a message saying I had not responded to his email and I would be dealing with his solicitors from now on.
Unfortunately this is all very petty and I do feel like this is a bit of an attack on me due to the fall out with his girlfriend. However I accept full responsibility for any missed payments and that the money needs to be paid.
I am currently also in contact with Gmail as all my emails with him have gone from my Gmail account which shows evidence of agreements made in the past. (I know this can't be prooved without evidence so waiting for Gmail to deal with this.) The only email I currently have is the most recent one asking for the money in full. I am not saying it is a fact that they are involved however I was using his girlfriends laptop to check my emails for over a year.
Sadly an agreement was made between friends and it seems to have gone sour. I know this is a lot of information most of which you may not need at all but I know it helps to know everything.
As a final point the letter states I payed £200 I have paid £220 so far.
Hope this is helpful and I am so grateful for your advice I know it all seems very silly.
Also I don't understand this 8% interest part of the letter from his solicitor which says he is entiled to persue under Section 69 of the County Court Act 1984
Since this letter I sent this responce:
Dear Madam
I refer to your letter dated 1 March 2013, of which I confirm receipt.
I accept that a total amount of £1285.23 is owed by me to Mr ....... However, due to a prior arrangement with Mr ........, he had agreed, by email, that I could pay the amount outstanding in monthly instalments of £50 rising to £100 per month. Although these emails have been deleted from my inbox, Gmail are seeking to recover them and I will send them to you in due course.
I started to pay your client in monthly instalments of £50 in around September, and paid a total of £220 in such instalments. Due to money being stolen from my account, I was unable to make the December payment of £50. Mr ....... informed me that he had incurred bank charges as a result of this missed payment. Once you are able to provide sufficient evidence showing that my missed payment for that month resulted in Mr ...... incurring bank charges, for example in the form of a letter from Mr ........ bank or a bank statement, showing these charges, then I will agree to reimburse Mr ....... in the amount stated. I have asked for such evidence from your client directly, but he has not been able to provide it. I will however not be paying for credit card charges as stated in your letter as me paying directly into his bank account does not in any way affect his credit card.
Therefore, I am willing to continue with the repayment of the amount outstanding, being £1285.23, in monthly instalments of £100, as was previously agreed by your client verbally and in writing, commencing on 15.03.2013 and four weekly from then onward until the debt has been paid in full. There is no requirement for court proceedings to be issued, as this will incur more unnecessary expense for your client. [Should you wish for me to sign a written agreement reflecting this arrangement then please forward a draft for me to review.]
I look forward to hearing that my proposal has been accepted and that no court proceedings will be issued in relation to this matter. Please also respond with confirmation of receipt of this email for my records.
Yours faithfully,
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I have since then recieved this responce:
Dear Madam,
Thank you for your email of the 12th March 2013. We have received our client’s instructions and are therefore able to respond to your comments.
Firstly, we have had the benefit of seeing your original email exchange with our client and confirm that we are aware of the original agreement whereby you were to pay our client £100 per month in order to settle the outstanding debt. We also acknowledge your explanation for why payments were not made to our client in December. Nonetheless, your email fails to explain why you failed to make payment to our client on the 15th February following your text message of the 6th February stating:
“Yes I got your email the date you put are not the dates I get paid so £100 will be in your account on the 15th and so on four weekly”.
Secondly, with regards to the amounts outstanding, our client wishes us to confirm that the original debt amount remains at £1305.23. You refer to a payment to our client in the sum of £220 and whilst £200 of this was in respect of the debt, £20 related to money owed to our client’s partner, ............................ for phone credit and is therefore not deductible from sums due to our client.
Indeed, our client takes the view that you have had ample opportunity to settle the outstanding debt in instalment payments but you have repeatedly failed to do so and have failed to provide adequate explanation or propose alternatives. For these reasons, our client is not willing to accept the proposal in your email of the 12th March.
In the circumstances, our client now proposes that the full balance of £1305.23 is settled within 7 days of this email, failing which our client will proceed to issue a County Court claim to recover the full amount plus statutory interest and court fees.
We look forward to hearing from you accordingly.
I now have no idea what to do next or where I stand in terms of this. I have made payments since this letter to stick to my part of the agreement regardless however I do not wish for this to proceed to court as I can not afford this but I also can not aford the full ammount in 7 days any adivce or help would be much appreciated
Basically the set up in our contract is the incoming tenant pays the deposit to the outgoing tenant and so on. He had already at that point paid the rent and the bills for that month so I agreed to move in on the basis of paying him in installments for that months rent and bills and giving him the deposit money when I moved out. (However there is no clear deadline for when this would be)
For a while in my first months of being there I had not paid anything which he had been fine with due to other debts that I had gained from uni which he fully understood. I started paying him £50 a month installments from around September/October. One payment was missed in Decemeber due to having a large ammount of money stolen from my account but he was fine with this and I paid him money in January.
However unfortunatly the problem seems to of arisen when me and his girlfriend fell out and I then received an email from him asking for all the money I owed him in full within 14 days.
The letter from his solicitor states that I agreed to pay interest and charges on his credit card. This is not what I had said in my email, he told me he had received charges on his overdraft because I had not paid the £50 into his account in December. So I said if he sends evidence of the fact that charges were incurred due to me missing that months payment into his bank account that I would happily pay for this. However no evidence was ever sent and I certainly did not agree to pay his credit card bill.
He then agreed to the payments each month to go up to £100 a month and that I should pay the deposit in April if that's when our tenancy runs out etc. He closed the email off by texting me to say hope all is well etc. So as far as I was aware this was a new agreement that both parties were happy with. Then randmomly out of the blue I recieve a message saying I had not responded to his email and I would be dealing with his solicitors from now on.
Unfortunately this is all very petty and I do feel like this is a bit of an attack on me due to the fall out with his girlfriend. However I accept full responsibility for any missed payments and that the money needs to be paid.
I am currently also in contact with Gmail as all my emails with him have gone from my Gmail account which shows evidence of agreements made in the past. (I know this can't be prooved without evidence so waiting for Gmail to deal with this.) The only email I currently have is the most recent one asking for the money in full. I am not saying it is a fact that they are involved however I was using his girlfriends laptop to check my emails for over a year.
Sadly an agreement was made between friends and it seems to have gone sour. I know this is a lot of information most of which you may not need at all but I know it helps to know everything.
As a final point the letter states I payed £200 I have paid £220 so far.
Hope this is helpful and I am so grateful for your advice I know it all seems very silly.
Also I don't understand this 8% interest part of the letter from his solicitor which says he is entiled to persue under Section 69 of the County Court Act 1984
Since this letter I sent this responce:
Dear Madam
I refer to your letter dated 1 March 2013, of which I confirm receipt.
I accept that a total amount of £1285.23 is owed by me to Mr ....... However, due to a prior arrangement with Mr ........, he had agreed, by email, that I could pay the amount outstanding in monthly instalments of £50 rising to £100 per month. Although these emails have been deleted from my inbox, Gmail are seeking to recover them and I will send them to you in due course.
I started to pay your client in monthly instalments of £50 in around September, and paid a total of £220 in such instalments. Due to money being stolen from my account, I was unable to make the December payment of £50. Mr ....... informed me that he had incurred bank charges as a result of this missed payment. Once you are able to provide sufficient evidence showing that my missed payment for that month resulted in Mr ...... incurring bank charges, for example in the form of a letter from Mr ........ bank or a bank statement, showing these charges, then I will agree to reimburse Mr ....... in the amount stated. I have asked for such evidence from your client directly, but he has not been able to provide it. I will however not be paying for credit card charges as stated in your letter as me paying directly into his bank account does not in any way affect his credit card.
Therefore, I am willing to continue with the repayment of the amount outstanding, being £1285.23, in monthly instalments of £100, as was previously agreed by your client verbally and in writing, commencing on 15.03.2013 and four weekly from then onward until the debt has been paid in full. There is no requirement for court proceedings to be issued, as this will incur more unnecessary expense for your client. [Should you wish for me to sign a written agreement reflecting this arrangement then please forward a draft for me to review.]
I look forward to hearing that my proposal has been accepted and that no court proceedings will be issued in relation to this matter. Please also respond with confirmation of receipt of this email for my records.
Yours faithfully,
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I have since then recieved this responce:
Dear Madam,
Thank you for your email of the 12th March 2013. We have received our client’s instructions and are therefore able to respond to your comments.
Firstly, we have had the benefit of seeing your original email exchange with our client and confirm that we are aware of the original agreement whereby you were to pay our client £100 per month in order to settle the outstanding debt. We also acknowledge your explanation for why payments were not made to our client in December. Nonetheless, your email fails to explain why you failed to make payment to our client on the 15th February following your text message of the 6th February stating:
“Yes I got your email the date you put are not the dates I get paid so £100 will be in your account on the 15th and so on four weekly”.
Secondly, with regards to the amounts outstanding, our client wishes us to confirm that the original debt amount remains at £1305.23. You refer to a payment to our client in the sum of £220 and whilst £200 of this was in respect of the debt, £20 related to money owed to our client’s partner, ............................ for phone credit and is therefore not deductible from sums due to our client.
Indeed, our client takes the view that you have had ample opportunity to settle the outstanding debt in instalment payments but you have repeatedly failed to do so and have failed to provide adequate explanation or propose alternatives. For these reasons, our client is not willing to accept the proposal in your email of the 12th March.
In the circumstances, our client now proposes that the full balance of £1305.23 is settled within 7 days of this email, failing which our client will proceed to issue a County Court claim to recover the full amount plus statutory interest and court fees.
We look forward to hearing from you accordingly.
I now have no idea what to do next or where I stand in terms of this. I have made payments since this letter to stick to my part of the agreement regardless however I do not wish for this to proceed to court as I can not afford this but I also can not aford the full ammount in 7 days any adivce or help would be much appreciated
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