Overdales and Lowells

[lozza]

I hope this is in the right place.
Over 12 months ago I made an agreement with Lowells to pay £5 per month for two accounts. They agreed a settlenent of £604 across both accounts. (Oringinally wanted £1200 or similar. All agreed to pay by DD. They set up three DD not two so i told them of their error. They admitted their whoopsie and corrected it. then Never took any payments. DD are still set up. Suddenly 12 months later court claim from overdales. Lowells heavies. I defended the claim explaining situation. We did move house but had a redirect on all mail and Lowells had my email address to chase up which they should have done.
They reckon they send a rake of letters saying I had not made payment even though the DD are set up and ready for them to take money.

Overdales said Lowells had cancelled arrangement due to non payment and now wanted original.amount plus court costs. I told them what had happened admin errors etc but Lowells blame me and want 1450 now. I have said lets set up the agreement as arranged last year to get back on track but they refuse to accept it. I refused to pay more as we had a written agreemnet but Lowells reckon they can change it.if its cancelled and demand it all. It went to directions but i missed the deadline due to covid and have contactwd Overdales 5 times to find out what to do. each time told a load of BS. Anyhooo today I got an email saying Lowells will accept 908 including court costs on.a tomlin order but want £50 a month which is far to high for us to afford. we either accept that or send in medical records to prove how ill my partner is to get them to decide if we are worthy of their help. All we want to do is pay what was originally agreed in Oct 2021. Is it really so hard. Where.do we stand legally on this matter.?. Lowells will not speak to me and all Overdales do is act as their minion with an air of power as if they are more than a jumped up debt collector.
I have 14 days to decide. please help before i go insane. thanks

[R0b]

Hi

Overdales are the solicitors acting on behalf of Lowells or have they purchased the debt from Lowells and are now in fact the creditor.

First and foremost, did you not inform Lowells of your change of address, if not why not? Don't be surprised if they try to argue that you were partly to blame for failing to keep them updated about your address. Always, always, always make sure you inform companies of your change of address for this very reason.

Anyway, I'm sort of confused at what stage of the legal proceedings you are actually at. If you missed a directions hearing (I presume this is what you meant) then why are you contacting Overdales, you should be contacting the court to find out what has happened and what the court has ordered, if any.

From a legal point, it depends on what the terms of settlement were and any other conditions that may be applicable. A settlement is a contractually binding agreement and from what you describe, you could argue that there is no case to answer in that the obligation to set up the payment correctly lay with Lowells who made a mistake and you notified them which was then corrected but they still failed to take the payments as agreed.

In fact you may want to go one step further and argue that the agreed payment term was a fundamental term of the settlement and which Lowell failed to uphold. Their persistent failure to take the amount was breach which then turned into a material breach when Lowells decided to terminate the settlement, at which point the termination itself was a wrongful termination thus amounting to a material breach.

I suspect at that stage Lowells might say you never told them of your new address, if that is true. In your defence to that point, one might argue that the failure to inform them of your new address is a red herring because you had set up direct debits for the agreed amount and there you could see that they were set up so there was no reason question it. Also, if there was no contractual term in the settlement requiring you to notify them of your change of address then there was no obligation to inform them - though that argument can be a double edged sword. Even though you might not have given the address, surely they had other means of contacting you such as an email or telephone number and if so, why didn't they try contacting you if postal correspondence was not successful?

Suggest it would be sensible to make a subject access request in relation to the correspondence they apparently have sent to you according to Overdales and any other relevant information about your account.

Finally, I would urge caution against agreeing to the medical records request, nt least because that is your partner's decision and your partner is not even party to this claim (I assume). That kind of request is an extreme invasion of privacy and in my view is disproportionate so it should not be agreed to lightly.

At the very least, you should respond to Overdales and take care in what or how you respond. Do you know if you have a court date for this matter?

[lozza]

Thank you Rob for your good suggestions. I tried to tell them about breach of contract from their end etc but refused to accept any blame. Re: directions, i rang the courts got answer so rang overdales who told me to ring lowells who told me to.ring overdales. Refused to give medical info for exact reason you state but they reckon it might help reduce the debt. just before xmas i got some legal advise from a local organisation who advised about breathing space and other legal bits and bobs that should get them to back off. I emailed Overdales who had indeed been sent the account to collect by lowells, saying what my solicitor advised and got response to say all court proceedings were dismissed and it had gone back to lowells.not heard from them as yet but when I do I shall be taking your advise about breach and running with it. And yes they have contact details and we had redirect on mail so they can buzz off.

i will update eventually....unless we move again....to the moon..... thats where you would think we had gone the way they went off about not been able to find us.

[lozza]

just an update. Contacted Overdales after some free solicitor advice, i mentioned breathing space to them ( a new thing for debt relief) and that I had received legal advice and what do you know they sent it back to Lowells who cancelled the court claim and took it back in house. Not heard a stitch since. I may not have won the war but i won that battle. now we wait again.