Unfair contract terms

hobbesy_2 · 17 February 2006 at 2:31PM

My history with First National/Asset links is on the boards to see buthere is my current query.

A varied county court judgement was made in October for £3980.32 plus £110 for costs. Asset Link still applied for a charging order on our property which was today in court refused - yay! In the process of finding our options on the charging order i rang Asset Link and wazs told our settlement figure at the moment was £4167.72 meaning they are still charging interest.

Interest on this loan is charged at a flat rate (may have this the wrong way round) meaning each month interest is charged on what debt is left, meaning the amount of interest charged goes up each month and therefore the debt increases by more and more each month.

The judge today told me to seek legal advice on how to get this stopped which i intend to do. Whilst waiting for my phone call (have access to phone advise through union) I thought i would trawl the internet and see what i could find...

It seems there is a clause in First National contracts (no.8.2 if you have one) that states -

'Interest on the amount which becomes payable shall bee charged in accordance with Condition 4, at the rate stated at letter F on the front of this agreement (1.49 or 20.3%apr in our case! subject to variation!) until payment. This interest will be payable before any court judgement AND AFTER ANY COURT JUDGEMENT AS WELL. This obligation is an independant one and will not merge with, that is become part of, any such judgement'

First National were taken to court over this by the Office of Fair Trading as an unfair clause and the OFT won, but then lost a later appeal at the House of Lords. So the House of Lords thinks this is fair! This debt will forever become bigger and bigger! What can i do?

K -x-

hobbesy_2 · 17 February 2006 at 5:52PM

bumped so others it affects can see too. fankoooo

K -x-

Pere_Ubu · 17 February 2006 at 8:17PM

Hobbesy you are becoming an expert on First National and Asset Link. I have emialed the OFT to ask them re the House of Lords case you raised obviously will have to wait until Monday now for a reply. With regards the variation we contacted Payplan immediately and they never mentioned anything about getting our CCJ varied. We would have done so if it had been explained to us. We don't have 100% confidence in Payplan to be honest they never return our calls/emails/letters. We are going to find out first thing Monday morning if it is too late to get our CCJ varied we have a forthwith judgement on ours. It states what we have to pay which we do in fact we pay more. What a way to start a weekend I bet you are on a right high after todays win!!