Cabot help

crazyhaggid

I had a lot of debts when I was younger, in the last fours years I've set up plans with each debtor where they have frozen the interest and I have been paying a fixed amount each month.

Out of the blue one of my debtors Marbles Mastercard suddenly sold my debt to cabot. Who began harassing me with demands for money from day one, in the course of two letters, dated just four days apart my debt jumped by over £40! The debt itself in just over £1500.

I phoned debtline who told me that I should request a copy of my orginal terms and conditons to see what interest rate they are allowed to impose.

88 Days after I requested this they finnally produce an illegible copy of my terms and conditions and scarily enough a letter thanking me for my recent payment (I don't know is this is some sort of scam) I've done some reading on this forum and found this:

Consumer Credit (Cancellation Notices and Copies of Documents)
Regulations 1983 (SI1983/1557) Section 2(1)

2. Legibility of notices and copy documents and wording of prescribed Forms

(1) The lettering in every notice in a Form prescribed by these
Regulations and in every copy of an executed agreement, security
instrument or other document referred to in the Act and delivered or
sent to a debtor, hirer or surety under any provision of the Act
shall, apart from any signature, be easily legible and of a colour
which is readily distinguishable from the [background medium upon
which the information is displayed].

Does this apply to me?

Also the person I spoke to at Debt line told me that under Scottish Law debtors can't pursue you if they don't have a copy of the orginal temrs and conditions could anybody confirm this.

Thanks again

Stu

LilacPixie

Was it a CCA you requested??? If so did what exactly did they produce?? Was it signed by you??

fermi

crazyhaggid wrote: »

Does this apply to me?

Yes.

Also the person I spoke to at Debt line told me that under Scottish Law debtors can't pursue you if they don't have a copy of the orginal temrs and conditions could anybody confirm this.

They are required to have a copy of the original agreement signed by you containing all the 'prescribed terms' as required under the Agreement Regulations and Consumer Credit Act 1974.

The 'prescribed terms' are given here:

IS MY AGREEMENT ENFORCEABLE (Via section 127(3) CCA1974).

PRESCRIBED TERMS FOR THE PURPOSES OF SECTIONS 61(1)(0) AND 127(3) OF THE CONSUMER CREDIT ACT 1974 Taken from schedule.6 (1983/1553) regulations

(If you just want to find out, skip the bits in between the stars it’s just some extra information)

**What do we mean by unenforceable?

In the Consumer Credit Act section 127 there is a provision for making an agreement unenforceable if it does not contain certain pieces of information.

Subsections 1,2,3,4 state which pieces of information these are, and everything mentioned there must be included within the body of the agreement, if one is missing the agreement is unenforceable.

How does unenforceable differ from enforceable with a court order only?

When an agreement is unenforceable it means that the court or the judge cannot make a ruling on it. The court cannot make it enforceable.

When an agreement is enforceable only by ruling of the court it means that the agreement can be stopped by the debtor but the court has the power to re-instate it and allow the credit to continue to enforce.**

The Prescribed Terms are these:

A Amount of credit

A term stating the amount of credit

B Repayments

A term stating how the debtor is to discharge his obligations under the agreement to make the repayments, which may be expressed by reference to a combination of any of the following:-

(a) Number of repayments;
(b) Amount of repayments;
(c) Frequency and timing of repayments;
(d) Dates of repayments;
(e) The manner in which any of the above may be determined; or in any other way, and any power of the creditor to vary what is payable.

C Rate of interest

A term stating the rate of interest to be applied to the credit issued under the agreement

D Credit limit

This may be a term or the manner in which it will be determined or that there is no credit limit.

---

Which of these applies to you depends on the type of agreement you have?

For a Running Account (credit card) agreement

BC and D Apply

For a Restricted Use Debtor Creditor Supplier

• Where the dealer is the supplier and the creditor is the one providing the finance.
• The money can only be used for the purpose it is given.
• There is no interest on the purchase (the cash price is the same as the total price)
• And there is no advance payment

A is applicable

For a fixed Sum Credit Agreement

A conventional credit agreement with none of the above restrictions

A and B apply

For a Hire Agreement

B is Applicable

This paper only covers section 127(3) of the Act agreements can also be unenforceable by contravention of sections 1 and 4 this will be the subject of the next paper.

Please note that these Prescribed terms where not changed in any way by the 2004/1482 Amendments although the form in which they appear on the agreement was. Subsection127(3) was repealed on the 6th of April 2007 so that unenforceability due to 127(3) will only apply to agreements executed before that date.

crazyhaggid

LilacPixie wrote: »

Was it a CCA you requested??? If so did what exactly did they produce?? Was it signed by you??

I asked for a copy of the terms and conditions I originally signed. They terms and conditions they sent me does have me signature on it but you can't read it.

crazyhaggid

Fermi, does this mean that if they can't produce a legible copy of my terms a and conditions stating the interest rate, etc they have no right to pursue the debt?

fermi

crazyhaggid wrote: »

Fermi, does this mean that if they can't produce a legible copy of my terms a and conditions stating the interest rate, etc they have no right to pursue the debt?

Did you formally request a copy of the agreement enclosing the statutory fee of £1?

If you did, then it means that until they comply with your request with a legible copy containing the prescribed terms, they should not 'enforce' the agreement.

If they were to take it to court to enforce the debt, a legible copy would also be required.

crazyhaggid

Fermi I did sent the statutory fee but it was returned, is this their method of side stepping?

fermi

crazyhaggid wrote: »

Fermi I did sent the statutory fee but it was returned, is this their method of side stepping?

They can't side step it. If they return the fee then that is up to them. It doesn't discharge them of any legal obligation.

This is a letter I saved a while back that someone else used. I can't find the thread at the moment, but you will get the idea.

Dear Sir,

Thank you for the reply to my letter dated XX/XX.2008.

Having taken the time to look over the documents supplied in response to my statutory request made under the Consumer Credit Act 1974, I have the following concerns

The document entitled “credit card agreement regulated by the Consumer Credit Act 1974” which appears to bear my signature fails to comply with the requirements of the Consumer Credit (Cancellation Notices and Copies of Documents) Regulations 1983 (SI 1983/1557). In particular section 2 of the Regulations

As you will be no doubt aware, the Copy Document Regulations requires that documents are easily legible and clearly the terms of the agreement are not easily legible, in fact far from it. Many of the terms are blurred and cannot be interpreted and I am further unable to make out the prescribed terms as required by schedule 6 column 2 of the Consumer Credit (Agreements) Regulations 1983 (SI 1983/1553). After taking advice on this matter, I am of the belief that this agreement that you have presented before me, as it stands would be unenforceable even by court order. Therefore, I require that you provide me a clearly legible copy of the agreement, where all the terms are clearly legible

Should you not be able to supply a clearly legible copy, I would suggest that you give consideration to cancelling this account and reducing the balance to zero. Of course the alternative would be to seek a declaration of my rights under Section 142(1) of the Consumer Credit Act 1974. I am advised that with the documents that you have supplied there would be an extremely good prospect of success with such a declaration, however, I am mindful of additional costs that such action could incur both on my part and on yours so I trust you will give consideration to this request


Yours Sincerely

crazyhaggid

Fermi thats perfect!!!!!

Thanks so much, I've been getting so worried about this, as I thought I had all my debts under control until this happened.

Thanks again

stu

fermi

I don't expect Cabot to agree that what they have supplied is incorrect, but if they don't at least you have a paper trail that shows they have been told.

crazyhaggid

I don't think so either I really hate the way these companies operate, if you or I break a law something happens if they do its another story.

If you wouldn't mind answering another question for me, from what I've read about them, there's a very good chance they have already registered a default against me, are they entitled to do this?