Confused re: Black Horse, Payments and PPI

HomeSpun

*UPDATE* I have sent the initial PPI mis-selling letter today so it is the other two queries I am looking for answers on (the charges and the 'what the heck are they doing?' parts )

Hi

I am hoping some of you lovely savvy people could help me with a small dilemma I have.

I took out a loan with Black Horse in June 2005 for an amount of £1500, APR of 29.9%, charge for credit was £709.27, duration of agreement was "minimum of 37 months". PPI was added to this: PPI £403.27, charge for credit of £190.95, total for PPI £594.22 (figures taken from original agreement).

Firstly, I'm sure I was told I had to have the PPI to take out the loan. Unfortunately it was all done face to face in one of their offices so there would be no record of this. Can I re-claim it?

Secondly, I missed some payments when we moved house (I can't remember exactly how many, but I have all my bank statements from the year dot so I could find out definitively). Because of this charges were added to my account to the total of £145.00. Are these charges supposed to 'accurately reflect' their costs in administrating late payments? If so, their collections consisted of one letter and one phone call - £145 seems excessive! Can I re-claim the charges?

Thirdly, I received a letter from them in August this year saying that I had an amount of £54.26 remaining plus the charges of £145.00 (so £199.26). They expected "2 repayments of £75.77 commencing 1st September 2008 followed by a final payment of £47.72". No mention of the frequency of these payments, but as the original agreement is monthly, I assume these payments should have been. They also state in this letter that "No more additional charges will be added during this period and when we have collected the above payments, your agreement will be settled". Now instead of paying them to the letter, I had paid off this £199.26 in weekly payments with the final payment being on 2nd October 2008 (so paid early according to them). I paid this, as I have all their other payments, by standing order.

Yesterday I recieved the following from them:

"It may be an oversight but you still have £98.62 left to pay on your agreement.

Please send us your payment within 7 days........."

I would guess that they have been told that I have cancelled the SO (as the agreement is paid in full according to my figures gleaned from their letter of 8/8/8) and that is what prompted this letter . Although having said that, I'm not sure that that is likely as I cancelled the SO on the 4/10/08 and the letter is dated 2/10/08!

I got the right hump with this as I know I have paid to the letter what they requested in their August letter so I sent them the following:

Dear sir

I write with regard to your letter dated 2nd October 2008, received today, with reference to the above agreement stating that as an ‘oversight’ I have £98.61 remaining to pay on my agreement.

I respectfully refer you to your letter dated 8th August 2008 stating an outstanding balance of £54.26 plus fees to the total of £145.00 (totalling £199.26) and to my subsequent payments listed below.

8th August £19.00
15th August £19.00
22nd August £19.00
29th August £19.00
4th September £24.66
11th September £24.65
18th September £24.65
25th September £24.65
2nd October £24.65

Total: £199.26

I therefore consider the total outstanding at present to be a grand total of £0.00. Your most recent letter also strikes me as very strange as your previous letter (dated 8th August 2008) requests payments of £75.77 on 1st September 2008 and 1st October 2008 plus a final payment of £47.72 on 1st November 2008.

I also note that your letter dated 8th August 2008 categorically states that:

“No more additional charges will be added during this period and when we have collected the above payments, your agreement will be settled.”

In light of the discrepancies that you clearly have on my agreement, I consider it necessary to request a full statement from yourselves detailing all payments made to you by me and all charges and debits rendered to this account from the agreement date of 29th June 2005 up until today’s date to enable me to compare this to my full and accurate records. I also request an explanation as to why, when this agreement has been fully settled, you have written to me requesting more money which is clearly not owed to you.

It would also be appreciated if you could include a copy of your guidelines for late payment charges as the OFT and FSA guidelines state that these charges should reflect your cost of administrating late payments and I would consider £145.00 in charges relating to one telephone call and one letter to be highly unfair and I wish to exercise my right to investigate this fully.

I trust that I will receive your reply within a suitable timescale, namely 15 working days.

I have checked the SO as it stood and the reference details are correct so they have had these payments correctly.

As I said in the letter I sent them, as there are discrepancies on the account, I want a complete statement showing exactly what they have added and when as they seem to be randomly adding amounts to my loan and just expecting me to pay them.

I will later (volunteering at school today) retrace through all my old statements and calculate the exact figure I have paid them since the conception of the loan in 2005 and edit my post to include this.

So can anyone clarify the very muddy waters for me - what the heck are they playing at?

I did a search for BH on this board prior to posting and couldn't find any exact answers to all my queries, hence the new post.

Thanks to anyone who has read this stupidly long post and in advance to anyone who can help

HS x

di3004

HomeSpun wrote: »

Hi

I am hoping some of you lovely savvy people could help me with a small dilemma I have.

I took out a loan with Black Horse in June 2005 for an amount of £1500, APR of 29.9%, charge for credit was £709.27, duration of agreement was "minimum of 37 months". PPI was added to this: PPI £403.27, charge for credit of £190.95, total for PPI £594.22 (figures taken from original agreement).

Firstly, I'm sure I was told I had to have the PPI to take out the loan. Unfortunately it was all done face to face in one of their offices so there would be no record of this. Can I re-claim it?

Secondly, I missed some payments when we moved house (I can't remember exactly how many, but I have all my bank statements from the year dot so I could find out definitively). Because of this charges were added to my account to the total of £145.00. Are these charges supposed to 'accurately reflect' their costs in administrating late payments? If so, their collections consisted of one letter and one phone call - £145 seems excessive! Can I re-claim the charges?

Thirdly, I received a letter from them in August this year saying that I had an amount of £54.26 remaining plus the charges of £145.00 (so £199.26). They expected "2 repayments of £75.77 commencing 1st September 2008 followed by a final payment of £47.72". No mention of the frequency of these payments, but as the original agreement is monthly, I assume these payments should have been. They also state in this letter that "No more additional charges will be added during this period and when we have collected the above payments, your agreement will be settled". Now instead of paying them to the letter, I had paid off this £199.26 in weekly payments with the final payment being on 2nd October 2008 (so paid early according to them). I paid this, as I have all their other payments, by standing order.

Yesterday I recieved the following from them:

"It may be an oversight but you still have £98.62 left to pay on your agreement.

Please send us your payment within 7 days........."

I would guess that they have been told that I have cancelled the SO (as the agreement is paid in full according to my figures gleaned from their letter of 8/8/8) and that is what prompted this letter . Although having said that, I'm not sure that that is likely as I cancelled the SO on the 4/10/08 and the letter is dated 2/10/08!

I got the right hump with this as I know I have paid to the letter what they requested in their August letter so I sent them the following:

I have checked the SO as it stood and the reference details are correct so they have had these payments correctly.

As I said in the letter I sent them, as there are discrepancies on the account, I want a complete statement showing exactly what they have added and when as they seem to be randomly adding amounts to my loan and just expecting me to pay them.

I will later (volunteering at school today) retrace through all my old statements and calculate the exact figure I have paid them since the conception of the loan in 2005 and edit my post to include this.

So can anyone clarify the very muddy waters for me - what the heck are they playing at?

I did a search for BH on this board prior to posting and couldn't find any exact answers to all my queries, hence the new post.

Thanks to anyone who has read this stupidly long post and in advance to anyone who can help

HS x

Hi there
please do you think you could copy and paste your post to here
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=862067&page=522

This is the ppi reclaming section where you will receive help and guidance, however it seems like you have grounds for a mis selling complaint so may be worth getting a complaint reclaim letter in.;)

Hope to see you there hun where me and others will help all we can, cheers.

Di.
x

HomeSpun

Hi

Thanks for your reply. I shall c&p over. Is it ok to leave it here too as it's not just about the PPI, but the general mess they are making with my account too?

Thanks

Spikeyjaycee

I too have a loan with Lloyds TSB/Black Horse. Because of personal circumstances (which I informed the Bank about) I couldn't afford regualr payments on the loan account and went through the whole merry-go-round of which department do i talk to then write to, then complain to because not one of them could give me a breakdown of my loan payments which I asked for back in Jan 2008! I keep my own records and want to see what figures they have compared to mine. I have now complained about the Bank to the Ombudsman and left it to them to sort out!

HomeSpun

Thanks for your reply and good luck with BH! I've googled extensively about this lately and there seems to be a good level of success re: claiming charges back off them, they put up a fight at first but cave under pressure. I decided at the end of last week that the only way to access my records with them would be an SAR so I sent that and the £10 cheque on Friday. They then have 8 weeks to get back to me with it all.

Hopefully they'll respond - who knows! I'd love to know where this extra money I supposedly owe them has come from.

HomeSpun

OK - looking at my spreadsheet for September payments (sad, I know!), I think I have made a little headway as to where this figure of £98.61 they're claiming I owe has come from, but it has made me even more confused about their accounting practices.

If I look at the last 5 payments I made:

4th September £24.66
11th September £24.65
18th September £24.65
25th September £24.65
2nd October £24.65

the first 4 of those add up to the elusive £98.61. All these payments were paid on the same standing order, I just changed the amount via internet banking. It's rather bizarre that these figures marry up precisely.

They cannot possibly be claiming not to have had those payments as:

a) I changed the amounts paid to pay it off quicker, had I paid to their timescale, I would owe £47.72 at the date of their letter, so they can't be crediting what I should have paid rather than what I have paid to my account.

b) They cannot claim they haven't had these amounts as they were all paid on the same standing order, with only the relevant amount changed, and they haven't included the last payment in their little calculation (the first payment of the 5 is different by £0.01 to the others so it is only the first 4 which add up to their figure iyswim).

Can anyone shed any light on this?

I've had no reply to my letters so I have no idea what they are thinking from their perspective (letter in post #1 was sent first, then a PPI claim letter, then an SAR - all sent recorded, all received).

HomeSpun

I have today received a statement from BH (no accompanying/covering letter - just a list of debits and credits) and lo and behold 3 of the missing 4 payments have shown up! They appear to be crediting my account approximately 2 weeks after I send the SO :rolleyes:.

Anyway - the gist of my reply to them:

I write with regard to the statement of my account dated 9th October 2008, received today.

I note that the balance outstanding according to this statement is £24.66. I refer you to my letter dated 8th October 2008 and the payment list therein. The payment of £24.66 dated 4th September 2008 is missing from the statement received, despite payments after that date appearing on it. Please could you trace this payment and apply it to my account.

I should also point out that this communication from yourselves included no explanation as to why you are chasing payments which are not outstanding and why my account was not maintained in the manner it should have been, namely the crediting of payments as they are received. I trust that your reply to this is forthcoming.

I would also like to make it clear that the statement received does not satisfy my Subject Access Request dated 10th October 2008 and I look forward to receiving the information requested.

It would also appear that their "Collection Activity Charges" continued to be added to my account, at £30.00 a time for three months after the payments recommenced. As I haven't sent a 'charges' letter yet (waiting for SAR), I haven't included it in todays reply.

HomeSpun

Another reply from them today detailing the dates which they added the charges to my account - given they sent me a statement yesterday, and she refers to this in her letter, I'm not sure todays reply has any real worth. No mention of the breakdown of the charges, the PPI letter I sent nor the SAR. Also no mention of their questionable accounting practices and why they still think I owe them money (although the amount changes with each letter they send - just smacks of competency, doesn't it!).

I may send them an equally pointless reply tomorrow as there is a chance that, having not had a letter from me in a couple of days, this reply may have been sent due to them missing my letters so much

HomeSpun

I received a letter from my Black Horse local office today telling me that the agreement is fully settled (tell me something I don't know :rolleyes:).

No word regarding the PPI letter - I think it may be time to ask them for all my unfair charges back.

Will keep post updated as I go