Lowells - Newbie needs help

mousehunt

Hi I posted this originally on the wrong thread - thanks to George for his help - hopefully you may be able to help further....

Hello I would be grateful for some help - sorry this is a little long winded but I have provided all of the background information first.

My husband had 2 Capital One cards one issued in 2000 and one issued in 2003 one was a visa one was a mastercard.

The visa one issued in 2000 had a balance of £1295 and the mastercard one issued in 2003 had a balance of £373 my husband had paid the credit protection insurance for the entire lives of both cards. In 2006 my husband was made redundant. He tried to claim from the insurance but was unable to. We wrote several letters asking for them to credit thier unusable insurance to both cards and we would quite happily carry on paying the much smaller outstanding balances. Letters went backwards and forwards and then stopped. In the meantime we moved house - we did write to Capital One giving them our new address. We had a re-direction on our post for 3 months - but received no further correspondence from Capital One. My husband was not paying them anything as we were concentrating on out priority debts being paid.

Over the last 2 years my husband settled his other debts his credit improved he was able to get a contract mobile phone, and contract broadband. Things were improving. Despite that I was made redundant in 2007.

In March of this year my husband received a letter from Lowell advising of doorstep collections for the outstanding debts to Capital One. To avoid any further problems I (stupidly after reading the forums) replied in writing to Lowells and sent 2 payments one for £25.00 and 1 of £10.00 with a covering letter which I signed on my husbands behalf. We received a letter back advising they would discuss with thier client if these payments were satisfactory, and they would come back to him. They did not reply - I made no further payments to them.

At the end of last week we received a Pre Litigation letter stating that we had not kept to the arrangement - which they had not confirmed was satisfactory.

Yesterday my husband received a copy of his credit file showing that in March 2008 Lowells had added the 2 debts for Capital One - showing that they were the lenders - no mention of Capital One. They have a D showing in all the months until September. They did not show that a payment had been made to each in March. They have now also locked them for September and October.

My questions are the following:-

Can Lowells add these debts to my husbands credit file?

If they cannot how do we go about getting them corrected?

As my husbands did not acknowledge the debts to Lowell it was me - can he write the non acknowledgement of the debt letter?

How should we go about getting the debt cleared if he cannot use the non acknowledgement letter- do we pay Lowell?

Sorry this is so longwinded - I hope someone can help please

Many thanks

GeorgeUK

Hi again MH - don't seem to be many people posting here does there??

As mentioned, i think you need to look into the payment protection insurance (PPI) to find out why it didn't pay out as your husband had been paying for it. They should either amend the account balance to take into account what they should have paid and remove the charges that went on due to their inaction, or they should repay the money spent on the PPI.
This page has details on what to do. http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/

I would also look at reclaiming charges if they do not remove them after dealing with the PPI claim.

Can Lowells add these debts to my husbands credit file?
Your credit file should list all the credit you have - this includes these accounts. The fact that it has Lowell's name i think doesn't matter too much.

If they cannot how do we go about getting them corrected?
Lowell may need to remove any default that they put on your credit file, but i think you will first need to deal with the issue of why the PPI was not paid and any subsequent charges that were made

As my husbands did not acknowledge the debts to Lowell it was me - can he write the non acknowledgement of the debt letter?
It depends what you mean by the non acknowledgement letter - there are a few different letters on this site, but i think you should write to Lowells stating that the account is in dispute with Cap1. Possibly also send a CCA request to stopp them starting CCJ proceedings.

How should we go about getting the debt cleared if he cannot use the non acknowledgement letter- do we pay Lowell?
First we need to establish whether a debt is owed and how much that may be as Cap1 seem to have screwed up the PPI. Once that is done and you make sure any default is removed from your account, then you may want to consider a settlement offer (full and final - not partial), if the charges you reclaim do not cover the outstanding balance.

I've mentioned above about reclaiming the PPI - the creditcard and bank charges may also be reclaimed if Cap1 don't respond to the PPI query. The details for all reclaiming are in that link.

If you send a request for a copy of the customer credit agreement (CCA), here are some details and a template. I would send a seperate letter for each account (with £1 payment each).

Details: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=578486
Template: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=11636295#post11636295

The only other thing i would mention about sending anything to Lowells is make sure your husband does not sign anything you send to them. You do not want them to get a copy of his signature incase it miraculously appears on a CCA that they have cobbled together.

If Cap1 start dragging their feet again when you write about the PPI, don't be afraid to request an official copy of their complaints procedure. You should definately be complaining about this if you have paid for it and never received the benefits of it.

Hope that gives you an area to start from.
Good luck.

mousehunt

Thank you for your help.

I have gone back to the credit card statements and have made a list of all of the charges that my husband incurred. I have also been adding up the PPI on both accounts. Capital One would not pay up on the PPI because they said it was my husbands fault that he was made redundant!!! My husband had been working for the company for over a year when my father was taken ill. At the time I had my own business and could not take the time off work to have our daughter during the summer holidays (I sold schoolwear!!- my busiest time of year) My parents had our daughter during the holidays for us. He had to have time off until we could organise other suitable childcare, my husband was threatened with redundancy if he did not return to work - our daughter came first so my husband had to accept the redundancy.

After all of this happened my business failed in Feb 2007 and I was declared bankrupt in July 2008. So it had been a fairly pants couple of years!!

When we received the threat of doorstep collections with Lowells after everything that had happened with the business I could not face any more worry over debt.

I am really grateful for your help - thanks again

Do not know how I managed to get my angry icon at the top of the post?????