Unenforceable, invalid or flawed financial agreements

999mph

Today I saw this ad on the newspaper that reiterated that a good percentage of all loan and CC agreements are flawed and hence can be ruled out of repayment. I am certain this topic must be covered elsewhere in the forum but I couldn't quite find a related topic.

Basically an upfront fee is charged before hand and a team of solicitors go through the process of requesting a Subject Access Record and scanning for any flaws. If any flaws are found the solicitors then are likely to threaten the lender with court action which after a back and forth debate results in a rebate.

If the case isn't successful some of all of the fee is refunded.

Later I found another website offering a good part of the service free of charge. You only pay a fee if you are entitled to have the debt written off. And that's at http://www.contractchecker.co.uk/

Has anyone been successful with the process? And what are your thoughts about the website just mentioned above?

Cheers. :A

Tixy

Hi 999

You can do this process yourself for free. There is loads of advice on here. No need to pay anyone to do it for you. The process is not too difficult.

On the forums its referred to as doing a CCA. That is requesting your credit agreement. There are templates somewhere I think. Once you get a copy of the credit agreement you compare it to see if all the required terms are present. If not its not a proper CCA and then the debt is not enforceable in a court.

MrsTinks

IF your credit agreement is unenforcable (IIIIFFFFFF) then why on earth would you want to pay someone who frankly doesn't know what they're doing to do something you can easily do yourself with a little bit of effort...
They can tell you nothing that you can't find out yourself or get from people on here. There isn't a huge topic called "Get out of debt free" because it's NOT that simple and it's been mentioned in thousands of threads already...
Companies like the one you are mentioning are scum - they take advantage of people who are too naive to know better and don't realise that these companies act to line their own pockets and not actually to help their "clients".

Then ofcourse you have the moral question of whether or not you shouldn't be repaying the money you borrowed...

RAS

and the OFT has issued a warning about this sort of company, although I noted with horror that a large one in Manchester is proudly reporting that it hopes to treble its staff.

dozy-debtor

Once you have received your CCA from your credit card company how do you know if it is unenforcebale?

sorry if this seems like a silly question but im new to all of this :-)

RAS

Under the rules prior to April 2007, a creditor had to provide a true copy of the Consumer Credit Agreement and the terms and conditions. If they fail to do that or the documents are do not meet the required standard, then the agreement is invalid and the creditor cannot take you to court.

if you post it here people can tell you.

rog2

999mph wrote: »

Basically an upfront fee is charged before hand and a team of solicitors go through the process of requesting a Subject Access Record and scanning for any flaws. If any flaws are found the solicitors then are likely to threaten the lender with court action which after a back and forth debate results in a rebate.

You don't need a 'team of solicitors' to make a 'Subject Access Request' - Under the terms of the Data Protection Act any individual may request information that is held on them by any organisation. The request must be in writing and accompanied by the appropriate fee. For SARs there is a maximum Statutory Fee of £10.00, and the organisation must provide that information within 40 days of receipt of the request.

A "cca request" however is directly aimed at requesting the consumer credit agreement and carries a maximum Statutory Fee of £1.00. The information must be provided within 12 working days of receipt of the request. If that information is not provided, then the agreement is 'unenforceable' without the agreement of the Courts.

Both processes are open to any debtor/individual and niether process requires the input of any professional body.

As regards the 'scanning by the team of solicitors', I am tempted to believe that this refers to nothing more than a comparison of the agreement to the list of pre-requisite terms that are outlined in the Consumer Credit Act. Again, this is not a complicated process and should the 'debtor' feel uncertain over any of the clauses or terms, then they can either ask on this forum, or take it to one of the debt counselling charities for verification. Either way this does not, nor should it, incurr any additional expense.

So, whilst the 'Statutory Fees' are not refundable, although some organisations do not charge for supplying the information or cca, a maximum of £10.00 is certainly preferable to placing your trust in a profit-driven company who sees your 'debt' as nothing more than a 'commodity' that can be traded.

999mph

Can the process backfire? I saw on one of the websites that a person who attempted to claim money back from the creditors ended up paying large amounts of compensation instead as they did not have a strong enough case (or so they claim this to be the case). Is this just another way to tempt us into using their service or do you genuinely think this sort of thing had ever happened in the past? Cheers.