CCA advice.

salirip

I am currently dealing with my cc debts by making token payments as advised by CCCS.

Now, I notice that a lot of people have been asking to be supplied with their ccas from their creditors.

I haven't done this so far and wonder what the benefits are. I don't want to rub anyone up the wrong way.

If requesting ccas is the way to go, is there a template letter I could send please?

salirip

Shameless bump.

stapeley

If creditors are accepting token payments, carry on with those .

Tixy

The CCAs are requested to see if the creditors have properly executed credit agreements. If not then the debt is not legally enforceable. The benefits are:
1 that the creditor cannot issue you with a CCJ (well they can but if you defend it they won't be able to)
2 that it gives you more leverage to make reduced monthly payments (useful if a creditor is being difficult about accepting reduced or token amounts)
3 if you want to make a full & final settlement the percentage they will settle for is usually considerably lower.

It (usually) doesn't mean your debt is written off which some people seem to think it will.

Thats my understanding anyway. Theres a template somewhere I'll see if I can find.

salirip

Thanks for the reply Tixy. It can all be a bit confusing so thanks, I'll give it a go.

10past6

salirip wrote: »

I don't want to rub anyone up the wrong way.

Don't be fooled by this myth.

Creditors will do what they want to do regardless of how it may affect the individual.

It' a business to them, take a look at the many threads on here from members who've received court papers, it's worth bearing in mind, creditors have NO loyalty to you as an individual, you therefore owe them no loyalty.

Send the CCA off asap.

GeorgeUK

One thing though - if you have charges that you can reclaim, it might be better to do a subject access request as you can get transaction details for the last 6 years as well as a copy of the original CCA. By doing a CCA request, you will usually not get a copy of the original as they are not required to provide copies of signatures so you may justget information off the system. The SAR costs £10 while the CCA request costs £1, but it may be worthwhile if you are going to reclaim charges anyway.

salirip

I don't understand about any chargesI can reclaim, this is all new country for me.

Could you explain please. Are you saying I should request the SAR rather than a CCA or both?

GeorgeUK

Sorry about that Salirip - as i do replies on the fly while at work, they can sometimes be a little brief.

You have a legal right to request a copy of your credit agreement at any time. You are not required to give a reason as to why you want the agreement - you may be wanting to update your records or you may be considering challenging the enforcability of the debt. Either way, that's you business for now.

For credit agreements taken out before 6th April 2007, they are required to have certain terms for them to be legally enforcable. If all the terms are not there, then the debt may not be enforcable. At this stage you can dispute the debt - not that the debt exsists, but the enforcability of it. Under section 127 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, the court must not enforce a debt if the credit agreement is not properly executed - if the terms are not all there, then this would be the case.

When you make a CCA request (with £1 fee) under sections 77/78 of the Consumer Credit Act, they must supply you with a 'true copy' of the agreement. Due to legislation in 1983, this true copy does not need to be an actual copy of the original document. It can be a reproduction using information taken from the original. Also, signatures are not required to be provided with this copy. Quite often a company will just create a document using data from their system and send this out to your stating that this is a true copy as it meets all the requirements under sections 77/78 of the Act.

If you were to do a subject access request (SAR - cost £10), you are requesting information under the Data Protection Act and the 1983 legislation will have no bearing on your request. You can request copies of all transactions and documentation including the credit agreement. You may have seen in the news some details of the banks being taken to court in a test case regarding bank charges. They lost the case, lost the appeal and are now considering taking this to the house of lords. Basically, any penalty charges issued for agreements that fall under the CCA74 must not be for profit - only to recover costs. Sending a letter to say that a payment is late will not cost them £35 so this is a penalty charge you can reclaim. There is lots of information on reclaiming on one of the other boards.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/

If they were to take you to court for not paying on one of the agreements, a CCA request would not always allow you to see what they had on record while a SAR would show you the document they held. This would allow you to see if the debt was enforcable, that it had been properly signed and that you knew beforehand what may be produced in court and be able to defend your position. If the agreement is not properly executed, then the court should not enforce the debt.

Here's some other threads that may be of use.
Details: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=578486
Template: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=11636295#post11636295
Legislation: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1496721

salirip

Thanks for that brilliant and fully explained answer George.

Much appreciated, I'll read through and digest. It's all fairly complex stuff isn't it, but well worth having under your belt.


Lots of info there.

Thanks again.

takamine

A company has approached me saying my loans (pre April 2007) may be written off. They offer two routes...
1) They will buy the loan from me for 10% of the amount owed? Is this legal? what could happen to my credit history?
2) I need to pay about £500 and they will hopefully get the loan written off in total?
hmmm...sceptical is the emotion?