A bit of a shock!

markld

Hi everyone

Glad my info helped, BSJ.

Ssmith asks if writing to the OFT and ICO helped. Yes, sort of. I ended up having lengthy conversations by letter with them and with Trading Standards. That on its own made me feel better, but I think the fact that every time I wrote to Asset Link I cc'ed the OFT/ICO/SS and made this clear at the bottom of the letters, was the only thing that made Asset Link give me Statements of Account. Without these, I could do nothing.

The OFT won't act until more people complain. So please write to them.

The ICO said I should go to court. So I am. Asset Link have filed a Defence and the court has ruled that I should file a Reply to the Defence. I posted it 10 mins ago...recorded delivery, of course! The first hearing is a Case Management Conference at the Court on 28 Feb, so I'll post again afterwards to let you know what happened.

Keri, the first thing you need is to get Statements of Account out of them. Say they are obliged to issue these annually and you will complain to OFT, ICO and Trading Standards if they don't.

If they give you any more telephone harassment, write to them to say you won't accept any more calls and all communication must be in writing. I did, and threatened them with prosecution under the 1988 Malicious Communications Act (communications intended to cause distress are illegal). That did the trick in my case.

Keep a log of all their calls. If you can, record them. Some answer machines and mobiles let you do this, but sadly mine didn't. It would have been useful now.

I can't say much more about the arguments I am putting forward in the court case as I don't want to prejudice the case and, not having done this before, I don't know what might prejudice it!

All the best

Mark

deano1_3

hobbesy wrote:

They tried to get a charging order on our house (and failed!).

Hi Hobbesy,

I read with interest your comments we are going through the same process with ths nasty company. Not sure if you can help but they are trying to have a charging order put on our house. How did they fail to get it put on yours? do you have any tips?

Thanks

bsjwright

Hmmm, yes I should have had another statement by now but they haven't sent one. I wonder if they're up to their old tricks again.

hobbesy_2

I could do with tips myself on some things as I still don't have the energy/courage to deal with getting them to stop interest, or at least lower it!

We were in court over this three times in total. From what I have learned since, this is their regular tactic for any debtor with a mortgage. They will immediately go for a ccj against you, and then for a charging order. Although if you continue payments payplan have had no instances where they have gone for a sale of someone's house, its not in their interest as they are making a fortune out of us all by not stopping contractual interest, and in our case would probably not have received a penny if our house was sold.

We were advised (mainly by payplan) not to contest the ccj as it was just a formalisation of our intent to make monthly payments and we were already on a dmp. So first tip would have been to contest the ccj in the first place. They have their own favourite court in Wales that seems to put every case of theirs through, so second tip would be to immediately move any cases with them to your nearest court.

Take all paperwork with you to court, showing payments regularly made towards your debt. Sadly, so much seems to come down to which judge you get. Our first seemed very helpful and was inclined to put the charging order through although we had read that they had no right since we had not defaulted on our ccj. She said they had a right to secure the payments somehow, that there were other options such as attachment of earnings, but if worst came to worst they would be well within their rights to make us bankrupt (we had debts totalling £30k, £4k of which to asset link). She didn't want to see us lose our home so thought this was the better option.

I strongly did not want a charge on our home, and as the argument was continuing she asked that we all return at a later date. The second hearing was made too soon after, and so after all arriving and sitting we were told to come back another day again! The third time we had a different judge. Asset Link's solicitor (they use local agencies) had a statement written by someone at Asset Link saying various things that didn't really count for anything (i have it somewhere if needed), we showed the judge our variation order and statement of payments for last 2 years at a higher rate than set by the ccj. He immediately said Asset Link had no right going for the charging order and should be ashamed of themselves. I mentioned about the last judges comments on bankruptcy, etc, and he said 'They can try and get what they like, doesn't mean they get it'

We haven't heard a peep out of them since. But they are still charging interest, and have never sent us a statement or acknowledged any letters from payplan. If we have ever tried to call them they have been extremely rude and unhelpful.

I wish you luck with this

Keri -x-