Where do I go from here?

chesney105

I took a personal loan out with Sainsburys Bank in Aug 2002 for £6000. It was repaid over a 3 year period, the final payment made in Oct 2005. PPI was included as part of the "deal" though not needed or wanted. I thought I was out of time in trying to claim for mis-sold PPI but I received a phone call from an agency who said I could go back 10 years. I have the Agreement No but not a copy of the agreement. The agent suggested I phone Sainsburys in the first instance and request a copy of the agreement. I phoned this morning but was told the document would have been destroyed as it is over 6 years old. Having read much of the info here, would you suggest I leave this to the agency rather than attempting to claim myself? Many thanks in advance.

di3004

chesney105 wrote: »

I took a personal loan out with Sainsburys Bank in Aug 2002 for £6000. It was repaid over a 3 year period, the final payment made in Oct 2005. PPI was included as part of the "deal" though not needed or wanted. I thought I was out of time in trying to claim for mis-sold PPI but I received a phone call from an agency who said I could go back 10 years. I have the Agreement No but not a copy of the agreement. The agent suggested I phone Sainsburys in the first instance and request a copy of the agreement. I phoned this morning but was told the document would have been destroyed as it is over 6 years old. Having read much of the info here, would you suggest I leave this to the agency rather than attempting to claim myself? Many thanks in advance.

Hi and welcome

Personally I would not suggest an claims company/agency, many have had problems and are charged for the work, where if you have a go yourself with all free help from this site you do not pay a penny, apart from the posting at your post office.

Its pretty straight forward.

Complete the FOS questionnaire, these were recently issued by the financial ombudsman service (FOS) and in replacement of the first template reclaiming letter.
Send to whoever sold and set up your policy.
The FOS also suggest to keep a copy of the completed questionnaire as well in case you need to refer to it at a later date.
They have 8 weeks in full to respond, sometimes they will ask for more time to investigate.

The FOS questionnaire is found on link below - further down the page as stage one.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/ppi-loan-insurance

Hope this helps and ask for any help anytime, good luck.;)

dunstonh

An ambulance chaser will get the same responses you will to a complaint. FOS stats actually show them to be less successful than personal complaints in general. Probably as most claims companies do nothing other than send a template letter and leave it at that to justify their initial fee.

The further back in time you go the harder it does get. The 6 year destruction of documents is a fair response and there isnt much you can do about it. The inevitable outcome of this, if you go to the FOS, is that you have no evidence to back up your claim and they have no evidence to back up their response. So, the lack of evidence on either side will result in a balance of probability decision. This will likely be based on their processes at the time which may or may not work against them. The length of time its taken for you to complain will certainly be a potential negative for you (and I bet using a template letter of claims company would as well as that would make it look opportunistic compared to a personal letter). The bottom line is that there is no way to call how this would turn out.

chesney105

Hi and thanks for your reply. I have downloaded the form and will send it off today. I tried on 2 separate occasions to repay the loan early. The first time I didn't pursue it or go into it in detail. The second time I requested an early settlement figure which was approximately half way through the term, the figure quoted was so high that it made more financial sense to continue the payments and leave the money in the bank. When I queried why it was so high I was told the instalments were used in the following order - repay the loan, repay the interest, repay the PPI. The PPI was non-refundable because it was taken out for a specific period. Do you think I should mention this in my FOC questionnaire? If so could you suggest a worded paragraph. Again many thanks in advance.

chesney105

Hi thanks for your reply. I have a letter from Sainsburys Bank dated 19 Aug 2002 informing me that all the details of the loan are complete. This letter also contains the agreement no. I also have all my bank statements showing the DD. Would this not be sufficient?

di3004

chesney105 wrote: »

Hi and thanks for your reply. I have downloaded the form and will send it off today. I tried on 2 separate occasions to repay the loan early. The first time I didn't pursue it or go into it in detail. The second time I requested an early settlement figure which was approximately half way through the term, the figure quoted was so high that it made more financial sense to continue the payments and leave the money in the bank. When I queried why it was so high I was told the instalments were used in the following order - repay the loan, repay the interest, repay the PPI. The PPI was non-refundable because it was taken out for a specific period. Do you think I should mention this in my FOC questionnaire? If so could you suggest a worded paragraph. Again many thanks in advance.

Hi there

You can enclose a letter with the Questionnaire if you want to.
If there is any space on the questionaire just write the information on there.

I think its worth mentioning it - just to cover all ground on this reclaim.

Basically, you just need to write something like, "that you did try on a few occasions to repay the loan early, but did not realise the balance was going to be so high, then realised the reason for this was because of the costly Payment Protection Insurance (PPI), so due to this you were unable to afford to repay this high amount, thererfore continued with the repayments in hope this was reduce substantially to an affordable settlement.
However, prior to this I did not realise the PPI was going to be included within the settlement, as it was never explained to me".

Something along those lines.;)

dunstonh

I tried on 2 separate occasions to repay the loan early. The first time I didn't pursue it or go into it in detail. The second time I requested an early settlement figure which was approximately half way through the term, the figure quoted was so high that it made more financial sense to continue the payments and leave the money in the bank.

Just to clarify, the destruction is typically 6 years after the repayment of the loan. Not 6 years from the application. However, the time bar of 15 years from the start date may end up being applied in some cases if the FOS dont or cant rule. When did you repay the loan in full?

chesney105

Hi thanks for getting back to me. The final repayment was made in October 2005.

chesney105

Section 5, Limitation Act 1980 - simple contract - 6 years after the date on which the cause of action accrued. In other words 6 years after the end of the contract or final payment.

So the information I was given by Sainsburys staff this morning was incorrect, the agreement is not due for destruction until Oct 2011.

Would it be better to write to Sainsburys and request a copy of the agreement or send a SAR?

Also, does anyone know how can I find out if Sainsburys have already been fined?

Many thanks

di3004

From this website.....

Does this apply to you? Expand the full list of Fined providers.

The regulator, the FSA, has said it wants to see better practice and has fined several companies for failing to treat their customers fairly. More fines, which could be for up to £1 million, are expected.
Who’s been fined so far?

• Swinton: Fined £770,000 in Oct 2009 for serious failings and an unacceptable level of non-compliant sales (on cover for home or motor insurance) between Dec 06 and Mar 08 (when it stopped selling PPI). Swinton has said it will contact over 350,000 customers who paid for the PPI and offer a full refund, as well as pro-actively review previously rejected claims. More Info: Swinton.
• Egg: Fined £721,000 in Dec 2008 for serious failings in its credit card PPI sales by telephone between Jan 05 and Dec 07. Egg has said it will be writing to customers, asking them to call a dedicated number if they are concerned they were missold PPI, and will compensate where appropriate. More Info: Egg.
• Alliance and Leicester (A&L): Fined £7 million, the highest fine to date by far, in Oct 2008 for serious failings in its PPI telephone sales between Jan 05 and Dec 07. A&L has said it will be writing to all the customers concerned. More Info: Alliance and Leicester.
• 5 motor retailers: GK Group Limited, George White Motors Limited, Ringways Garages (Leeds) Limited, Ringways Garages (Doncaster) Limited and Park’s of Hamilton (Holdings) Limited were fined a total of more than £175,000 in Aug 2008 for exposing a total of 2,175 customers to the risk of being sold unsuitable PPI policies. More Info: Motor retailers.
• Liverpool Victoria: Fined £840,000 in July 2008 for serious failings in the sale of single premium PPI on telephone loans sold betweeen 14 January 2005 and 8 August 2007. It has also agreed to compensate customers if their policy is not appropriate and to refund interest automatically. More Info: Liverpool Victoria.
• Land of Leather Ltd: Fined £210,000 in May 2008 for allowing its sales force to sell PPI, between May 2006 and Feb 2007, without effective monitoring or training. More Info: Land of Leather.
• HFC Bank, also trading as "Household Bank" and "Beneficial Finance": Fined £1,085,000 in January 2008 for putting customers at an unacceptable risk of being sold PPI when it was not suitable for them. Failings took place in branches between Jan 2005 and May 2007. More Info: HFC Bank
• Capital One: Fined £175,000 in February 2007 for failing to ensure that 50,000 customers buying credit cards and loans between January 2005 and April 2006 received important information about the policy. More info: Capital One
• GE Capital Bank Ltd: (supplies cards for Asda, Comet, Debenhams and Topshop among others): Fined £610,000 in January 2007 for inappropriate sales of its store cards and credit cards. More info: GE Capital Bank Ltd
• Redcats: Fined £270,000 in December 2006 for also not having adequate systems and controls in place to minimise the risk of unsuitable sales. More info: Redcats
• Regency Mortgage Corporation: Fined £56,000 in December 2006 for not collecting sufficient information during a PPI sale to ensure its recommendations met customers' demands and needs. More info: Regency Mortgage Corporation
• Loans.co.uk: Fined £455,000 in October 2006 for not having appropriate systems and controls to minimise the risk of unsuitable sales. More info: Loans.co.uk

Are you a customer of one of these firms?
If you’re a customer of one of these companies it may have already been in touch with you, but if it hasn’t you should definitely send a reclaim letter asking for justification that your policy was sold with your best interests in mind.
Other companies are likely to be fined too
The FSA is likely to announce further fines, this is important as it hugely strengthens your reclaim, so ensure you get the free weekly email to keep updated on this.
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