Need advice on what to do!!

gemspan

Hi there

I have just found this forum and thought somebody may be able to help me.

This last year has been terrible for me. Through illness and a bad luck with my business I find myself in financial difficulty. I have never had money problems before so this is something really new to me and I am sick with worry.

In a bid to try and get things sorted I have decided to sell my house and downsize. I have missed 2 mortgage payments in the last year and curently have arranged to pay £200 per week which is absolutely killing me. I just can;t afford it. However, I am afraid they will repossess if I don't pay it. My arrears are approximately £1100. In addition I have a secured loan with Black Horse Finance which I took last November for £15,000 to get stock for a trade show and also buy a new packng machine for my business. Things didn't go well at the trade show and all the money I borrowed was eaten up without much return. My fault but I did think it would work. The packing machine also doesn't do what it was supposed to do ie extend the shelf life of my products, so I'm now left with a machine that the seller wont buy back and I don't know where to sell it - apart from ebay at a much reduced price!

Anyway, I tried to remortgage earlier this year and was told by Black Horse that I could postpone some of the loan in order to pay other things off. At the last gasp they refused to let me postpone the loan and now I am in the position of having to sell my house. The settlement figure for Black Horse was £15,500+ in June and I have recently applied for a new settlement figure and it has now gone up to £19,700+ because I claimed on insurance for being sick and they say I have to pay the full premium of £5000 altough I only claimed £700. Is this right? There is nothing in the agreement to say that. the loan was also sold to me as having a reduced interest rate if I took the insurance; nothing was said about it being added to the loan or that I would have to pay the full premium if I claimed and settled the loan early. This now means that I have to pay an additional £5000 which would have gone on paying off credit cards etc., from the proceeds of the sale of my house.

I am downsizing to a smaller house and mine is currently on the market at a fixed price of £165,000. This leaves me £33,000 - £15,000 on a deposit and the rest to pay off debts. It would have been £38,000 had BH not added the £5000. I have written a letter of complaint and asked them to explain why this has happened and also detail the charges, payments and how they calculate the settlement figure. The manager was to come back to me today but he has not so I fear the worst.

Has this happened to anybody else? Also, I have been getting around 6 calls a day to my home and have now written to ask them to stop calling me and communicate by lettr. I got in touch with CCCS but they were the ones who put me in touch with the remortgage provider who provided a terrible service. I have now been in touch with Payplan who appear to be much better and are sorting me out a mortgage. I can get 90% if I have only missed 2 payments but this payment that was due to be paid when the remortgage fell through is currently being paid off with the £200 per week.

I was threatened with somebody being sent round to my door by MBNA; they also phone me on my mobile. Theres lots going on but I feel as if I have a light at the end of the tunnel but it seems so close but so far. Just need some advice. I have written to everybody advising them of my circumstances. Am I doing everything right? Do I have to take the abuse that I get on the phone. I have been customers of theirs for almost 20 years and have never made a late payment but they just don;t seem to care.

Look forward to hearing from somebody. Life is very hard at the moment. Sometimes I think I have some money and then it is just taken away.

itsarichmansworld

Not sure what to do but I would suggest contacting the FSA or the citizens advice maybe even the Office of fair trading

Hopefully someone will be along to give better advice

CFC

Hi Gemspan, I'm really sorry to hear that your business has take a turn for the worse.

Unfortunately, you have claimed on the insurance. If you look at it from the bank's perspective, they have taken on the risk and you have had benefit, so they want all the premiums. It's like if you insured your car annually but paid monthly installments. You can't have a crash, claim on it and then tell them you don't want to make any more payments. You have to pay the full amount on it. I think if you read your insurance policy documentation you will find this spelled out. Sadly the policies you buy which you buy packaged with a loan are not generally a good purchase.

In general, when your business purchases goods or services from another business, you have the same implied rights as a consumer would have when buying from you.

However, while these basic rights can't be excluded from contracts with consumers, they can be excluded from contracts between businesses. You should make sure that the terms and conditions of any contract don't put you at a disadvantage.


In the case of goods, unless otherwise stated, you are entitled to demand that your purchases:

correspond with the seller's description
are of satisfactory quality - safe, in working order and free of defects
are fit for their purpose - capable of doing what they're meant to do
These rights are outlined in the Sale of Goods Act 1979.

Now, even if your contract did specifically exclude the 'fitness of purpose' clause, you may be able to do something about it under the Unfair Contracts and Terms Act. The law will also take into consideration your negotiating power. For example, if you bought from International Conglomerate Worldwide Only Producer plc, and you're a sole trader, your negotiating power is very limited.

I would advise you to seek advice on the return of the machine from your local Trading Standards, CAB or Chamber of Commerce.

Best of luck.

gemspan

Thank you so much for your reply. So that does mean that even although I only received £700 in insurance payments they can take the whole £5000? I can see if they want to take the money they are owed in payments but not the whole amount. That seems immoral!!!!! It certainly wasn't spelled out to me like that when I took the loan; the loan was sold with insurance so that I could get a lower interest rate! I think I have been mis-sold or not really given the full facts which again I find immoral! I don't think I have an insurance policy as it was attached to the loan. I don't think I ever received one but I will have a look for it just to make sure.

I think I have been incredibly stupid or perhaps niave!!! I don't think I have a leg to stand on with the packing machine either then as there was no contract just the sale of the machine saying it would keep my products fresh for 6 weeks at room temperature. I don;t have that in writing. I am only finding out now just how silly and trusting I have been as the guy was such a nice guy!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, I think I may be able to claw back some money from illegal bank charges as I seem to have quite a lot of them and that may pay off some of my debt. I'll have a look at how to go about that.

Thank you again. This forum is very informative and lots of people who have been in the same boat so I don't feel as if I am by myself now.

Gemspan

immoral_angeluk

I do think you are right to sell the house. Could you maybe write to the people on your back telling them that at the moment you are having difficulties but are in the process of selling your house, after which you will clear the debt in full...?

gemspan

Hi there

That's exactly what I've done!!! I finally took my head out of the sand last week and wrote to all of them explaining this.

However, I have since been looking at consumer action group website and have joined. The real reason this state of affairs started in the first place was because Halifax removed my od without telling me 2 years ago and startd bouncing all my dds and so's. Each time I was incurring £35 in charges. I completely lost track of what was going on and started to take bank loans and use credit cards to live because before money went into my account it was swallowed up by the charges being incurred.

I have had my light bulb moment and will be writing to all my banks and cc companies to get my statements and put in claims for these illegal charges. Also, I have been thinking about what CFC said about the insurance. The insurance cost £5000 over 10 years. However, I have only used 1 year of it and therefore am entitled to the remaining monies back LESS the money I have claimed for so they should be giving me a rebate of that money. There has been a similar case and the person won. This is something that is about to come into the public domain very shortly; the fact that these companies sell PPI for commission etc., and problems arise when people come to claim or settle the loan early. This way of working is also unlawful.

I do think I have a good case and had somebody round to view my house today so hopefully may get an offer soon.

I feel so much more liberated now that I have found this forum and realise that my debt is not insurmountable and a lot of it was caused by HBOS in the first place. There is also a question as to whether I can take them on for defamation of character because they have defaulted me purely because of their charges. I am looking into that at the present time.

When you are in debt you feel as if these people have the ultimate power and don't question what they do. It is very enlightening to realise that in fact they are not working within the parameters of the law and they should be brought to task. I for one will be doing this. I am starting by sending off for my bank statements for the last 6 years from the banks. I will then send off to the credit card companies for the same statements. One step at a time I will fight back and make them pay for the misery they have caused me.

Thanks for all the invaluable advice I have read on this site.

Gemspan