Starting claim against Shop Direct VERY catalogue

technogogo

My wife has had an account with VERY for a number of years and has been paying a form of payment protection insurance. She cannot recall how this came about. (I have told her she is a silly mare.) She has not worked since we started a family (>15yrs ago) so I believe the insurance is useless and therefore we have a valid refund claim.

I have followed step 1 using the template letter. I wrote to Shop Direct, enclosing £1 payment, to ask for T&Cs. They have replied but only with a single A4 sheet, double sided of T&Cs that makes no mention of the payment protection insurance. It just talks about the interest arrangements for the account and payments etc...

I intend to write back asking specifically for details of the T&Cs relating to the payment protection insurance. Has anyone else had this happen? Why wouldn't they include the PPI element in the T&Cs they sent back?

I'm really really sorry if this is in the thread already. Its a monster thread and I spent ages searching it. But searching for the word "very" throws up a LOT of false results as you'd imagine! :mad:

di3004

technogogo wrote: »

My wife has had an account with VERY for a number of years and has been paying a form of payment protection insurance. She cannot recall how this came about. (I have told her she is a silly mare.) She has not worked since we started a family (>15yrs ago) so I believe the insurance is useless and therefore we have a valid refund claim.

I have followed step 1 using the template letter. I wrote to Shop Direct, enclosing £1 payment, to ask for T&Cs. They have replied but only with a single A4 sheet, double sided of T&Cs that makes no mention of the payment protection insurance. It just talks about the interest arrangements for the account and payments etc...

I intend to write back asking specifically for details of the T&Cs relating to the payment protection insurance. Has anyone else had this happen? Why wouldn't they include the PPI element in the T&Cs they sent back?

I'm really really sorry if this is in the thread already. Its a monster thread and I spent ages searching it. But searching for the word "very" throws up a LOT of false results as you'd imagine! :mad:

Hi and welcome

And quite right too that she would not be covered with not being employed at the time it was taken out, it was worthless to her.
If the account is still active then I assume they should still hold the details, if gone past 6 years, they may not any longer hold any or much details, but a reclaim can still be done, and with that you would continue to step 3 on the how to make a reclaim
with completing a reclaim questionnaire.

Complete - send and keep a copy for your records, so basically as long as you have the account number, and reasons for being mis sold, you are ready to fire away on the reclaiming.

Good luck.

technogogo

Thanks Dizzy Di. I've seen your name on other forums today on this same topic - legalbeagles.info

So just one follow up question... do I need to issue a SAR? Or just send a completed reclaim questionnaire form?

Reason I'm asking is though we have many of the previous account statements, my wife had the account with Very, and Littlewoods Direct going back as far as 2004. So... if and when we are successful, do we need to know how much we are claiming back? or can we simply say the amount is "all payments that have been made so far"?! Also, is the claim against Very (Shop Direct Finance Company Ltd) also going to include payments made when they were "Littlewoods Direct" or do we need to do two claims? (please say no!)

(Bit more background which coincides with other reports... my wife has no idea how she came to have this insurance cover. She says she never returned the forms that she would have been asked to sign because she didn't want the cover. But seems they added it anyway. It used to be just pence. But in more recent years the monthly extra care advance payments can be £3 or £4 when the statement total is only £50. And when she returns items and get the purchase price refunded, the extra case charges remain. Which is worth a grrrr.)

technogogo

Ok then an update from OP. (numbers and dates changed to protect the innocent! but are ballpark)

The CCA/T&Cs response letter states that the account was opened way back on X April 1997!

With reference to statements we still have, we have adding up the Extra Care Advantage payments made. Since Jan 2009 it comes to around £110.00. We estimate we've probably paid another £100.00 in insurance from when the account was first opened until end of 2008.

The account has a current balance of £154.00

So this is relatively small beer. We are not trying to avoid paying a large outstanding balance. Saying that however, the amount owing is similar to the amount of mis-sold PPI we would like refunded! :think:


Now, to answer my own question about the CCA T&Cs received: the judgement in the Carey case means that CCA's sent by lenders do not have to include the original signature. Also the terms and conditions themselves can be reconstituted. However, it does have to include the address of the customer at the time the agreement was signed. The returned CCA does not have our (previous) address on it. So would seem to not be a 'proper' response as required by the act.

I strongly suspect that Shop Direct could not produce the original signed agreement if required to do so in court. Though this case is not going to go near a court as the sums are too small.

Our aim here is to get a settlement of around £150. So I'm considering the following action...

Reply to Shop Direct saying that the copy of the credit agreement fails to meet the CCA requirement because:
1 it does not include our address at the time the agreement was signed.
2 although they state that the account was opened <sometime in> 1997 the CCA has a footer with the date <sometime in> 2010.
3 since 1997 they would have varied the terms for sure. In their response, if an agreement has been varied by the creditor under a unilateral power of variation, the creditor must still provide a copy of the original agreement, as well as the varied terms. (don't know if this means they should highlight the variations or just include all relevant T&C change communications?)

So, I believe we have a fairly strong degree of leverage. But how should I pull on that lever?

Remember I have only so far requested CCA and T&Cs. At some point I need to declare I believe the insurance element was mis-sold and ask for that money back. But I want to do this in the context of THEM knowing that WE think their obligations under the CCA have not been met.

I am confident I can craft a suitably worded letter. But would appreciate some advice from anyone who has already received and or accepted an offer from Shop Direct that involved similar sums of money. How best to shake their tree in other words?!

s.saving

Can anyone help; I need to know what address I send my very catalogue ppi reclaims form to

garynuman

s.saving wrote: »

Can anyone help; I need to know what address I send my very catalogue ppi reclaims form to

You can send it to:

Shop Direct Finance Company Ltd.
Sandringham House,
Sandringham Avenue,
Chelmsford,
CM92 1LQ

It also depends how long ago you signed up for it as, I believe, they weren't regulated by FSA until 2005. I tried to claim from an agreement taken out in 1996 and was refused due to this.

Also, DON'T expect an easy ride. They acknowledge the complaint with a standard template letter but (in my case) made no genuine attempt to contact me further. They also failed to return my SAR after 60 days (not the required 40!) so I went to FOS only to be told they weren't regulated. Terrible company to deal with.

Best of luck with your claim though.

Regards

Gaz