difficult one to understand - please help

singledaddy

A friend of mine asked my advise on a debt she has, but it was beyond my understanding so i told her i would ask on here.
Basically she has a debt with northern rock. it was for about £500 and is now down to about £200.
she defaulted early with this debt (when she became unemployed), and got a default notice on her credit report (which will drop off in a couple of years).
since then she has been paying a fiver a month which is all she can afford and Northern Rock are happy with this arrangement.
However, when she became unemployed 4 years ago she phoned NR cos she believed she had payment protection on this debt. She was told by NR that she didnt. As a result of this she had to default on her payments for a couple of months before she was able to start the £5 a month payments.
She has recently found out that she does have payment protection.
If NR had applied the payment protection when she informed them that she had lost her job there would then have been no need for a default notice on her credit report.
She is obviously going to contact NR to now get them to apply the payment protection, but what she wants to know is if she can ask them to remove the default on her credit report as it was only put on because they misinformed her about having no payment protection.
I hope this makes sense and that someone on here can advice. Thanks in advance.

So,basically, she only got the default cos NR told her she didnt have payment protection when in fact she did have.

singledaddy

..................................anyone?

camuk81

Can she get a copy of the Repayment protection policy. There may be something in there of how she lost her job as to why she was not eligible. Best to start from there and go back to the start.

FireWyrm

Oh blinking heck...you're right, that's bad.

Ok, the defaults she probably has to take on the chin, but I think there's a case for twisting their arm into writing off the balance. I suggest you start with a polite letter outlining the problem and the fact that PPI would have stepped in early on. Add that she's under allot of stress etc. Then hit them up with the dodgy advice that left her in this situation and then suggest they write it off in the interests of good customer relations. If that doesn't work, threaten them with the OFT and then do it...write with a complaint and tell them you're doing it.

You could also, if you were feeling mulish, take it to the papers since the big businesses have a habit of getting away with crap advice which causes customers more trouble than necessary....

Ps, it'd also be looking for the cost of the PPI premiums since it was obviously mis-sold wasn't it...it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on since it wasn't invoked at the right time...you get the idea.

singledaddy

cheers mate. will pass on your excellent advise.
i hope you didnt mind me asking you all on her behalf. The help ive received on here has made me only a few months from being debt free so i knew this was the place to ask.