Car HP agreement terminated - can anything else go wrong now??!

mrsrwallace

Hi
Some of you may have seen my previous thread on my mortgage woes which have settled for the moment but now today we got a letter in the post - how I hate Royal Mail! and basically the car finance company has written to say that they have terminated the agreement and that we are to contact them to arrange the return of "their" vehicle.
Now I know a bit according to the agreement and it states that they cannot just come and take the vehicle as we have paid more than a third of it so they would need our permission to take it or get a County Court order to take the car off us. The background to this is that we have less than a year left on the HP to pay and we had contacted the company to alert them to the fact our income dropped significantly and we were allowed to pay what we had offered for 3 months. After those 3 months were up we contacted them again and increased our offer which we paid last month and had no letter from them to say they had any issue with this. Then out of the blue we get this letter today. So where do we stand???? We are so close to having the car paid for in full and literally owe only the interest on the agreement as the car's price has been paid back already. So - what do we do?? Can we contact them to say WOAH THERE! hold your horses! - or can we contact them and ask them to NOT terminate the agreement? Or do we just pay as we have been paying these last few months and hope that in the Court we get a chance to say our piece and show we have maintained payments each month, albeit they are lower? Would the magistrate/judge accept we have tried to keep up and give us time to keep paying or would they tend to side with the HP company? I have no idea how this works at all. So has anyone any idea of the process here? Also, because we have paid over 80% of the amount borrowed it would be a DISASTER if they took the car now....we need it for work, school etc and we've paid thousands for it! We'd have no vehicle if they took it and would be months before we could even scrape together the funds to buy a cheap runabout!
As per my previousuthread about the mortgage, we can accept that as realistically we cannot keep that on in the longterm and had to extend the term etc so it would be YEARS before we'd be anywhere near to owning it so we have accepted the house is going one way or the other but we CANNOT accept the car going - it's a LIFELINE!!!!

Any advice/previous experience of this is very welcome!

waltsalt

My advice is not quite related to your woes but I would suggest splitting your posts into paragraphs to make them a bit easier to read. Just saying.

mrsrwallace

thanks waltsalt,

must remember to pay attention to writing in paragraphs what with my mind being so obviously not absorbed by other more pressing issues

continualdiamond

Can't offer much advice except that try everything you possibly can to keep the car given your situation.

I voluntary termined my hire purchase agreement half way through, however have just received a letter to say it needed £240 of repairs to bring it up to satisfactory standard.

I rang and quiered what worked it needed, it apparently had 'light' scratches on 1 door, front bumper and back bumper.

Just a warning as would hate you to loose your car and then get a letter with cost of repairs that you're then liable for. I am furious that a 2004 car is not allowed to have light scratches and that it = being un-satisfactory.

mofopants

maybe the offer you gave them wasn't enough - might be worth a call to see if you can negotiate something else.

sheerdelight

Contact the Citizens Advice Bureau or one of the other voluntary bodies across the provinve that can advise on possible ways forward with regard to your agreement. Have details of your agreement and payments to date available. They might be able to intercede on your behalf to help negotiate new terms.

mrsrwallace

thanks for replies:D

contacted CAB and managed to get speaking over the phone to an adviser and he said that once the finance company issues the letter stating the agreement is terminated it is basically bye bye car unless the court decides to let us keep it and maintain payments of a lesser amount.

so we then called the finance company and surprise surprise they were totally unwilling to negotiate at all. We have maintained full payments on time every time for the last 4 years and a bit and now we are nearly at the final hurdle we take a big drop in income and they don't care! So anyway they basically said we need to get arrears caught up over the next 3 months and resume the full monthly payment after these 3 months and we can keep the car. So we just though sod it and agreed, I have no idea how we are to pay this though, we will just literally be on toast and beans for the next 3 months and will have to pay it somehow.

Should i have to starve they are NOT leaving us without this vehicle...we need it for work etc and if we are to get better paid jobs elsewhere how are we supposed to get there?? :mad:

Let this be a listen to you all....if you must take HP then DON'T! Get a loan from the Credit Union!!!

mrsrwallace

I didn't mean that by the way! DO NOT EVER GET INTO DEBT in the first place. If you can't afford it in the first place don't be getting into debt to pay for it.

x12yhp

mrsrwallace wrote: »

I didn't mean that by the way! DO NOT EVER GET INTO DEBT in the first place. If you can't afford it in the first place don't be getting into debt to pay for it.

Now if only the 10s of thousands who are on the cusp of your situation were to pay it heed.... unfortunately it isn't likely!!

angela90

What amounts of money are involved? How much do you still need to pay and what are you in a position to pay?