Weightmans Solicitors

typical_blonde

Sorry if this isn't the right place, but I need a bit of advice. We had a loan with Cahoot, got into difficulties and it ended up in the hands of Weightmans, who were less than pleasant. Anyway, to cut a long story short we agreed to pay them £50 per month until the debt was cleared, set up a dd and thought nothing more of it, until we received a letter from Wescott telling us they were taking over the debt and we owed them £477.08. When we checked our records we worked out that we actually had over paid by £77 and wrote back, listing all the dates that the dd's were paid to Weightmans. They (Wescott) wrote back saying that we had no proof that we had paid the money into the right account (!). They were threatening to "take proceedings to recover the money due", when we had complied with the agreement and paid it to Weightmans.

I rang Weightmans and after some to-ing and fro-ing, they admitted that we were paying them when we shouldn't have been and they sent us a cheque for £650 along with a letter stating

"This sum represents 13 x instalments for £50.00 received from you by standing order after 17 June 2013, the date upon which Equidebt Limited entered administration."

We have banked the £650 and paid Wescott their £477.08, but the fact remains that at no time did we receive any notification that we should not be paying Weightmans or that Equidebt had gone into administration and they have had our money for 13 months. Am I correct in believing that they owe us the interest on our money for the 13 months they had it and some type of ex-gratia payment for the stress and inconvenience of chasing Weightmans? If someone who understands these things could put together a form of words for me to include in a letter to Weightmans I would be very grateful.