Allay £50 late fee letter

MerryMeg

Hi,

My husband is a berk - he gave in to endless phone calls from Allay Claims, despite being self employed and not having knowingly ever had PPI because of this. It turns out he had some sort of money owed and two months (max) or so ago he received a letter saying he would shortly receive a settlement cheque for something like £16.75 for a claim from HBOS whom he had a mortgage with around 15 years ago.

We had a bit of a laugh at this measly amount, forgot about it and the cheque never arrived - we had a vague conversation about it a few weeks ago, concluded that perhaps we had to sign something in the letter to claim it, to be honest we just thought, oh well, no matter its only £16.75

Today we received a letter in the post heading 'Outstanding Invoice' in red writing - "Despite many efforts to contact you regarding our outstanding invoice of £3.94....blah blah...our fee remains outstanding....you have not paid the above sum within the timescales and therefore you have incurred further charges"....

OF FIFTY POUNDS!!!!

They are saying we owe £54 and if we "choose" not to settle the claim now we will incur further costs.

We have had no cheque, and no subsequent letters, no invoice for £3.64 or reminders, no letters at all other than the original laughable letter about the £16-odd cheque we were told to expect, did not receive, and largely forgot about. We have received NO money from this company.

Can they actually do this? Where do I go from here?

[Deleted User]

MerryMeg wrote: »

Where do I go from here?

The Ombudsman.

SonOf

You make a formal complaint to Allay saying that they have missold their services to you (on the basis of charges not being disclosed).

Also, CMCs are not allowed to charge more than 20% of the redress plus VAT. These charges are part of that. So, Allay are breaching the limit.

If Allay reject your complaint, you can refer it to the FOS as, thankfully, the FCA took over regulation of CMCs back in April and that means you can now use the FOS against them.

MerryMeg

Thanks for your replies - I'm going to ring them in the morning and say that I can't possibly see how I owe them money for something I have not received. It makes you wonder just how many times they make £50 out of people.