Consumer Rights, Dispute with Lender

Jen_09

Hello All,

We purchased a car through Hire Purchase. The car now (June 2023) has a failed engine and found to have been missold. The complaint has been escalated to the Financial Ombudsman, who has advised (March 2024) the lender to unwind the contract and refund all amounts.

Since then the lender has taken little action and we have been chasing almost twice a week. The responses from them are rather pathetic and obstructive (e.g. in meeting, on annual leave, is on lunch, false promises of call back). The only response we have received so far, asks us to confirm the location of the car, usually in a one sentence email or text. We are extremely reluctant to answer this given this the only leverage we have left.

We are utterly perplexed at the level of communication and pushing to understand how they plan on implementing Ombudsman's decision nor the timeline.

During this period we have made the monthly payments as usual. However we are now extremely frustrated for many reasons: my partner needs a car for his job, has had to turn down offers and income, we have had double expenses as we need to pay for this as well as alternative mode of transport and the unsatisfactory/lack of communication from the lender.

What are our rights? Can we pause or hold payments till the dispute is resolved? It is now coming up to a year since we started this whole process. 

Any advise is appreciated!

Thank you,
Jen

DullGreyGuy

What is the job title of the person in the Ombudsman that made the decision? 

If its 1st tier (an Adjudicator or Investigator) then they will treat the non-conformance as an unofficial objection by the company to the decision and escalate it to the 2nd tier (an ombudsman). It is the second tier decisions that are legally binding on the financial services company. 

If you get that decision and they still are not complying your next option is court however its not a normal court case, the ombudsman's decision is legally binding so you dont go to court to ask them to determine who is in the right or wrong but simply to issue a court order based on the ombudsman decision. Once you have you CCJ it opens up a range of collection options like bailiffs, winding up petition, third party debt order to freeze their accounts etc. 

sheslookinhot

Maybe not telling them location of car is not a good idea. They may want the car back before they refund you.

Jen_09

DullGreyGuy said:

What is the job title of the person in the Ombudsman that made the decision? 

If its 1st tier (an Adjudicator or Investigator) then they will treat the non-conformance as an unofficial objection by the company to the decision and escalate it to the 2nd tier (an ombudsman). It is the second tier decisions that are legally binding on the financial services company. 

If you get that decision and they still are not complying your next option is court however its not a normal court case, the ombudsman's decision is legally binding so you dont go to court to ask them to determine who is in the right or wrong but simply to issue a court order based on the ombudsman decision. Once you have you CCJ it opens up a range of collection options like bailiffs, winding up petition, third party debt order to freeze their accounts etc. 

Thank you so much! This clarifies to us the options we have available. It was a Investigator's decision, so we will follow the process.