No document/Agreement Paperwork for a potential discretionary commission claim dated 2008 and 2010

Welshirish89

Hello All,

I had 2 separate finance agreements with Vauxhall in 2008 and then in 2010.

I no longer have the paperwork BUT I can provide:

- details of dealership I purchase from.
- registration of vehicle 
- my personal details, address at the time the finance was taken out

But also, Santander who I banked with at the time have confirmed a direct debit mandate was set up on the relevant dates with a reference number and subsequent payments collected.

However, Stellantis cannot locate me on their systems which I understand due to companies not being required to keep records after 6 years.

I'm still due to go back to Stellantis and provide them with an official letter fron santander with the direct debit mandate details in hope this will trigger them to look into further.

Is anyone else in the same predicament and have you found any solutions please?

Thanks 🙏

GrumpyDil

I don't think there will be to be truthful.

I suspect a lot of companies are working on their GDPR policies and getting rid of any records that they have no regulatory or business requirement to keep.

Saves on electronic and paper storage costs and means when an ex customer raises a complaint there are no records so the company can legitimately say we have no record of whatever is being asked about.

Of course I could be wrong but... 

Hoenir

I suspect you are. Storage costs huge amounts of money. Records are (often) systematically destroyed when they are no longer required by law to be kept. 

Nasqueron

The only caveat would be if the FCA decide that there was a problem AND if they decide there should be some recompense, AND if the dealer always or mostly used DCA then there might be a decision to take an estimate of what they were typically charging and what they were giving on average in DCA and then use that figure. That said, if they didn't use DCA consistently, and when they did, it wasn't always negative (e.g. option was there but not used) then they may say there is no evidence either way so don't proceed

dunstonh

However, Stellantis cannot locate me on their systems which I understand due to companies not being required to keep records after 6 years.

Not quite.   The data protection acts require companies to destroy data that is no longer required.    It is generally accepted that 6 years after the debt was repaid is a fair timescale.  it is also the period recommended by the FCA.

I'm still due to go back to Stellantis and provide them with an official letter fron santander with the direct debit mandate details in hope this will trigger them to look into further.

Direct debit collection references are not the agreement number.

Many firms archive the data for a period of years before full deletion.  The most common method is to archive under the agreement number.   

Is anyone else in the same predicament and have you found any solutions please?

The FCA is in the same predicament and has said as much.   It will form part of their report, when published.

One solution is for the firms to be told to bring archived data, back onto current systems.  This happened late on with PPI follow an FCA review. But until the FCA publish their review, we will have to wait.

DullGreyGuy

Hoenir said:

I suspect you are. Storage costs huge amounts of money. Records are (often) systematically destroyed when they are no longer required by law to be kept. 

Generally "the law" doesn't require companies to retain anything however it can be detrimental to any defence, enquiry etc if you have nothing when HMRC come knocking or a customer sues you etc. 

The law itself says the opposite, that you should minimise the amount of PII you hold and should be deleting/destroying or anonymising data at the earliest opportunity. 

Not all companies keep paper records, even going back years some companies were digitising paperwork received and destroying the originals. There is still a cost of storing digital records but it's much less than physical ones. 

GrumpyDil said:

Saves on electronic and paper storage costs and means when an ex customer raises a complaint there are no records so the company can legitimately say we have no record of whatever is being asked about.

Of course I could be wrong but... 

Saying you have no records generally isn't a good thing... remember civil courts work on the balance of probability (ie is it more likely than not) and so if the customer can produce a record to say you are liable to them and you have to tell the judge that all data from that period has been deleted so you cannot deny or confirm it then almost certainly the judge will find for the claimant. This is why typically companies will set a 6-7 year retention period because for simple contracts someone has 6 years to issue court proceedings from the date of loss. Some go for 7 years to have a contingency of 1 year. 

This is a bit different as the customers paperwork won't show what the arrangements were with the finance company. It is going to be a very common theme as the law requires companies to minimise PII and the FCA are going to have to opine on how they require companies to deal with matters where records have been legitimately destroyed. 

Hoenir

DullGreyGuy said:

Hoenir said:

I suspect you are. Storage costs huge amounts of money. Records are (often) systematically destroyed when they are no longer required by law to be kept. 

Generally "the law" doesn't require companies to retain anything however it can be detrimental to any defence, enquiry etc if you have nothing when HMRC come knocking or a customer sues you etc. 

"The default standard retention period for HMRC records is 6 years plus current, otherwise known as 6 years + 1. This is defined as 6 years after the last entry in a record followed by first review and/or destruction to be carried out in the additional current (+1) accounting year. Whilst this default retention period applies to the vast majority of our records, it does not apply to all records. Some records are required to be retained by law, for longer or shorter retention periods."


Having had to retrieve docoments from boxes contained in aircraft hangers to satisfy enquiries in the past. A time consuming activity.  The documents being boxed , then palletised then placed on storage racks. Retrieving just one specific document is an expensive business. 

Welshirish89

The good news is, I've received a further email to confirm they've found my details and there was a discretionary commission agreement in place.

Fingers crossed for anyone else who may have been in the same situation. 

dunstonh

The good news is, I've received a further email to confirm they've found my details and there was a discretionary commission agreement in place.

Don't get too excited.   DCA can be positive, negative and neutral.

All you have been told is that a DCA agreement was in place with the dealer.  It doesn't mean it was used in your case.   
Neutral would be where the dealer has it available to use but didn't use it with you.  
Positive is where they reduced the interest rate by giving up some commission.  This often happened during promotional periods.  Such as end of quarter sales targets needing to be achieved and putting on cheaper finance.   Or a helping a sale get over the line.
Negative is where the interest rate was increased and an increased commission taken.

Whilst the FCA has not yet published its review, it is unlikely to say that those who benefitted by reduced commission being taken and a lower interest rate applying are due compensation.   Equally, where it was available but not used is unlikely to result in compensation.  It is negative DCA that is going to be the focus.

However, even with negative DCA, the car dealers have being arguing that they often used that in conjunction with lowering the price on the vehicle and it was just shifting the margin from one method do the other.    We don't know how the FCA is going to consider that argument but it has been said that the FCA has been more focused on second hand car sales that used negative DCA.

DullGreyGuy

Hoenir said:

DullGreyGuy said:

Hoenir said:

I suspect you are. Storage costs huge amounts of money. Records are (often) systematically destroyed when they are no longer required by law to be kept. 

Generally "the law" doesn't require companies to retain anything however it can be detrimental to any defence, enquiry etc if you have nothing when HMRC come knocking or a customer sues you etc. 

"The default standard retention period for HMRC records is 6 years plus current, otherwise known as 6 years + 1. This is defined as 6 years after the last entry in a record followed by first review and/or destruction to be carried out in the additional current (+1) accounting year. Whilst this default retention period applies to the vast majority of our records, it does not apply to all records. Some records are required to be retained by law, for longer or shorter retention periods."


Having had to retrieve docoments from boxes contained in aircraft hangers to satisfy enquiries in the past. A time consuming activity.  The documents being boxed , then palletised then placed on storage racks. Retrieving just one specific document is an expensive business. 

7 years is what is generally considered sensible given the law of limitations is 6 years for simple contracts plus 1 year for prudence. However as stated, the law doesn't require you to do so.

Physical record recovery depends very much on how well things have been indexed and/or digitised. On a previous piece of work on the topic at one end we had a company that digitised everything and it did the indexation, packing recovery etc so you could see the digital version instantly, it had an index number and if you wanted it alone then it turned up in the post 2 days later. An alternative supply was box based so we retained what's in which box and we'd request the box ID and the whole box turns up 2 days later. 

There was the other extreme too though where people with spare warehousing had decided records management could be a good use of their space and had none of the sensible precautions you' expect and getting anything back was very hit or miss. When doing a site survey of one such place the ex-farmer who owned the business was doing welding on the shelves right next to boxes of paper records. The amount of rubbish that was being stored there was incredible. But hence the piece of work that meant every box got a distruction date and is automatically destroyed 3 months later unless the business explicitly intervenes.