Lowell saying not statute barred

Ob1Toby

I have had loads of letters, emails, texts and phone calls from Lowell since November 2024, regarding an old credit card debt
The last payment on the account was Sept 2018 . I replied saying the debt is statute barred, however, they are saying it is NOT statute barred as the original lender issued a default notice in Sept 2019, and this is when the Limitation time frame starts, and not from the last payment.
Id be very grateful if someone could shed some light on the situation.

Many thanks in advance 

fatbelly

Yes that's correct

It was established by the court case BMW v Hart

Ob1Toby

Thank you for your reply
Are you saying Lowell is correct?
Thx

Ob1Toby

I've had a look at that case. It's a HP agreement. Would it be the same for credit cards or just specially HP?
TIA

molerat

Surely the account should have defaulted 3 to 6 months after the missed payment, there are FOS decisions which support that.

Ob1Toby

So would that make the default notice void?

ManyWays

We always tend to assume that a default notice has something to do with a default being registered on your credit record, because these bothe tend to happen at roughly the same time. But legally these are two distinct things, with the "3-6 month guidance" being established by the SCOR committee that oversees credit scoring, and the default notice is a legal requirement under the Consumer Credit Act. 
So far as I know, you cannot argue that a Default Notice is void because it was served later than a default could have been added to a credit record.

sourcrates

The date of default would be the "cause of action" date here, so yes, Lowell are correct, and have the court case to back up their claim unfortunately.

DankVielen

Ob1Toby said:

Thank you for your reply
Are you saying Lowell is correct?
Thx

I am new here so do not take my word as gospel but based on the posts by others, they say that Lowell have a habit of making assertions that they cannot prove.  Mystery payments of £2 and allegations of acknowledging the debt, yet when asked to provide evidence of these they fail to produce them.  They have a dedicated page on Debt Camel and I have found quite a lot of Lowell threads here.

I had two debts (one big one small) that ended up with Lowell, I made some complaints to the FOS and got a letter from them saying the debt was unenforceable, but no letter regarding the smaller one.

I would suggest you go through all your paperwork and file them by debt, I did this which was a vast improvement on my carrier bag of unopened debt envelopes and I came across default letters.  If you have such a letter for the debt you are referring to then do a subject access request and make your own complaint about them.

Not only would an earlier default letter exonerate you from this debt but it would put them in hot water with the FOS.

I never take the word of any of these debt collector companies, I consider them to be vermin, inflicting anxiety for debt that the lender has mostly written off.  I have been browsing this forum a lot in the last few days and it is a gold mine, I can't help but agree with this post.

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