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Has the bank forged my signature for PPI? Help!
Hi,
After several months of swapping credit cards to take advantage of 0% rates on balance transfers, I finally decided to approach my bank for a low interest rate loan and consolidate the payments into one lump sum. I required a fairly large loan of £15,000 and so was rather desperate for the bank to approve my loan quickly.
As a contractor living in London but working outside of London, I couldn't locate a branch that I could access during the week. Therefore I made an appointment to see a branch that was open in London at the weekends. I find one and arranged a meeting with a manager for a weekend in April 2007. The meeting went well and the advisor seemed to believe that it might be possible for the bank to help me. However, in order to authorise the loan the bank need to establish what my regular form of income was. As a contractor I used a payroll company based outside of the UK. It was therefore not clear to the bank where my income was coming from. I was told that once the bank could verify this, the loan could be approved. It would be a lump sum loan with a repayment period of 5 years. Nothing was signed on the day and I was told that the bank would be in touch later in the week.
As the events occurred nearly a year ago I cannot exactly recall what happened next. What I can remember is that I was working outside of London when I got a call from the bank. The loan had been approved but I believe they required a signature to agree the loan. They understood that I could not get to a bank branch and therefore sent me to a partner bank that was near me to complete the necessary documentation. I remember signing a document and a copy being sent by fax to the London branch I had originally contacted. There were some difficulties in faxing this to them, but it was eventually cleared.
A few days later, the loan appeared in my online banking system and I was relatively happy although though the full repayments were larger than I anticipated. The total sum loaned was over £23, 000. I naively figured that it was unlikely that the bank would miscalculate the repayments and therefore I assumed everything was ok.
I've kept up the payments on the loan and everything has been fine until I recently read the Martin's latest article about PPI. I've encountered PPI products in the past credit applications and avoid them like the plague. I have never accepted a credit cards with insurance cover (PPI) as I believe them to be a rip off. Nonetheless, Martin's article mentioned misselling of this insurance on loans and it got me thinking. I contacted my bank to double check if my loan did not PPI. To my horror, they informed me that I had PPI and that it had been added to the lump sum of the loan. I told them this was odd as I never ever applied for PPI and was confused why I would suddenly break the trend with this loan. I figured I must have missed it in the small print so asked for a copy of my contract. After a couple of minutes of being put on hold I was told that my file was elsewhere in the bank and they would call me back once they had located it. This seemed reasonable enough so thought nothing of it. A couple of hours later the bank rang back and informed me that I had indeed signed for the PPI. I couldn't believe this as there is no way I would have put my signature next to something like this knowing how much of a rip off they are. I therefore asked the bank to send me a copy of the contract.
Almost a week later, I got a copy of the contract. I do not recall signing this particular document which detailed the financial breakdown of the loan and it does indeed include two signatures bearing my name. One signature in a box agreeing to the loan and a signature in the box agreeing to the PPI. At the bottom of the contract it states: "Please tick box above to confirm that you do wish to purchase optional loan insurance". I would like to point out that on the copy I have before me there is no tick in the box. I was also struck by the two signatures as there appear to be several discrepancies in the handwriting style. I have referred to past signed documents dating back to November 2005 and I cannot understand why my signature would have changed in April 2007 for one single document. Therefore I am not convinced this is a signature of my hand.
My sister applied for a similar loan at roughly the same time, with the same bank (different branch) and having heard the process I went through she felt it did not match her own experience. Together we feel there are several other issues surrounding this agreement that do not add up. At this stage I will not divulge what those are, but we feel it puts into serious doubt the integrity of the contract.
My question for the forum is what should I do next? I am liable for an extra £5000 on my loan for insurance I do not recall agreeing to. I am considering recruiting the expertise of a handwriting and fraud expert. Advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks.
Unwanted PPI casualty
After several months of swapping credit cards to take advantage of 0% rates on balance transfers, I finally decided to approach my bank for a low interest rate loan and consolidate the payments into one lump sum. I required a fairly large loan of £15,000 and so was rather desperate for the bank to approve my loan quickly.
As a contractor living in London but working outside of London, I couldn't locate a branch that I could access during the week. Therefore I made an appointment to see a branch that was open in London at the weekends. I find one and arranged a meeting with a manager for a weekend in April 2007. The meeting went well and the advisor seemed to believe that it might be possible for the bank to help me. However, in order to authorise the loan the bank need to establish what my regular form of income was. As a contractor I used a payroll company based outside of the UK. It was therefore not clear to the bank where my income was coming from. I was told that once the bank could verify this, the loan could be approved. It would be a lump sum loan with a repayment period of 5 years. Nothing was signed on the day and I was told that the bank would be in touch later in the week.
As the events occurred nearly a year ago I cannot exactly recall what happened next. What I can remember is that I was working outside of London when I got a call from the bank. The loan had been approved but I believe they required a signature to agree the loan. They understood that I could not get to a bank branch and therefore sent me to a partner bank that was near me to complete the necessary documentation. I remember signing a document and a copy being sent by fax to the London branch I had originally contacted. There were some difficulties in faxing this to them, but it was eventually cleared.
A few days later, the loan appeared in my online banking system and I was relatively happy although though the full repayments were larger than I anticipated. The total sum loaned was over £23, 000. I naively figured that it was unlikely that the bank would miscalculate the repayments and therefore I assumed everything was ok.
I've kept up the payments on the loan and everything has been fine until I recently read the Martin's latest article about PPI. I've encountered PPI products in the past credit applications and avoid them like the plague. I have never accepted a credit cards with insurance cover (PPI) as I believe them to be a rip off. Nonetheless, Martin's article mentioned misselling of this insurance on loans and it got me thinking. I contacted my bank to double check if my loan did not PPI. To my horror, they informed me that I had PPI and that it had been added to the lump sum of the loan. I told them this was odd as I never ever applied for PPI and was confused why I would suddenly break the trend with this loan. I figured I must have missed it in the small print so asked for a copy of my contract. After a couple of minutes of being put on hold I was told that my file was elsewhere in the bank and they would call me back once they had located it. This seemed reasonable enough so thought nothing of it. A couple of hours later the bank rang back and informed me that I had indeed signed for the PPI. I couldn't believe this as there is no way I would have put my signature next to something like this knowing how much of a rip off they are. I therefore asked the bank to send me a copy of the contract.
Almost a week later, I got a copy of the contract. I do not recall signing this particular document which detailed the financial breakdown of the loan and it does indeed include two signatures bearing my name. One signature in a box agreeing to the loan and a signature in the box agreeing to the PPI. At the bottom of the contract it states: "Please tick box above to confirm that you do wish to purchase optional loan insurance". I would like to point out that on the copy I have before me there is no tick in the box. I was also struck by the two signatures as there appear to be several discrepancies in the handwriting style. I have referred to past signed documents dating back to November 2005 and I cannot understand why my signature would have changed in April 2007 for one single document. Therefore I am not convinced this is a signature of my hand.
My sister applied for a similar loan at roughly the same time, with the same bank (different branch) and having heard the process I went through she felt it did not match her own experience. Together we feel there are several other issues surrounding this agreement that do not add up. At this stage I will not divulge what those are, but we feel it puts into serious doubt the integrity of the contract.
My question for the forum is what should I do next? I am liable for an extra £5000 on my loan for insurance I do not recall agreeing to. I am considering recruiting the expertise of a handwriting and fraud expert. Advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks.
Unwanted PPI casualty
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Comments
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== UPDATE ==
After receiving the phoney loan agreement from my bank I decided to run a little test to see if I could catch them out.
The copy of the loan agreement that was sent to me did not contain a tick in box agreeing to PPI. I figured that whomever had tampered with my agreement had probably forgotten to tick the box so I wondered what would happen if I pointed this out to the bank. If a fraud had been perpetrated, it wouldn't be too far fetched to think that someone might tick the box to cover their tracks.
I phoned the bank and enquired again about my loan agreement. I told the woman on the phone that I had requested a copy of my loan agreement last week but still hadn't received it in the post. I stated that it must therefore be lost in the post so I asked her to send me another copy of the agreement. I stressed that the matter was most urgent and I needed it to be settled as quickly as possible. I re-iterated that my problem with the loan agreement was that I did not recall agreeing to the PPI and that I hadn't signed or ticked the PPI agreement box. I asked her to double check this before sending me a copy which I could review. The lady on the phone assured me that another copy would be sent straight away and apologised for any inconvience caused.
A week later, I still hadn't received anything from the bank so I contacted them again and asked where the copy of my loan agreement was. I was shocked to hear that the bank had lost my loan agreement and that no copies of it existed anywhere at the branch!! The lady went on to tell me that there was nothing further the bank could do and I should contact customer relations.
I couldn't believe it. Within a week of me receiving a phoney copy of my loan, the bank suddenly 'lost' it!
My question now is, can I still claim back the PPI on my loan if no loan agreement exists and am I even liable for the loan if there are no copies of the agreement?0 -
True it is possible that the bank may have lost the agreement but why not give me a courtesy call to say so?? A customer requests a copy of an important document which they need urgently, the bank can't find it so they just forget about. And why fob me off to customer relations when they can't do anything about the matter?? Hardly professional and definitely not the level of service I get from my home branch.
To be quite honest, I think its fair too convenient that this branch have now lost this agreement. I think my persistence in trying to get hold of this document has panicked someone and they've 'lost' the document to prevent any further enquiries on my part. Too bad I've got a copy of the phoney loan agreement. The signatures on it are blatantly not mine and last time I checked, fraud is criminal offense. Even if the signatures were mine, why have I been paying for PPI when the check box clearly indicates that I did not agree to it. Something very suspicious is going on here and quite frankly, I don't like it.0 -
== UPDATE ==
I made a complaint to the bank on the 20th March and on the 30th March I received a letter from the bank's complaints department informing me that I have now been assigned a case officer who is looking into it.
On 2nd April I checked my online banking and loan agreement and I found that the bank have made a payment of £5300.00. No letter from the bank has arrived yet and no explanation or break down of the payment. I'm very pleased with the amount but I'm still concerned that the bank has not admitted to any wrong doing or made any attempt to contact me and explain what is going on.
I'll post another update when I receive it.0 -
I wouldn't have put it past the Bank to do whatever it takes to sell you an additional product. It does sound as if they have made this gesture which has registered online, but they haven't sent you a latter yet confirming the action you have taken.
I've lodged court papers against one of the main high street banks for forging documents relating to PPI, so you aren't the only one. I'd be happy to have a result like yours!Almost debt-free, but certainly even with the Banks!0 -
You poor thing-who an earth on the high street was this??Loan-£3600 only 24 months of payments to go!!!
All debt consolodated and cards destroyed!!
As D'Ream would sing 'Things.....can only get better'!!!0 -
In my case it was the bank that liked to give you extra...............Almost debt-free, but certainly even with the Banks!0
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== UPDATE ==
Can't believe this has dragged on for so long.
The bank have finally acknowledged that the manner in which my loan was agreed was wrong. Whilst they uave not admitted that a forgery took place, the have told my that an investigation was conducted and the member of staff who brokered the loan now no longer works at the bank.
The bank are offering a further £1,500 to settle the PPI policy and will then restructure my loan to the interest rate and term that I agreed to.
Success!0 -
Gosh well done on your result and for sticking with it for two years!0
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My loan was with RBS.
Not sure what's happened at the bank in recent months but the change in attitude has been incredible and in particular the young chap on their PPI Customer Concerns team who has really championed my case.
They're on their way to winning my trust back
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