New to forums and need some advice

Azz_Kiker · 1 June 2008 at 12:30PM

First of all I would just like to say hello to everyone out there and thanks in advance for any advice that can be given.

My story starts a couple of years back. I was approached by an old friend wondering if i would like to make a little money by doing him a small favour, as Xmas was coming up, I thought it would be a good idea.

The favour was to take out a car in my name on finance and he would pay for it, as he was self employed I thought it was due to this that he couldn't get finance, at least thats what he told me...

So I took out a car on finance no problem for him, I later discovered that he was actually working for a local drug dealer and the money was coming from him to pay the monthly installments. So when i found this out i was trying and trying to get my so called friend to take the debt out of my name, I was given all the stories under the sun and told "next week it'll all be sorted"

In the end I had to take the car back and try and sell it privatly, I got a fraction of the price that was still outstanding, but due to my own financial problems, i had to use some of this money towards my own debts, leaving very little to pay back to the creditors.

My family have lost all trust in me, I've moved away from home due the troubles I was facing from the people I took the car from, I lost my job that was going to help me pay off the debt and im now working part time at minimum wage just to get me by.

I've been contacted by a company wanting to set me up on a payment plan, but due to there being about £14k o/s, i dont see any way of getting out of this mess.

Any help would be great.

Thanks

standupguy · 1 June 2008 at 2:06PM

Taking out Finance for your friend could be considered fraudulent as the Finance company were unaware of this arrangement - had they known the truth the finance would not have been granted.

Was the documentation a loan or Hire Purchase?

If it was a Hire Purchase agreement then the car belonged to the Finance Company and should not have been sold without their permission.
If this was the case then the sale of the car is known as "conversion" - selling property that you do not own.
Of course, if they were aware you were selling the car and agreed to the sale then that is another matter.

If it was on a loan document then the Finance company would not have had title to the vehicle and the sale would be ok.

In view of your circumstances it may be best to offer a regular monthly amount of what you can afford.

If the company took this further a court would only award what you could afford monthly anyway and it may well be the company does not want to spend further money chasing this debt through the courts if there is little chance of recovery.

If the company are fully aware of the circumstances you detail here then my view would be that this debt is probably fully provided in their accounts and may well be written off?
However, if this is the case, this does not stop them passing this to a debt collector where they will get a percentage of whatever is collected

Of course this leaves you with not being able to obtain reasonable cost credit for a good few years to come.

clearmydebts · 1 June 2008 at 3:21PM

Sorry to hear what happened to you. It must be terrible to have to move away. I'm not really able to offer any advice as I don't have a car myself but hopefully someone else will.

Azz_Kiker · 1 June 2008 at 6:48PM

The best i can probably afford to pay back is only going to be about £50 a month at the most.

With a quick calculation, i think its going to take about 23 years to pay off.

I've looked into going into a trust deed which will take 3 years to do its job, im not to sure about the whole doings of a trust deed so im not to sure if i want to sign into one of these without looking into it further.