Statute Barred?

[lindylou]

Hi
I haven't been on here for a long time. In 2012 we were really grateful for the advice we were given on here. Long story short we had previously had a DMP. We settled on 3 of the debts using redundancy money (Apparently we could have probably settled for a lot less but at the time wanted it over) We had one remaining loan which we offered 55% on but they wouldn't even negotiate with us. Initially we dropped our payments to £1 a month but after fantastic support on here we stopped paying as hoped that they might then be prompted to negotiate with us. The last payment was June 2012. Every year we get a standard letter from them and apart from another letter which acknowledged a slight miscalculation on our original loan, we haven't heard from them. As far as we are aware the Loan hasn't been sold on. Is the loan now statute barred or because they send us the annual letter does that not apply? It was a bank loan for a car which we then topped up at some point. We have spent years just waiting to hear they were taking it further as it was for a large amount. I'd appreciate some advice please. Many thanks

[Warwick65]

When was the loan defaulted ? If it was before June 2012 then I would say it probably is SB but I wouldn't go telling them anything. If it is of no inconvenience to you , let them keep sending letters and keep filing them.

I am not sure of the technicalities but what was the term of the loan and when did that term expire - this may have some relevance to statute barring but Diana Mayhew might be able to shed more light on that

[lindylou]

Thank You
We have just this minute done a credit report on Clear Score (first time we have looked for a couple of years) to see when it was defaulted and whereas before it was still showing the defaults (even those we had settled on) this one is 493 and saying there are no defaults etc . Surely as they are still writing to us it should be on there?

[nightwatch]

Thank You
We have just this minute done a credit report on Clear Score (first time we have looked for a couple of years) to see when it was defaulted and whereas before it was still showing the defaults (even those we had settled on) this one is 493 and saying there are no defaults etc . Surely as they are still writing to us it should be on there?

No, if it was defaulted then it drops off your report after 6 years (5 Scotland) they can write to you but they CANNOT put any marks on your Credit File,
We have a couple that are now SB they keep writing and we keep ignoring, NW

[lindylou]

Thank you. So if they suddenly start to threaten court or sell the debt on etc what should we do? Will we have to pay it or not? Sorry for all the questions

[Still Waving]

Did you correspond with them at all regarding their "letter which acknowledged a slight miscalculation on our original loan". ?

[lindylou]

No I didn’t. I thought that too but I’m sure I didn’t respond because of what Niddy had said. Why would a bank not chase this debt?

[nightwatch]

They would have to have a verry good reason for starting court action after all this time,but that is a million miles away, you are in the system for automatic account updates. This is something they must send to you.
no one will have checked the account so don't worry about court action
should they send you anything other then, post back on here. I also doubt they will pass it on to a DCA .
just keep filing them away and don't worry about " what ifs "

NW

[Joanna Connolly Solicitors]

In 2012 we were really grateful for the advice we were given on here. Long story short we had previously had a DMP. We settled on 3 of the debts using redundancy money (Apparently we could have probably settled for a lot less but at the time wanted it over) We had one remaining loan which we offered 55% on but they wouldn't even negotiate with us. Initially we dropped our payments to £1 a month but after fantastic support on here we stopped paying as hoped that they might then be prompted to negotiate with us. The last payment was June 2012. Every year we get a standard letter from them and apart from another letter which acknowledged a slight miscalculation on our original loan, we haven't heard from them. As far as we are aware the Loan hasn't been sold on. Is the loan now statute barred or because they send us the annual letter does that not apply? It was a bank loan for a car which we then topped up at some point. We have spent years just waiting to hear they were taking it further as it was for a large amount.

I've taken a peek at your original thread from 2012 and am guessing that this debt is the Tesco £24k loan. Is that right?

We have been on a DMP (with Payplan)since July 2010. On the whole we've been lucky as after a few months all letters stopped and its been quiet since. Due to the fact that we kept consolidating debts we only have 3 creditors for our unsecured debt. Nat West (Triton,) Tesco, and Bank of Ireland (Buchannan Clark & Wells) . . . .

Tesco (loan - enforcable as we reloaned a couple of years ago) are not even negotiating. The debt is still with them as they lumped all the interest on at the start of the DMP so pro rata they were only getting about £20 less than before. In fact they were getting more than Nat West even though our debt with them was greater.

We offered 30% saying it was from my sister and increased to 50% but they want the whole amount owing to date. They say the debt is 28,000 and they are settling at 22,000 which to them is a concession as the loan was 'front loaded'
DH has tried to keep the lines of communication open and asked to speak to one of their managers but nobody got back to us. We have put everything in writing but they haven't responded.
We have since asked Payplan to put the offer forward but they phoned DH on Friday to say it was a complete rejection.

You say your last payment to them was June 2012 but was that payment from you direct to Tesco or via PayPlan? If it was paid by PayPlan to the creditor that payment may have been forwarded later, possibly only a month. PayPlan were acting as your agent so it would likely be considered as a payment by you for Statute Barred purposes.

What you also need to establish was when PayPlan was last in touch with Tesco since that could be considered as acknowledgement of the debt (by your agent) even if they were simply informing Tesco they would not longer be paying them on your behalf. So when did you cancel your PayPlan DMP?

Letters sent to you are definitely not acknowledging the debt. If these letters come every year are they headed Notice of Sums in Arrears (s86) because if they've not served you with those statutory Notices then the debt would be unenforceable until or unless they remedied the situation.

I'm not sure why you think the debt would be enforceable. Did you send them a s 77-79 CCA Request in 2012 and if so what did you received in response?

You refer to "we" in all your posts. Does that mean this was a loan in joint names, and if so is there any remote possibility that your other half may have made a subsequent payment without your knowledge?

It does appear that this debt is Statute Barred but it's best to treble check everything so there are no nasty surprises further down the line

Di

[lindylou]

Thank you all so much. I say ‘we’ because I class it as our debt but the dmp was in my husbands name. One creditor actually just put the debt in his name which actually was better for us.
Yes this is the Tesco debt.
No he definitely didn’t pay anything. I sort all the payments and I have looked back and the last £1 came directly from us in June 2012. We had already cancelled the DMP as we had negotiated & paid off the other 3 debts in the December. (2011) with redundancy money. I have no idea of PayPal would have written after that although I suspect not.

I just can’t understand why they wouldn’t have taken it further before now especially as we had tried to negotiate with them at the end of 2011 and offered them 55% (from what I remember) there and then.
We have lived since just expecting them to start action at any time and it was just this month that we remembered it was 6 years.
So we continue as before unless things change?

[lindylou]

Yes we did check in 2012 and Niddy confirmed that it was enforceable.