PPI claim on behalf of my Mum's estate

[squidier]

Having read the hugely informative posts in this thread I wondered whether I could as some advice.

My Mum died last September and whilst sorting out her estate I found that she had ppi on a Debenhams store card. I would like to try to make a ppi claim on behalf of her estate. I am the executor of the estate.

I have managed to get the SAR info from Santander (they don't make it easy do they?!).

Mum did not tick the box for ppi on the original loan agreement in 2000. The SAR correspondence states that in 2002 'Automatic letter deb insurance added by telemarketing sale' which I guess means that they rang her and persuaded her to take the insurance.

Then in 2003 the sar lists:

30/11/2003 - INSURANCE STATUS TO F
30/11/2003 - INSURANCE STATUS F TO R
30/11/2003 - INS. CANCEL REASON TO R
30/11/2003 - INS. EFFECTIVE DATE 01/01/0001 TO 30/11/2003
30/11/2003 - INS CANCEL DATE 01/01/0001 TO 30/11/2003

Which I guess means she cancelled it, the tranasctions on the account show premiums paid for April and May 2003, then nothing until August 2005 when she paid monthly until her death.
However the sar also has

23/09/2005 - INSURANCE STATUS F TO X
23/09/2005 - INS. CANCEL REASON TO X
23/09/2005 INS CANCEL DATE 01/01/0001 TO 23/09/2005

Which sounds like a further cancellation?

So I would like to make a claim based on:

1. That Mum didn't originally want the insurance, was then persuaded to buy it over the phone (she had poor hearing, probably didn't understand what they were saying), she then cancelled it but it was again reinstated.

2. She was 69 in 2002 so many of the policy benefits were not available to her a few months after starting the policy.

How do you think I should word the initial complaint letter - I would like to get it right at the start as I'm aware from this thread that Santander are difficult to deal with and that my Mum isn't around to say what actually happened.

Thanks
Jane

[IF]

Re: PPI claim on behalf of my Mum's estate

Hi squidier,welcome to AAD, I've moved your post to your own thread for more replies and support

Best wishes
IF

[di30]

Re: PPI claim on behalf of my Mum's estate

Hi Jane & Welcome x

And so sorry for your loss, my gosh she was so young, am so so sorry x x

Right usually the business should have a complaint form to complete, now with that form enclose a letter of the the loss of your mother and all matters are left for you to deal with, and if you have any copies of letters to confirm this then do also enclose a copy of that too, so they do not try coming back to say your not able to deal with it because of that blah blah.....

Now I understand that Santander are dealing with Debenhams complaints, if you log on to Santander website they should have a complaint form for you to download, so complete that and keep a copy for your own records, let us know how you get on and hopefully it will be resolved at earlier stages,however, if this is not the case we can move on to the next avenue.

Ask for help anytime :-) x

[squidier]

Re: PPI claim on behalf of my Mum's estate

Thanks for the response Di, I've found the Santander form and will fill that out and add a letter.

I wondered whether anyone could confirm for me that I've interpreted the SAR information correctly with regards to what looks like cancellation records - it's all in some sort of abbreviated code.

[Bill-K]

Re: PPI claim on behalf of my Mum's estate

Hi Squidier, and sorry for your loss. My wife lost her Mum last year, and became her ' Estate Administrator' - which is a somewhat less formal version of 'Executor,' usually where a family member takes on the responsibility for the deceased's estate. You have a legal duty to administer the estate as fully as possible in order to maximise it financially for the beneficiaries as well as for any creditors, but this can be complex, as I have found. Also - be aware that many creditors will give you the impression that you are personally responsible for repayment of the deceased's debts, but this is not usually the case, and you are usually only responsible for the administration of them. When you eventually finalise the value of the estate - if there is not enough to repay all debts, then you should not have to make up any shortfalls yourself.

Under the DPA and the ICO rules, the lenders are supposed to provide clear explanations of any abbreviations used in DSAR data - so look for this, and if there is none, then ask (politely but firmly !!!) for this. As you have surmised, it appears that she was taken advantage of by aggressive tele-sales on more than one occasion - so mis-selling looks very probable, and her hearing deficiency and age are further pointers to this.

But from my reading of your original post, you only seem to have located 2 premium payments in her records for the initial PPI, so there may not be very much 'mileage' in this. The entries for 30/11/03 appear to show that this was the effective date of cancellation, but the effective start date of 01/01/0001 indicates that no start date was entered into the database and a 'default' value remained instead. If the only premiums on record are for April & May 2003, then it appears that the first PPI was taken out in March/April, and then cancelled at some point after the May premium was paid. If the card balance after May was around zero, then no PPI premiums would have been charged - even though the PPI policy may have still been in place. So that seems a likely scenario, with the first PPI eventually being cancelled on 30/11/03.

Then it appears that she was sold another PPI policy for which monthly premiums started in August 2005 - but the entries for 23/09/05 seem to suggest that this policy was cancelled on that date, so I would have expected no more than two premiums to have been paid on it. However, you have said that she continued paying monthly premiums until her sad death in Sept. 2014, so that suggests that you have records of these PPI premiums being paid until then - which seems to contradict the apparent cancellation on 23/09/05. I do believe that the lenders use their records to pinpoint potential 'soft targets' for selling their products, so it may be that the insurance that was cancelled on 23/09/05 was yet another insurance product (eg. CPP - Card Protection Policy) - and not PPI. This would explain the continuance of PPI premium payments after the unspecified insurance cancellation of 23/09/05.

The bottom line though - is that you have two hurdles to jump with PPI claims. The first is to establish that it was mis-sold, and you seem to have very good grounds for this. The second is to evaluate the redress offer, and you need records of the premiums paid for this. You appear to have these records, so I would say that regardless of the records of insurance cancellations - you will be reclaiming the premiums that were actually paid - and this will be the central issue. When you have collated the dates & amounts of all PPI (and CPP ?) premiums paid, then you should also reclaim the apportioned account interest that was charged on these, along with a further 8% interest where applicable. This 'sticky' thread should help with that:

http://forums.all-about-debt.co.uk/s...Redress-Offers