PowerOfCats UE Diary

[Gilly71]

That’s great news but dare I ask how much that cost you?

[stuckinarut]

Superb

[PowerofCats]

Morning All

Update:

I received a discontinuance for the first debt within 2 weeks of instructing JCS and yesterday the second discontinuance was received.

Very happy.

[Gilly71]

I am appalled that a lawyer said ignore a letter of claim. I would go as far as negligence and if I were powerofcats I would be considering a complaint. Surely at least one claim could have been avoided.

[MisterK]

Dottir. More hypothesis than argument perhaps ?

But I'd definitely rule out the fist fights.

[Dottir]

Mister K - I think you misunderstood. When I said argument I did not mean it negatively , it was as in ‘the point you were making’. To me arguments are debates not fist fights ?

[MisterK]

I wouldn't really want my thoughts to be represented or characterised as an argument. I am of course aware of the 10K threshold, but one of the problems here could be that if there are no sanctions at all against a claimant who for example engages in claims of the scattergun variety - the kind of claim which might not have been brought if the claimant had bothered to do their homework properly - then someone could be in line for a potentially large legal bill through no fault of their own. So that might well be considered to be unreasonable conduct on the part of the claimant and hopefully JCS would point that out if it applied here. But we don't know what's happening and quite likely we don't have all the facts so I would guess that the best thing to do would be to wait until Cats gives us an update, assuming Cats does so of course. I for one would be very interested to know the outcome of this as no doubt would others.

[Dottir]

Here's another thought for you, Cats. If JCS can convince the claimant early on that this is beyond doubt SB so that they have no option other than to withdraw the claim then I would have thought that the claimant should be settling your account with JCS, not yourself. It shouldn't really matter perhaps that you didn't inform them earlier that you thought it was SB. How could you be sure, you are not a lawyer. If they didn't do their homework as they should have done then it could be said that they are seriously amiss for bringing the claim in the first place and should therefore accept the consequences. Those are my thoughts.

I am not convinced by your argument. Costs are only usually awarded in claims above 10k . The only exception would be unreasonable conduct. In this case maybe the claimant could say there was unreasonable conduct because no one told them it was SB - they may very well think it is not. The whole point of the Pre Action Protocols is to stop things going to court, I think I have expressed my views on this before as have others.

It might be also worth looking at the contract with JCS to see if costs would be refunded.

[MisterK]

Here's another thought for you, Cats. If JCS can convince the claimant early on that this is beyond doubt SB so that they have no option other than to withdraw the claim then I would have thought that the claimant should be settling your account with JCS, not yourself. It shouldn't really matter perhaps that you didn't inform them earlier that you thought it was SB. How could you be sure, you are not a lawyer. If they didn't do their homework as they should have done then it could be said that they are seriously amiss for bringing the claim in the first place and should therefore accept the consequences. Those are my thoughts.

[PowerofCats]

I have 2 claims of similar amounts (see diary) and they were £1000 plus VAT each. The claims were around the original debt amount as the creditors have requested interest.

[Ballister]

Mine was £700 plus VAT for a claim over £5k. There were also costs which I got refunded

[Sparkles]

When you say a LOT are you talking hundreds or thousands? I'm just curious as I have a debt that may one day need help from JCS but I have never been able to get any idea what it might cost.

[Dottir]

Morning

Yes, when I spoke to Gerry about the LOC I pointed out my statute barred date and he said that the majority of dates that we (debtors) have recorded are rarely reflective of what is held by the creditors and erroneous payments can be added.
Interestingly the date on the court form from when the creditor is claiming interest to present is 4 days after I sent a CCA in Jan 2019 with the statutory £1... My gut tells me they incorrectly applied this as a payment or similar

It was very tempting to reply to the LOC myself but I was worried about doing something incorrect and screwing up the process!

It's a LOT of money instructing a solicitor. More than I thought to be honest, but if successful then it'll be worth it.

I have everything crossed...

I get that sometimes we are not in a good place. From my years of reading these forums what Gerry said may be true but is usually easily disproved.

It is done now so you are in good hands but for other readers maybe try a SB letter. You could write something along the lines of

'I am unaware of the account you mention but from my records I know that any accounts I may have had would all be time barred under the limitations act and therefore I will not be paying or engaging in correspondence. If you believe this to be incorrect then please provide full details of the last payment date, amount snd source'


Then it puts the onus on them to prove it and if it was say a £1 CCA fee you could respond with proof that it was just that.


My fear, and something I have said before is that by not responding to a LOC , it might be more difficult to gain costs even if it is a slam dunk of a winner.


I am however very hopeful that your accounts are SB and Joanna can get them dismissed with little effort and minimal cost although you have said it is not cheap.

[MisterK]

Hopefully it will all be over quite quickly as a clear win for you so that your costs are minimised. In addition, it's possible that JCS will be able to get your costs (primarily the fees that JCS will charge) paid by the claimant although that might be dependent upon the size of the claim and which level of the legal system is involved etc. JCS will know and no doubt do what they can. If you do manage to get all your costs covered then little will have been lost. If it does indeed turn out to be a clear case of statute barred then it seems logical to me that it ought to be possible to strongly assert that the claim should never have been made in the first place and therefore it's not right that you should be out of pocket by having to defend it.

As per Dottir's suggestion above, I suppose the right time to send the SB letter would be after the claim arrives and before deploying JCS as this would give the claimant an opportunity to withdraw at no cost to themselves. Then if they then don't withdraw you could engage JCS a little later and will have then been easily able to prove that they had been informed of the SB status. This would seem to be powerful ammunition in the event of an application for costs (should that be possible). But that's not to say that you don't have a clear case for the award of costs as it stands.

Well that's my view but we'll see what happens. I don't have expert knowledge and so I'm in no position to advise, I'm just learning like you. Please keep us all informed if you are able to do that, this is likely to be of interest to others.

[PowerofCats]

I may be missing something but it seems to me that these ought to be statute barred as of September or October 2024, assuming that you haven't done anything that would reset the SB clock since the last payment you made in September 2018. The date they dropped off the CRA files is not as relevant as the date for settlement that the original creditor gave when they issued the default notices (in 2013). So if there had been no resetting of the SB clock in the 6 years since the date for settlement then I think that they would have become SB as of some date in 2019. If you reset the SB date during those 6 years by making payments then they would become SB 6 years after the most recent reset which looks like September 2024.

I'm very happy to be corrected on this if I'm wrong, but that's my understanding.

You're quite right.
Last payment sent to Stepchange the start of Sept 2018. Technically they pay the creditor within 14 days, so by the end of Sept 2018 it would have been received by the creditor but I work on Oct 2024 being my SB date 'just in case '

Only contact with creditors since then was CCA request in Jan 2019 and a digital SAR May 2019. Neither of which can be 'counted' as acknowledgement of debt and were sent using AAD templates.

No payments made by me to the account, no contact in any way shape or form.