Crouchie's Lawyer

Sorry Ponty but 'are right' should contain 9 stars not 4. It's no different that sleeping around without protection but refusing to get checked for STD's. Cervical cancer is obviously a serious illness and early signs can be spotted meaning it stands a good chance of being prevented with simple measures - like smear tests. If people choose not to get these done thinking 'it wont happen to me' or 'I dont have time to do this' then it's not as if they have done everything possible to prevent this. Its like someone who smokes 20 a day who gets cancer. Give up the fags - stand a better chance of not getting cancer. Take smear tests - stand a better chance of spotting the early signs and preventing cancer. It may sound harsh but Jade chose to ignore having these tests even though she (alledgedly) slept around when she was younger and that only changed when something wasnt right, then she even chose to ignore doctors advice about staying for futher tests after the initial one instead chosing to go onto celeb BB again. Hardly the ideal role model to promote girls to get checked up.

Lets just pray that we dont get hit with a 10 point deduction next season as starting League 1 on -10 will mean more than likely we will end up in that division for more than one year

Clucking anoys me that she has been shot to messiah type famedom just because she has cancer. The same people who flood facebook with tributes to 'A loving soul' and talk about her as if she were a modern day Mother Teresa are most likely the same morons who were calling for her head after the race incident on celebrity BB. How easily their views were 'purchased' by clever PR work from a man who preys on the weak easy target celebrities. He must have been kicking himself when that bint Kerry Katona fired him as he could have milked the sheet out of her situation. Then along comes Jade and he must have thought he won the lotto with that one! It annoys me that people say she has done so much for the cancer cause. If women chose to ignore the facility which is available to them to get checked up for cancer then more fool them. Allegedly Jade herself ignored this facility and as such paid the price. If she had a little more intelligence then maybe she would have got checked up sooner and something could have been done. My heart goes out to her little boys as they are left without a mother, however I do not agree with the media hype which has sucked in so many 'sheep' surrounding JG. And dont get me started on her pikey of a husband!

Ocd?

That I couldnt answer I am afraid. I dont know why the law was not 'back dated' if you like. It would have made sense and certainly protected the banking industry from claims like these but whether there was a law or even clause in the contracts or previous consumer credit act which prevented this I dont know?

I am not Credit Issues so I wouldnt know, we (as agents) have not been given a percentage figure to quote. I can tell you that the percentage of applications which have flaws in the credit agreement is very high. Over 90% but this doesnt necessarily deem the agreement unenforcable and can be for something as simple as wrong font type.

Oh you failed to print the rest of the article too... The only statistic I have given is that which has been given to me which is of all the cases which CI have taken in, only 6% of cases have been refunded. Make of that what you will, but CI will issue a refund if the case does not benefit the client or if the agreement is proven to be enforcable. CI are only concentrating on agreements prior to April 2007 so have no need or desire to quote that 50 million agreements are being produced each year as that is current, therefore not applicable. Timescales are always relayed to the client as possibly up to 9 months due to the legal involvement within the case. Every case is different and whilst there have been successes which have turned around within 6 weeks, the majority of cases take a hell of a lot longer than this! So we do not promise 'fast results' or completion within a short period of time. We do not quote 100% success rate either. In fact we do not quote a success rate at all. Every case is different and a lot of cases are still in their early days and going through court, so to quote success rates at this stage is misleading and incorrect. And I would never advise of a positive outcome all the time. I merely state the facts and know with the solid refund policy in place, if the client is unsuccessful, it has only cost them £50.

Thats funny as there are a load of cases which have successfully completed that state otherwise! And just because they cannot easily be challenged, doesnt mean they cannot successfully be challenged. It just means you need a company with the nouse and experience to do it for you. The legal body behind Credit Issues are not just you run of the mill legal firm. They specialise in this stuff alone and have employed the services of the barrister which helped go over the new consumer credit act changes in 2007. If anyone knows there are holes in the old act Im sure its him! With a solid refund policy, Credit Issues would not waste the time, money or resources entering this industry to rip people off of £50 a pop. Considering they dont actually get that £50 anyway, it goes to the solicitor and the costs are far greater than £50 anyway. On every case they refund, they probably make a loss. So there would be no point doing this on a whim or a hope that it may go through, knowing the likelyhood is that it wont. Ok there may be a few smaller bandits out there who are happy to sit on people's upfront fee's and in fact a lot of smaller firms are doing just this waiting for test cases from firms like CI to go through before they do any work on them! As I have previously said CI have publicly distanced themselves from this kind of behaviour and this kind of firm. Time will tell, and there will be doubters out there. Thats fine. But there are success cases. Lenders have already settled on over £1,000,000 of debt so the above article from the financial guru's that are the CAB is IMO a load of carp!

What do you mean? I built my second house there in case of any immenent floods!

Well a solicitor which specialises in consumer credit law isnt you average solicitor that deals with house purchase, wills or divorce settlements. Firstly, the company has only been running around 10 months as the industry as a whole is still relatively infant. They have only started putting cases through in mass for around 6 months because they wanted to make sure they had the infrastruture and support in place to service the clients propperly rather than just running with it and seeing where it takes them like a lot of other firms have done in the industry. Obviously with cases going to court, there are a hell of a lot more cases in pipeline than completions but so far to date CI have written off £1m of debt and have targetted themselves £10m this year. Success rates at this point are a pointless figure. Similar to looking to the league after 1 league match. The reason being is that success rates to cases in will be very low because of the size of the pipeline. I can tell you that cases where refunds have been given (thats cases where they have not either been beneficial to the client to proceed or cases which it has been shown the agreement is enforcable) is only 6% of cases in. I cannot give you the specifics of cases where clients have had their debt written off or reduced as obviously that would contradict the data protection act and to be honest, I dont know names etc for that very reason. However feel free to check out the blog on http://www.creditissues.co.uk which gives all the information of success cases and which banks it was that settled. I didnt say they were convicted of fraud did I, I merely said they have fraudulenty produced documents. I do not know if CI have decided to take this further or infact just said to the lender in question 'You have to settle now or we will take you to court and prove this and you will be further in the poo'. I appreciate you are not trying to have a go, it makes for interesting conversation. I would however like to point out that I am unable to always answer your questions, I am merely a rep for the company. Similar to the set up of a company like Virgin Vie etc so Head Office deal with most things and they have all the information. What I would say is that if you think CI or indeed myself is trying to get 'fat' off £50 then you are mistaken. The amount of time, effort and energy I have put into it is worth a lot more than £50 and that £50 doesnt go to me. It doesnt even go to CI. It goes to the solicitors for their time. I seriously doubt it even covers that. I never advise my clients to stop paying their debts. However the point I believe you have picked up on is a valid one. Once the lender has been proven to have breached the CCA, they are in default. Similar to how a client would be in default had they breached it by missing payments. At this point, the client can if they want to stop making payments to the debt until the dispute is sorted. They are legally entitled to do this. As WSS and yourself go onto point out below, this would indeed mess up your credit file. However, by reporting negative information on your credit file, the lender has directly breached the rules of the Banking Act and the Banking Code. This is something which CI are taking a few lenders to court over at the moment as I understand. Because the lender is in default they are not legally allowed to register a ccj or default against you, but because the credit profile companies (experian and equifax) are organisations which voluntarily exchange info with the banks, they are reporting what the banks tell them, and although in default, the banks canstill put missed payments against the debt which is wrong. I thought you weren't having a go?

Captain Sensible, I agree with the sentiments of your post and have said it is something you could do yourself if you wanted to. But equally, with a working pair of hands you can change a car engine. Doesnt exactly mean you will and in most if not all cases, you take your car to the mechanic. That is for a number of reasons such as: Time - It will take someone who knows what they are doing and what to look out for a lot less time than it will take someone who has no prior experience or real understanding of what they are doing. To add to this point, if it took you an extra 3 or 4 months or swatting up on the knowledge and understanding it and you were trying to clear a loan you pay £200 p/m on, that extra 3-4 months of graft you put in to save you the money (presuming you can fully understand the credit agreement laws in that time period) had cost you an extra £600 - £800 in repayments which you wouldnt have had to of paid if you chose a firm to take care of it from day 1. Confidence - Yes I could read how to change an engine and even understand it, but that doesnt mean that I would be confident enough to do it and trust my ability in getting it right. Botheredness (technical term) - we live in a lazy soceity where we want things done for us, hence why services like this exist. If you make a mistake in changing your engine you risk endangering your life or the life of others, whereas its not exactly life threatening if you mess up a claim for compensation under the CCA. However, you risk getting yourself into a worse state if by taking them to court you incur the court cost fee's and lose. Using a company like this gives you peace of mind that they do everything for you, quickly and efficiently and the added benefit of knowing it will only cost you £50 if you dont have a successful claim, rather than wasting valuable time and effort.

I could be wrong but I think the credit consumer act only relates to the UK so no, I dont think it did start in the USA. Yes it is bureaucracy gone mad a bit but it is here and people will use it.

That is not the case at all. The company is part owned by a firm of solicitors and your average run of the mill solicitor will not have the in-depth knowledge on the credit consumer act to be able to deal with these kind of cases unless that is their specialist field. So by all means, feel free to go to a solicitor but they will not know much about it. Would you want someone to service your car that had an in depth knowledge of the make and model of your car or someone that happened to own a tool box? A legal team looks over the agreement and tries to find a number of minor or major issues with each agreement, if they dont find any the client is refunded as the agreement is deemed as enforcable, if they do then the lender is informed that they are in default of the agreement and that they will be taken to court for the agreement to be deemed as unenforcable. Some lenders fight it and the case goes to court, a lot of lenders are just settling out of court so they dont incur the court fee's. I do not know which specific banks have done this and even if I did, posting it on the internet would deem me liable for any potential legal issues that bank wanted to take against me or the company. I am merely an agent for the company. The information I get is sent to head office which deal with the cases. I dont personally know all of them as there are hundreds if not thousands of issues from things as major as not listing the cancellation rights and misquoting the apr to things as small and silly as the font type and size the agreement is written on. Another example is that one banks agreement stipulates that all agreements should be signed on their premises which is up north and they are predominantly a phone/internet credit card company so send all agreements out in the post to be signed, ergo the agreement has been breached straight away. Something as small as font size or type alone will not get your credit card wiped but added to other minor or major breaches it all stacks up.

There really are some sad little children on this thread. Im sure you know who you are.

See little snake, this is where you are wrong. It is not tantamount to theft as it is completely legal. If the bank has failed to draw up a correct agreement then the whole basis of the borrowing is based in wrong information. How would you like it if you took out a fixed rate mortgage and 3 months into the fixed rate, the rate went up? Or you wanted to cancel at a certain point after being told that you could but you noticed the original agreement didnt have your cancelation rights on? Is that fair? That is certainly not legal which is why the debt can be cleared legally in a court of law (or settled out of court early if the lender has any sense).

Thank you dic*ionary. How is it completely different? Looking at it from your view point, its getting out of something you should be paying. How is that different? Both are not illegal. Both rely on technicalities, they are very similar.

And the majority of people who are morally above something like this would take full advantage of any tax loophole to save them paying extra tax. Which is no better in my opinion!

You could go on that site but it is occupied by some of the most financially arrogant people in the world. They all think they know it and and presume that because they do, everyone else must. All they will do is say it is easy to do yourself, however, would I would question if anyone without a strong law background specific to the consumer credit act could spot many (let alone all) the floors in a credit agreement which could get your debt wiped or reduced. I posted it to give people information. I said in the original post that I didnt care for the people who are going to morally poo poo it but it didnt stop you :roll: I was not after peoples opinion on it. Its not an idea I am considering or want views on. Given by amateurs who are not qualified in any way and more often than not people who do it on a voluntary basis or as something to do part time after retirement. The CAB have default answers to most generic questions and if you think they could help you and spot the floors in a credit agreement then you are wrong. Again, it will be 'here is how you do it yourself'. Cheers Stevo

You came to that conclusion all by yourself you big boy you :rollyeyething:

How the client gets the upfront fee is not up to me, whether they borrow it from friends and family, put it on a different credit card, use savings or pay in 3 monthly installments - there are options. And lets say that person who is paying £750 upfront has 1 loan of £7500 at £200 p/m and two credit cards totalling £7500 (presuming a minimum payment of 3% per month would equate to £225 p/m for the two credit cards) they will be possibly clearing £15k of debt which they pay a combined £425 on and reducing it to £1750 which on a credit cards would work out at £52.50 per month. I think that significantly improves their finances, so if they want tobe in that position, they find the upfront fees. Again WSS, you are not interested in it so I dont really care about your opinion, it makes no difference to me.

Then how is it that over £1m of debt has been cleared. If it doesnt apply to you then your opinion means squat to me. I havent got a clue what you are pointing out here? The company name is credit issues. My personal website is http://www.thedebtfairy.co.uk which is in affect a redirect to the credit issues site. The company is not called the debt fairy. :confused: Right, the fee's are £450 for the first agreement you want to challenge yes, with a further upfront fee of £150 for every other agreement you have. If once the agreements have been looked over they are deemed to be enforcable, you get all the upfront fee's back other than £50 per agreement which covers the solicitors time spent so far (to be honest it doesnt even cover that so CI would be making a loss). You would also get that back if you cancel within the allotted time period or it is deemed that you will be no better off with proceeding (for example if your balance was minimal). You are only charged the £1000 when your first challenged agreement is successfully wiped or reduced and you only pay this once. So if you had 3 credit cards and they were all successfully wiped you would pay a total of (£450 + £150 + £150 + £1000) £1750. If the case doesnt go to court it is because they have deemed it to be enforcable which means you will get your refund anyway so I fail to see why you think they are just taking the upfront fee's. The only reason the upfront fee's are charged is to get the clients commitment to credit issues, otherwise credit issues would do all the hard work and the client could be using 3 or 4 companies at the same time with the idea of only finalising with the quickest one, meaning there would be a lot of costs and time incurred for no reason, so the upfront fees are to protect against this. And in regards to your last comment, how can (ignoring your moral views on it) reducing someones debt be a bad thing? Or deemed not caring for the client???

Coming from a rascist that cuts likea knife. They are illegal, so no. What I am advertising is not illegal. It is a job which pays Rattlec*ck, Im sure you dont do your job for free. And it is well within the law so I am no cheat eiether. hth Well done you. I doubt you have ever had cancer either, but doesnt mean that people are not unlucky enough to find themselves in a position where they are immune from it! You cannot say that all the people in the world struggling from debt deserve it. As for the payment protection arguement, thats carp too as most policies only pay out after a defer period and only pay out for a limited time. What pays the bills until the policy pays out? Or after it stops? What about people who get made bankrupt? And suffer for the rest of their lives due to bad credit? I know people who have been previously made bankrupt and have come out the other side worked their asses off and become millionaires but cannot get credit because of their credit records. Given the choice Im sure they would takethis option over bankruptcy. Big words Barto. Very lounge-esque. If you cannot join in the big boy conversation and add merit to it, then dont bother at all. At the end of the day, I know this is not everyones cup of tea. People will be dead against it and others will see it as a saving grace. But it is not illegal and there are people out there who will take advantage of it. I am merely passing the information on.

Pancake if there is an industry for it, people will do it. I respect your views but not everyones views are the same and there are people out there that will want to do this.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, however if there were not people doing it there would not bea market for it. There are situations where this can be beneficial. Single parents who are struggling to put food on the table from debts they incurred when they could previously afford it (like when they had a partner, or a job but have since been made redundant) and by clearing these debts they can breathe easier and other similar situations. Just because your moral views dont believe in this doesnt mean it is not right. How about someone taking out debt but not realising how much it will cost them due to incorrect agreements. Is that right? Considering the size of the banks which have made these agreements and the resources openly available to them, you would think they would have the ability to get the agreements right and to comply with law! Sorry Barney but you talking carp here. The company is entitled to no grants or anything of the like. It is set up part owned by a firm of solicitors and is a company regulated by the Office of Fair Trading and Ministry of Justice. Just because this may not be your 'thing' doesnt mean to say thatit cant and wont be a vital tool in helping others. I would imgaine the majority of people who poo poo this and call the people who do it 'pikeys' are people who have never really been swamped in debts and struggling.

There was a thread on here some time ago, possibly before the server change about the credit consumer act and how there are holes in many of the credit agreements signed on unsecured debts (credit cards, store cards and personal loans) before 6th April 2007 enabling people to have their debts deemed unenforcable and wiped in a court of law. I couldnt find it so I guess it was before the server change, so I have started this thread. I fully expect there to be people who are morally against it and expect replies like 'If you borrowed it you should pay it back'. However, the fact is that there is a market out there and people do want to challenge their banks and building soceities, especially in the current economic times. Banks were very slack in composing the credit agreements often missing out important information like cancellation rights or incorrectly quoting APR's. In a court of law it can be shown that this invalidates the agreement and the debt is deemed unenforcable. Surprisingly, a lot of the time, the lender cannot even provide the original credit agreement you signed, and lenders are settling out of court and agreement to completely wipe the debt or significantly reduce it. Think its too good to be true? I did too before I looked into it and realised there have already been a lot of success cases which have gone through and seen how the banks and building societies have reacted to some of these cases (like fraudulently producing agreements and doing 'cut and shut' jobs on others!) So, should you have a credit card, store card or unsecured loan with balances totalling over £2k, check out http://www.thedebtfairy.co.uk. There is more information on there, alterntively, PM me.