I too have the misfortune of being missold a Personal Protection Insurance in 2004 from a company called Beneficial Finance! Beneficial is a subsidiary of HFC, which is a subsidiary of HSBC?
I have never been happy about the PPI from the moment I signed their contract and have made my feelings known to Beneficial basically from that time onwards. Most of my actions to cancel the PPI have ended in irate telephone conversations with their call centre staff not calling back and ignoring me altogether!
I tried to claim off the PPI in December 2006 when I was made redundant. My request was completely ignored. No one from Beneficial phoned me back, and I didn’t receive any claim forms whatsoever!
In 2007 I complained to Beneficial from February to September that the PPI was no longer fit for purpose demanding its cancellation and money returned immediately!
Every letter I sent was ignored, and not one telephone query was followed up.
In November 2007 I decided to stop repayments until the complaint was sorted out.
1. Why I hadn’t received a claim form.
2. Why there had been no official correspondence from Beneficial/HFC.
Only then did Beneficial/HFC contact me on a regular basis, of which all came from a higher level of management.
I submitted a third written complaint about one of the area managers for Beneficial/HFC only to find the person I had put the complaint about was handling my complaint?
I submitted a fourth complaint about their ‘Front Loading System’ not being disclosed at the time of signing of the contract and goes against the agreement itself by not adhering to the 60 monthly incremental repayments and non disclosure of exactly where the repayments were going!
I now have two letters from senior complaints managers directly contradicting each other. One stating that the front loading policy was initiated to recoup the PPI in the first year of repayments? And a second letter stating that this is not the case??
My efforts to pin a complaints manager down to directly answering question has been met by the removal and change of no less than four managers dealing with my case. I have to date ‘flooded’ all of them with registered letters of complaints as proof of correspondence.
There is without doubt a stonewalling and damage management operation in effect?
With my situation of refusing to pay until the problem is sorted out brings out two separated areas of contention.
The complaints department of Beneficial/HFC is actively ignoring my correspondence and complaints against them presumably until the Financial Ombudsman Service makes a decision.
The Beneficial/HFC repayments department is actively perusing ‘alleged’ arrears regardless of a legal query or complaint flagged against the account?
Their argument is that I have a contractual obligation to complete repayments.
My reply is that they broke the agreement by misselling practices of the PPI, not disclosing information pertaining to ‘front loading’ on the agreement, and not providing claim forms for redundancy?
Beneficial/HFC are knowingly chasing repayments that are currently under investigation of fraudulent misselling practices.
With this in mind, I have written to my fifth allocated manager informing them ‘I will start repayments immediately’ if they provided a letter stating that they are aware that accepting my repayments maybe illegal and fraudulent on their part and are currently being investigated for these reasons.
I do not expect my proviso for repayments to be accepted, but I intend to chase Beneficial by writing back accusing them of not accepting my repayment offer!
I will ‘with the permission’ of this forum make all correspondence public and available if it is deemed to be of use.
Regards
CaissonsDisease. Aka Pat.