Congratulations mate, I followed your thread as I was in a similar situation to you and I'm pleased to report that my two accounts (one with Halifax) both joined the ranks of the statute barred in November last year. Just got one case left now with Lowell who are threatening all manner of things as usual, however that agreement has no prescribed terms either and will be SB in about 2 years so hopefully it will go the same way

Well it seems as though my last letter to this company has once again not been appreciated and I have just received their latest response. Dear Mr. XXX We are in receipt of your letter again unsigned and this time dated 11th Inst. It is clear that you fail to understand the reasoning behind our Invoice, which related solely to your Breach of Agreement for both parties, as you indicate are involved to attend even when knowing well the full costs of said works and further to knowingly allowing this Company to expend fruitlessly on a journey, when you now state that Mr. XXX alone was not empowered to make arrangements. All other incidental points, whatever the cause or the reasoning, are not relevant to the position of your failure to abide by the agreement above mentioned or to cancel,as required in our letter of acceptance of the appointment. We note your attempt to dissuade ourselves from attending a court hearing, by stating that you will have the proceedings transferred to your local County Court. It should be made abundantly clear that this option is not for you to decide, but is upon representation to the court to have the proceedings transferred, which may be opposed and further which may not be automatically granted by the court. It is seen that your attempt by statement of the same is vexatious and an attempt to cost this company further in its presentation of a case which is solely about an invoice relating to your previous action in costing time and travel expenses We shall now proceed with our action and will not only advise the court of your vexatious attempt to further cost this company by your stated intended action, but further draw to the court's attention that you failed to sign letters, which indeed may invalidate the comments as non-submissive evidence. We would advise that you have received al evidence needed in this case and will of course make full disclosure of our file of papers which will show that you coerced this company into attending at your home without any intention whatsoever, even knowing the costs beforehand, of proceeding any event, indeed knowing full well that you had not sought (as you now state) funding for such work costs. Yours Faithfully Once again all my points have been ignored (unsurprisingly) and apparently if I defend the claim he will oppose it being transferred to my local county court for a hearing. I don't know where he is getting his legal advice from but I hope its the same guy that comes to court on the day as it will be an easy case for me if it is. I'm not even going to bother wasting a stamp on responding to these crackpots as they seem to be sticking their fingers in their ears and saying we can't hear you when it comes to answering any of my points. They do however state that all my points are irrelevant to their claim which is not surprising due to them being unable to answer any of them. It also makes me laugh when they object to me not signing any of my letters, now I wonder why that might be?

Okay guys this is my final letter to this bunch, however I will continue to update the forum with any further responses they send, although I'm not going to respond to them directly. Dear Sirs, Having previously submitted my final response to your claim, you responded to my letter on 28th July 2014. Despite my position on this matter remaining unchanged, I felt that there were sufficient inaccuracies within the content of your letter that require them not to remain unchallenged. In your most recent letter you now appear to be stating that I was advised during the initial telephone call that your quote was only free if we go ahead with the work. This statement is blatantly untrue as nothing of the sort was ever stated at any time during the proceedings in question. It would also appear highly questionable that despite a number of prior communications regarding this matter, that this statement has only just come to light which had this been the case, would surely have been stated previously rather than as a blatant attempt to deflect the fact that you had agreed to provide a free no obligation quotation. You also now state that you were not advised of my partners interest in the property which again is an outright fabrication of events as you were advised of this multiple times during our meeting and this was in fact the reason I repeatedly gave for refusing to sign your “in principle” contract despite the best efforts of your “pushy salesperson” to convince me otherwise. Your own schedule of events in fact seems to be highly conflictive of my own, where you ask me to explain why your price was dropped to £10,000. For this explanation I would refer you to my first letter which fully addresses this matter. You then state that your letter dated 8th July 2014 does not agree that no contract existed on you leaving our property. In this instance I would refer you to your own writings on this subject where even in your own highlighted points (32, 33) you state that you left the property without me signing your contract. The only dispute here is that you state that I did not sign due to me wanting to first finalise the finances, however this is not the case as you were advised that the actual reason I would not sign any contract was that I first needed to discuss the matter with my partner to see how she felt about the proposed quote. You also say that my latest statement to you regarding our funding is fabricated and that I advised you that this was almost in place. I would again challenge you to provide any evidence of this rather than hearsay of which your claim has so far been reliant on. I am able to prove when funding was applied for and in fact taken out, both occurrences being many weeks following your visit therefore your claim that you were advised that this was in place or nearly in place is wholly denied. Despite your recent letter, I would remind you that at no time have I ever disputed receiving your written contract, however the reason that this was not singed and returned to you is because my partner and I were still in discussion to see if we wished proceed with your quote following your telephone call where you offered to drop your price to £10,000. No agreement between us existed at this point and following discussions with my partner we had no desire to make any agreement with you, therefore this document was discarded shortly afterwards. Your latest letter also conveniently fails to address many of the points I had raised including why; 1. If I had wished to proceed with your quote would I refuse to sign your contract, (twice during your visit to our property) and again when you sent the written paperwork? 2. Perhaps more significantly why own your representative, himself a partner in the business, advised me during the final telephone call that if we ever wished to use the services of your company again to “please feel free to make further contact”. Surely a partner in the business should have immediately otherwise accused me of breaching our contract had one actually existed, which is itself a clear indication that no such contract was ever in existence and your claim is simply an afterthought in an attempt to recover your expenses as you were ultimately disappointed that we failed to accept your quotation and instead chose to have the work done with another company. You even have the audacity to state that the second company (one of the biggest in our local area) deliberately undercut your prices in order to gain business. The total cost for completion of the work from the second company was £4,800 which actually included more work than you were prepared to do for £10,000 as they also completed work to the annexe. With the total cost of this work being almost two thirds cheaper than yourselves, that in itself strongly leads me to question the accuracy of your initial quote. Your final statement within your latest letter, then mentions some previous contact with your company approx 3 yeas ago relating to potential work on our property. I fail to see any relevance in this statement as we never progressed past the telephone stage on this occasion and this would only serve to show that we have been considering work to the property for quite some time which leads your latest accusation that “I deliberately wasted your time on this occasion” to be simply vexatious. It is however most interesting that you also state in this letter that the burden of evidence will show that “I had no reasonable intention of proceeding with any form of contract with you”, especially interesting given the context of your claim which is attempting to recover payment from me for “breach of contract” that now by your own words I never had any intention of completing. Having now taken some legal advice regarding this matter, your letters in fact appear to contain any number of inaccuracies and inconsistencies, with your version of events appearing to change frequently at the point of you being challenged on a particular matter. Your latest statements even go so far to actually add falsehoods to your version of events and I would therefore remind you that making a false statement to gain a pecuniary advantage is both deception and a criminal offence which I strongly believe may be the case here. I would once again therefore invite you to pursue a claim through the County Court process should you feel that you have a genuine grievance. The claim will however be defended which will necessitate a transfer of proceedings to the Neath Port Talbot County Court where you will be required to attend to state your case. As previously stated, I strongly believe there is nothing more to be gained by us simply arguing back and forth “who said what” as this is a subject for which we are unlikely to agree. You have repeatedly stated that I made several statements to you which I deny ever making and you have failed to address the points I put to you in my last communication. I would then for the last time request that you provide some actual evidence in order to back up your claim as will be required by the court in order for you to prove your case. Failing this, no further communication other than as a direct response to an (N1) County Court claim shall be entered into. Yours Sincerely,

Oh, I like that I'll have to borrow it for my next letter

or maybe send him an empty envelope saying please find my payment offer enclosed inside

Okay for anyone following this I've just taken delivery of letter number 3 from this company, As expected he completely ignores the points I made in my letter and has now accused me of deliberately wasting his time and money and states that I am fabricating facts to get out of his contract. He denies his previous letter stated that no contract existed on him leaving the house (which it clearly does) then tells an outright lie by stating that during the first ever telephone call I apparently agreed that the quote would only be free if I went ahead with the work (that's a big one even for him) He goes on to say that evidence will show I have fabricated the facts of this case and that I had no reasonable intention of proceeding with any form of contract in which case he is entitled to his expenses. He then takes a different approach from insisting in his last letter than they will no longer accept anything less than £4,000 and asks me to make a reasonable payment offer to him to avoid the need for him taking me to court which he doesn't want to have to do (I bet he doesn't) So as far as a reasonable payment offer goes that takes into full account all that's happened so far, how does, let's see, Sweet FA sound? At this stage I'm seriously thinking of sending him a letter before action requesting costs against him for harassment and my time in dealing with a frivolous potential claim and asking him to make me an offer of payment

It's not yet at the stage of a DCA only Paypal threatening to go that way if I don't add £45. I imagine this amount will however increase with charges etc.. but it annoys me that they just will not accept anything evidence from sellers over the word of a buyer. I have heard many horror stories but always thought surely it can't be that bad but being told that online tracking which states item delivered is insufficient when a buyer makes a claim is quite honestly beyond belief and I don't see why I should have to add funds when Paypal choose to refund the buyer. I was just wondering what kind of a fight I'm in for. My credit history is stuffed anyway thanks to an unenforceable credit agreement so noting more to lose there I suppose. I've been looking online but can't find any evidence of actual court action anywhere so it might just be down to dealing with DCA's which I have no problem in doing.

I recently sold an item for £45 on ebay and posted this by courier with full online tracking. The couriers own website states the item was delivered but the buyer stated he has't had it. He opened a claim and ebay being ebay found in his favour despite the online tracking. They have now put my paypal account in -£45 and stated that unless I add funds its time for the usual round of debt collection. Having never had any experience of ebay/paypal going wrong is this amount actually enforceable and is there any history of court action from these guys? I have taken screenshots showing that the item was delivered to the buyer as a possible future defence and ensure that Paypal have no access to my credit card or bank account. I'm just wondering if this is actually worth the fight as I'm guessing all manner of fees will be added to the debt. What do you guys think?

Hi Guys Some time ago (about 12 months) I sent a credit agreement request letter to Argos for an account taken out prior to 06/04/2007. I was sent a signed application form that contained no prescribed terms and conditions so I told them it was unenforceable. They sent it out to about 3 DCAs in turn all of which received the same answer from me I heard nothing further until today when a letter arrived from Argos saying they have sold the debt to Lowell as no good reason has been given for not making payments. I also had a letter from Lowell today saying they have bought the debt and now want payment as I now owe them. Anyway, is there a standard letter on here for when a debt with an agreement containing no prescribed terms and conditions has been sold to a DCA?

Well I'll be expecting a round of letters from the usual debt collecting parasites before too much longer unless of course this guy really is up for a fight in court although I highly doubt that. His claim would be based on him being out of pocket for having to travel all the way down here for nothing, which is actually rather ironic as what does he think will happen when I submit a defence to his claim?

not yet I am planning on doing this on Monday as I've been awaiting a response from the company, he does state in his new letter that he would welcome an investigation by trading standards as he can apparently produce his evidence to prove his good nature. he did state in the letter that I have his permission to contact trading standards however contact with anyone else will mean a claim for defamation and damages, so I guess he doesn't want me calling Anne Robinson or Don't get done, get Dom

He has actually stated in his letter that the contract was agreed by telephone following his visit. He called me stating he could drop the price to £10,000 if I would accept. I actually said to him that I would need to speak to my partner before making any decisions and that was where we left it with me saying don't call me I'll call you if we ever wish to proceed as I was getting fed up with his pushy attitude by this point. The problem is he is now saying that is not what I said but that I told him to go ahead during the call which is simply not true. How he could ever prove what was said by telephone I don't know as surely its my word against his however on my side I have always refused to sign his contracts (thankfully) and had no finance agreed until many weeks later however I suppose all he can do is try to convince the court otherwise. Surely it would be for him to prove his case, not for me to prove what wasn't said.

Okay thanks I was just trying to get across that is is up to him to prove his case but I'll make the change. The thing is that I'm all up for defending this as I don't see that he has any case and would normally say he'll never take it that far, but this is the exact type of moron that will go through with a frivolous law suite on principle which is a bit of a hassle for everyone involved.

OK Guys this is my final response to their new letter. What do you think ? Final Response Dear Sirs, Please consider this as my final response to your letter regarding the alleged verbal contract. In your most recent letter dated 8th July 2014 you have stated a number of inaccuracies that I wish to bring to your attention. You state that I informed you that I was a financial adviser and based on this you would expect someone within this profession to be familiar with the process of obtaining finance. I remind you that I actually informed you that I work as a Financial Inclusion Worker and explained that this meant that I work as a debt and benefits caseworker for the Citizens Advice Bureau. You also indicate that I stated at the time that finance had been partially discussed with our mortgage lender by this point which is simply not true. At no time was any finance ever discussed with our mortgage lender as the loan which was eventually taken out many weeks after your visit to our property was actually obtained from a lender independent from our mortgage company and you have never been advised otherwise. I also dispute that you were advised that I make all of the decisions concerning financial commitments for the household. My partner is jointly named on the mortgage and as such has a vested financial interest in the property therefore I would not hold the authority to make such decisions myself. On the day of your visit you were actually advised that I would in fact need to speak with my partner first regarding any potential work and then look into options of finance which is partly why I refused to sign any provisional contract with you, despite you attempting to push this issue and stating that the contract could be made “subject to finance”, therefore making it necessary for me to make a second refusal. I note with interest your latest letter that you agree no contract existed following your visit to our property, however you state that during the occasion that you contacted me by telephone on March 12th and offered to reduce your price for work (for the roof only) to £10,000 that this offer was accepted and that you sent out a formal written contract based on this acceptance. This again is wholly inaccurate as you were specifically advised during this telephone call that I would again need to discuss the new offer with my partner. I would also point out that no finance had been sought or agreed at this point. I would also be most interested to know if the written contract you sent out was solely in my name or joint names with my partner who holds a substantial financial interest over the property. Despite this, your letter then states that I had the option at this point of returning the paperwork to you to discontinue the contract. I would point out that there was no contract to discontinue and if this was the case why would you now be pursuing a claim based on your financial loss if I was freely able to discontinue the alleged contract at this time without penalty as your loss would have been the same. I also dispute that your final telephone conversation was made to find out what was taking so long. The call (weeks later) was instead made to see if we had reached any decisions regarding the proposed work with your company and it was at this time that you were advised that the work had been completed elsewhere. I would put it to you that if your description of these events was accurate why then would your representative state that if we ever need the services of your company in future to feel free to make contact? At no point during this telephone call was anything mentioned regarding any breach of contract or penalty charges as your representative, who had previously identified himself as a partner in the business, clearly understood that no such contract had ever existed. I would also put the question to you, why if I had wished to go ahead with the proposed works as you have stated, would I have twice refused to sign a provisional contract with your representative and then not signed and returned any paperwork which you subsequently sent to me? In my previous letter I also advised you that for any verbal agreement to be legally binding an actual agreement on the services to be performed and an agreement on remuneration for this service have to be fixed in place and agreed upon. Once again I have shown this not to be the case which can easily be evidenced by the date our finance was applied for and finalised, which was many weeks following your appointment. The finance was in fact only finalised following the quote from the second company who actually performed the work which is again easily evidenced in my paperwork. I do not believe that any responsible person would simply agree to this scale of work without first having in place at least an in principal agreement for finance which was not the case here. You also state that you would have been happy to provide a distance quote, however considering the type of work involved I find it hard to see how this could be obtained with any degree of accuracy and during the initial telephone call you had actually agreed to provide a free no obligation quotation. Once again, I fully dispute any breach of contract or that any such contract whether verbal or written has ever existed as you have so far provided no evidence to the contrary other than the spoken word of your representative replicated in your written catalogue of events, most of which are highly disputed. Furthermore I do not believe that any further communication between our parties will serve any further interest and I invite you to pursue a claim through the County Court process should you believe that you have a genuine grievance. I would again remind you however that any such claim will be defended at County Court as I believe that I will be able to show through on the burden of evidence that no contract has ever existed in this case. Yours Sincerely,

Okay well I've just received letter number 2 from this company They have apparently withdrawn their offer of allowing me to pay £1,000 and are going ahead with a county court claim for £3,850 for breach of contract. They have disputed some of the facts in my letter stating that we arranged a price in principle over the telephone and the appointment to come here was a formal inspection which is simply untrue. They also state that my letter is an attempt at financial blackmail not to proceed with any case and that should I carry out any of my threats they will pursue me for damages and defamation. They will also show the courts the threats I have apparently made They have also stated that I told them that I had finance in place by my mortgage lender. This is again untrue as I did not even apply for any finance until well after the time the company came to the property and the loan was taken out about 6 weeks after this date and at no time did I ever even approach my mortgage lender as the loan was acquired elsewhere. They do admit that my partner wasn't present but they have stated I told them I could make all decisions, again not true So I am going to do a final response disputing most of what thy have claimed and basically say please feel free to go to court. If they didn't like coming all this way the first time surely they would need to do it again when I defend the claim. The way the letter is written they may just decide to file a claim and hope for the best however I still don't see how they can prove their case which is surely their responsibility to do so. The fact I can prove that no finance was in place at the time of the appointment should help as why would anyone agree to a contract when they haven't even looked at funding it, also if I agreed to go ahead why did I refuse to sign his in principal contract?