Ell-enn they have all post forwarded to a po box, then i had to wait for them to collect it and sign for it. they now have done it was on the 8th june. so now they have untill the 18th july to send back my sar and the 8th july to respond to the financial omsbudsmans complaint. Jono.

I'm not having much luck with getting letters to them at the moment, sent them one letter on the 29th march by recorded it's still not got there yet, and sent two by special delivery last Wednesday, they haven't got them yet either. bloody royal mail, £4.95 guaranteed by 1 next day, will have to wait and see what today brings. Jono.

Sorry about that I changed my mind when I was at the post office and sent a crossed postal order in thier name.

Tritts this is a copy of the SAR I sent, I put a £10 note in with it so they didn't have my bank account details. Carter & Carter Financial Limited 173-191 Mansion House Wellington Road South Stockport Cheshire SK1 3UA 3/6/2009 Data Protection Act 1998 “Section 7 of the Data Protection Act 1998 entitles an individual to request from a data controller a copy of the information constituting personal data about him. This right is subject to a number of exemptions in Part IV and schedule 7. There is nothing in section 7, nor Directive 95/46/EC, limiting the purposes for which a subject access request may be made. There is also nothing to provide for a data controller to require the data subject to state the purposes for which he intends to use information obtained as a result of his subject access request. There are also no exemptions from the right of access where civil legal proceedings are contemplated or ongoing.” Dear Sir/Madam Application ref: ***** I understand that you currently hold details of my personal and financial information within your internal record systems with regard to personal loan accounts Please supply me with all the data that you hold on me. This includes in particular, but is not limited to, the following:- 1. Full copies or transcripts of any correspondence in postal, email or any other format which you have entered into with any individual, organization or third party which contains my personal or financial information, or which pertains to me. 2. Transcriptions of all telephone conversations recorded and any notes made in relation to telephone conversations by your company 3. Where there has been any event in my application which has required manual intervention by any person, I require disclosure of any indication or notes which have either caused or resulted in that manual intervention, or other evidence of that manual intervention in relation to my application 4. Specific details of the fees/charges levied in respect of this application and a detailed breakdown of said fees/charges and what each charge relates to and on what date said fees/charges were levied. 5. A genuine copy of any notice of fair use of my data as required by the Data Protection Act 1998 6. A list of third party agencies to whom you have disclosed my personal data and copies of all the information you have disclosed. 7. Full copies of all contracts which you believe exist or have existed between myself and your organization, including true copies of any documents you hold in support of the same. 8. Copies of all documents which include any of my personal information including copies of any contracts or invoices, emails or computer records containing my personal information, or any records which pertain to this information. 9. Where any previous information or records held have been deleted or disposed of, the methods used to do so, including dates, certificates or references confirming details of destruction. Where you are unable to provide such certificates, please provide a declaration, signed by an authorised officer of your company, confirming the dates and methods of destruction of this data. 10. Full hard copy print outs of my personal or financial information, held in a digital, magnetic or any other format which is held in any archives, backups or other storage devices / locations. IF YOU UNABLE TO DEAL WITH THIS REQUEST, YOU SHOULD IMMEDIALTELY FORWARD IT TO THE PERSON WITHIN YOUR ORGANISATION RESPONSIBLE FOR DATA PROCECTION. I look forward to hearing from you in the first instance of receipt. I enclose the statutory maximum fee of £10. You have 40 days in which to comply. Please note that the above address is the one which you normally use to communicate my private business to me and which you have therefore found to be acceptable. Yours faithfully, Jonathan Hanson

Ell-enn thanks for that I hadn't thought of a SAR but thats just been posted special delivery, I've spoken to trading standards and lodged a complaint with them, I also have copies of everything I've sent and receipts. Tritts, you should do the same. I'm not happy with just getting my money back I want to punish them. I had four direct debits returned when they took this money off me putting me further into debt, I'll be asking for this to be repayed also. Jono.

it doesn't matter if you don't have any paperwork, just send them a letter to the address i have Carter & Carter Financial Limited 173-191 Mansion House Wellington Road South Stockport Cheshire SK1 3UA also lodge a complaint with the financial ombudsman 08450801800 and trading standards 08457224499 I don't think it would do any harm talking to the police, it could be identity theft or fraud or obtaining money by deception. As for Duran Duran I listened for three hours non stop the first time i rang, I've been told by the financial ombudsman not to bother ringing if it's that difficult to get through, just send them letters and emails. sales @ carterandcarterfinancial .co.uk jono.

Tritts, don't give up I'm not going to stop untill I get my money Back.

This is the letter I'm sending them today. Carter & Carter Financial Limited 173-191 Mansion House Wellington Road South Stockport Cheshire SK1 3UA 29th May 2009 Dear Sirs. Application Ref: ***** I have received a letter on the 28/05/2009 from you dated 21/05/2009 saying “congratulations you have been approved in principle”. As I said on the phone to you on the 12/05/2009 I didn’t want to go ahead with any part of an application with you. Yet you debited £499.99 from my account whilst I was on the phone. As I said on the phone after being on hold for three hours on 14/05/2009 that I wanted a refund and said again not to go ahead with any part of the application. You received a letter from me on 20/05/2009 stating that I wanted refunding immediately and that I didn’t give any authorisation for this application to go ahead. A copy of this is attached. You have not responded to my letter you received on the 20/05/2009, you have also not responded to the letter the Financial Ombudsman sent you on the 14/05/2009, could you respond to these by return of post as you have already had my letter for 9 days and the letter from the Financial Ombudsman for 15 days. I also want a copy of your complaints procedure. I repeat I do not give you any authorisation to give my details to associate companies in order to complete a loan, I do not agree to Carter & Carter Financial Ltd passing on my details to the variety of home credit companies in order to assist my loan application. According to your terms and conditions: “An administration fee will be charged by Carter & Carter Financial ltd from £49.00 depending on your application. Once we have processed your details and sent them over to our lenders, a refund will not be payable. Unless you have cancelled the application before we have charged the administration fee.” I cancelled this application on the phone on the 12/05/2009 so a refund is payable. Quote from your letter dated 21/05/2009 “Please fill in the cut off slip and send it back to us to confirm you are happy to go ahead with the loan application” As I am not signing anything you have no written confirmation that I want to go ahead with this application, therefore a refund is requested immediately. Yours sincerely Jonathan Hanson.

This is the first letter I sent them Carter & Carter Financial Limited 173-191 Mansion House Wellington Road South Stockport Cheshire SK1 3UA 18th May 2009 Dear Sirs. On Tuesday 12th May I was contacted by your subsidiary Easy Step Loans, I was cajoled and lied to so that I gave my debit card details under the pretences of it being used as identity verification, I questioned this a few times asking if any funds were to be debited, I was assured by your agent that at no point would any money be debited, it was only for identity purposes only. I was then passed on to another agent who said I had been approved in principle for a loan and you are only brokers for loans. When I asked if a fee was payable he said that between £10 and £500 was payable, I asked if this was payable on completion, he said when funds where available. I asked again how much and when the fee would be payable and he repeated that it was between £10 and £500 when funds where available. At this point I said that I didn’t want to go ahead with any part of the application and expressly said that I didn’t give any authorisation for you to debit my account, I was told by your agent that he would contact administration and have any and all of my details wipes from your systems. I thought that was the end but lo and behold when I checked my bank statement on Thursday morning, Carter & Carter Financial Limited had debited my account £499.99 at 17.33 on 12th May 2009. This was at the same time I was on the phone with your agent. I am disgusted that a company such as yourselves can lie and steal money from people who can least afford it, I had left that money in my account because I had direct debits coming out, now I’m overdrawn at the bank. I have contacted the Financial Ombudsman Service and filed a complaint with them, also the Office of Fair Trading has a complaint filed with them. In addition I’ve been to the police and advised them that I want to file charges against you for obtaining money by deception. As the officer said I had to give you a chance to sort this out as it could be an administrive error but if it wasn’t, then it is a case of obtaining money by deception. I am putting you on notice that you have seven days from the date of this letter to credit my account £499.99. if this is not completed to my satisfaction then I will file charges against you for obtaining money by deception and also for identity theft. I will use all and any avenues possible in my pursuit of your company and all registered officers of this company, unless this theft is completed to my full satisfaction. I repeat you have 7 days from the date of this letter ( 18th May 2009 ) J Hanson.

I've had the same problem with Carter & Carter Financial / Easy Step Loans, they took £499.99 off me. I tried my bank and they can't do anything about it because I gave my card details.

Hey Tritts, no the bank can't help at all. They have to follow Visa rules and if you give them your card details then they can't do anything about it. I sent Carter & Carter a letter, they received it on the 21st and sent me a letter back dated the same day saying, how i've been accepted in principle for a loan ect ect, it arrived today. I'm ringing them in the morning to tell them where to shove it.

As from looking more closely into Easy step loans and Carter & Carter, it’s a quite large company, there is nothing about easy step loans but there is an easy loans group, this has a few subsidiaries and as the financial ombudsman said there are nine different addresses for this group. This seems to be quite a targeted [problem] on people who are the least able to afford it. I was cajoled and lied to, to give my card details all under the pretences of checking my id.

I immediately contact my bank and cancelled my card, I’ve put a complaint in with the office of fair trading and the financial ombudsman, both of these couldn’t find any info on easy step loans only easy loans group and Carter & Carter, both these companies are based at the same address in Stockport so I’ve gone after Carter & Carter as they were the ones who debited my account. I went to the police and they’ve said that it might be an administrive error and I should give them chance to correct this, but It could be a case of obtaining money by deception and should mention this in correspondence with them. After three hours of holding on the phone to easy step loans I was told I would have to contact them in writing because there is nothing they can do and they would get back to me within 14 working days. My bank the wonderful Lloyds TSB have told me that they have had a lot of disputes with this company and because they have to follow Visa rules, when I gave them my card details even under false pretences it’s tough, there’s nothing that they can do, they even had their contact details because the happens on a regular basis but still won’t do anything. Help me hammer these people who pray on those that are in financial trouble and are easy targets like me.

Hi I’m new here and I’ve been ripped off by easy step loans / Carter & Carter Financial. A couple of months ago I applied for a loan with another company and was unsuccessful, on Tuesday I received a few text and phone calls about loans, obviously my details have been passed around or sold on. Easy step loans contacted me on Tuesday teatime offering me a loan, as we were talking they came up with a half decent loan offer and asked if I was interested. When I said yes they passed me on to another person who was going to verify my identity to do this I had to give my debit card details. At this point I was dubious and asked if they were going to take any fund from my account, I was assured three times that no money was going to be taken it was only for identity purposes only, I even stated that I didn’t give any authority for them to debit my account. I was then passed on to another person who said that easy step loans was a broker for loans and I had been accepted in principle for a loan. At this point I asked if any fees were payable and was told that a fee of between £10 and £500 was payable. When I asked what amount the actual fee would be in my case they said again between £10 and £500 would be payable when funds were available. I asked if that meant when the loan was completed but he said again when funds were available. At this point I said I didn’t want to go ahead with any part of the application, and stated again that at no point were they authorised to take any money off my debit card ( I was adamant on this point and pointed this out a number of times). He told me that he was going to contact admin and have all my details wiped off their systems. That I thought was that but on Thursday morning my wife checked my account online and found that Carter & Carter Financial had took £499.99 out of my account.