Well, a result has been reached. They have agreed to an initial £500 with another £500 in monthly instalments of £20. A pretty good result so thank you for the advice given here. Still annoyed I have to pay anything but should be annoyed at myself for not reading what I was signing really! Thanks again.

Hi, After a wait of nearly 2 months I have a reply! Not great but progress:- We write in response to your email dated 19 September 2011 and apologise for the delay in responding. We have reviewed the contents of your email and comment as follows on the points raised:- 1. Misrepresentation - The Application Form is headed Credit Account Application Form, the Personal Guarantee contained within the Application Form is in a separate section which is clearly headed Credit Guarantee in bold type and the wording and consequences of signing are made clear. In order for an allegation of misrepresentation to succeed you need to be able to demonstrate that Travis Perkins has made a false statement with the intention of inducing you to sign the Credit Guarantee. The Application Form was completed by you in your own time and submitted to Travis Perkins and we cannot therefore accept your allegations of misrepresentation. 2. You completed the Application Form and the Credit Guarantee contained therein in your capacity as Company Secretary. You held yourself out as being somebody with authority to bind the Company and as a result of completing and submitting the Application Form to Travis Perkins, Travis Perkins agreed to grant a credit facility to the Company reliant on the Personal Guarantee provided by you. We note you refer to the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 however you have contracted with Travis Perkins in a business capacity not as a consumer and therefore the Act does not apply. 3. As stated at 2 above, you were not contracting with Travis Perkins as a consumer, you were applying for a business account with another business and therefore are not afforded the same rights as that of a consumer. 4. The Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 does state that the terms need to be reasonable however we would expect a Court to take into account the fact that you were dealing in a business capacity and not as a consumer and that this was a contract between businesses not between a business and a consumer. 5. Your arguments in relation to "reasonableness" are rejected for the following reasons:-™6'1 a. You state that you had no intention of entering into a Personal Guarantee however in view of the fact that the Personal Guarantee is contained within the Application Form is clearly worded, clearly headed and is signed by you in your own time, away from Travis Perkins premises, we cannot accept that there was no intention to enter into a Personal Guarantee. b. There is no requirement for the Personal Guarantee to be a separate document. The fact that it is a separate section within the Application Form does not make it unenforceable. The wording of the Credit Guarantee makes it clear that, as a result of signing, you are agreeing to be liable for the debts of the Company in the event that the Company is unable to pay. c. You are not dealing with Travis Perkins in your capacity as a consumer you have contracted with Travis Perkins in a business capacity. d. In a business capacity you applied for a credit account with Travis Perkins. You received a blank Application Form complete with Travis Perkins terms and conditions. The terms of the contract were not open for negotiation and if you did not wish to be bound by the terms contained therein you were under no obligation to complete and submit the Form to Travis Perkins. Whilst we note your comments with regard to the validity of the Personal Guarantee we maintain that the Personal Guarantee is valid and enforceable against you for all sums outstanding. We note the issues raised in relation to pricing and goods being supplied without order numbers however no query was raised prior to the account being referred legal and in any event these allegations are not supported by any evidence. We note your offer of £500.00 in full and final settlement however this is rejected. The sum of £3476.22 remains outstanding and due for payment and unless we receive your realistic proposals for settlement of all sums within the next 7 days, we will be pursuing you further in your capacity as Personal Guarantor. I also received another letter same day saying my offer of £500 is reasonable and they are prepared to offer £2200 as settlement. I have sent an email back asking for more time to respond, trying not to be antagonistic as they took so long to reply to me yet expect my response/cash in 7 days! (they've replied already giving me till the 28th). The whole case put forward by toddle2U relies on misrepresentation which they do not accept and claim I have to demonstrate that TP have made a false statement with the intention of inducing me to sign. I don't see how this can be proven but wonder about the following:- 1. The wording on their form next to where you sign to apply for the account (not the PG) is larger than the PG wording and actually carries a warning to make sure you understand what you are signing whereas the PG section does not. 2. The only way I can see to claim misrepresentation, or at least try and show that my case will not be singular, would be to ask the court (if it comes to that) to contact all existing account holders to ask if they are aware of the existence of a PG on their account. I have hinted that this may form part of my defence but don't know if a court would go to such effort. 3. TP claim they only opened the credit account reliant on my PG. I have asked many times if all TP accounts must have a PG and if they still carry out a credit check or just open an account as they are covered by the PG. Obviously I've had no reply to these questions and ask them as at the time of opening the account, our company had traded successfully for 25 yrs and had an unblemished credit history. My point being that a credit account would have been awarded without my PG.

Hi, It was the TP one.

Hi. I sent an email containing the advice kindly received from toddle2u with a without prejudice offer of £500 to finish the matter on the 19th September and have had no reply. I am emailing again this week for a response and if there is any movement I'll update this thread.

Regarding the Brandon Hire problem my father has: If the guarantee is valid and indisputable, do you know what the requirements are for a company to make a claim against the guarantee. They have just sent a writ without any previous correspondence. Do you know if it is incumbent on them to supply details of orders/invoices etc? Or is there a set procedure that they should adhere to?

Wow, thanks for all of the advice/info. I'll let you know the (hopefully positive) outcome.

The Brandon one was signed July 2009 and there is a section E headed guarantee, though again easy to sign in error/haste as it's the last box to sign so easy to assume it's just a standard declaration if not expecting a guarantee to form part of the credit application.

Thanks again. As it happens, the director (my Step father) signed the Brandon hire form and the guarantee and received a writ yesterday having had no previous correspondence from them.

Thanks for taking time to help with this! Yes, the form I signed was headed Credit account application and within part one there is a credit guarantee which I signed without reading as our secretary completed the form and I just signed - none of our other trade accounts requested any credit guarantee.

The supplier is Travis Perkins and the form was signed in June 2010 unfortunately

That is as I feared though the fact the guarantee is incorporated into the application form in such a way encourages a guarantee to be signed without realising exactly what you are signing. If the guarantee is a legal contract, should it not be confirmed to ensure consent? I've read that an essential requirement for a valid guarantee is mutual consent: both the creditor and the guarantor intended there be a guarantee. That is, when you sign the document, it must be clear you intended to give a guarantee. I can prove that I signed the form not knowing there was a guarantee incorporated (Different handwriting as secretary completed form, fact that during last 2 months of struggling to pay suppliers did not prioritise this one) but would that be strong enough to let my case go to court?

Hello all, I've only just joined the forum as need advice regarding the legality of a personal guarantee. I'll try to keep it brief! I unknowingly signed a personal guarantee that was incorporated into a credit application from in June 2010 with a building supplier. I was company secretary and a shareholder. The guarantee says it may be completed by the owner/director/co. sec but the wording of the guarantee says "In consideration of your agreeing to supply goods to the applicant company on credit, we the undersigned being owner/director/directors of the applicant company jointly and severally guarantee payment of all the financial obligations...." No mention of company secretary or shareholder. The company went into liquidation in May 2011 and I got threatened with a statutory demand which I managed to have put aside but am still threatened with legal action over the debt (£4k) owed to this company. Both me and the wife are still out of work and expecting number 2 in a week's time so this is rather daunting and stressful! So my questions are am I considered owner by having shares in the company? Can a personal guarantee be incorporated in a credit application form just as a separate paragraph, making it easy to sign in error? Its existence was never confirmed on any correspondence following the setting up of the credit account. I have had much correspondence with the company in question and it has been dragged out as they have twice taken over a month to reply to me. Any advice much appreciated!