Argos CCA - Or lack of!!

[stroke a badger]

I really should start charging for my time you know!!

 

I've been asked to help a friends sister who has managed to get herself into some financial difficulty due to a long term illness. Because of her condition she has had to have long periods off work, in some cases as much as 3 months out of 12. This as you can imagine makes getting a steady well paid job nie on impossible and makes budgeting harder still.

 

The only debt she has is to Argos which is for a running credit account that was opened in 1996 and has a balance of £1100 owing. A couple of payments were missed but as far as delinquency goes thats about it.

 

Since Jan of this year Argos have been phoning Kate asking her if she wanted a new card and offering her a lesser APR as she is a "valued customer", all she had to do was sign a new credit agreement and they would do the rest. After much thought she decided not to set up another account as she did not want/need more debt due to her financial situation.

 

As a favour, and to try and see if there was any way I could help her out I requested a copy of the CCA, and this is what arrived in yesterdays post.............

 

 

Whats missing - where do I start!!!!!

 

My intentions are to make a full and final offer of 10% of the outstanding balance, Kate can go as high as 30% but going on what they have sent I personally think they will have no choice but to settle for 10%.

[honey5]

this is in reply to your cca request? and this is all they have sent?

if so then sit back and do nothing at all not even make them an offer

honey x

[stroke a badger]

The thing that I find funny is the date as the request was signed for 15/04/08!

[honey5]

theyre nuggets

honey x

[stroke a badger]

Nuggets - LOL

[honey5]

IS MY AGREEMENT ENFORCEABLE( Via section 127(3) CCA1974)

PRESCRIBED TERMS FOR THE PURPOSES OF SECTIONS 61(1)(0) AND 127(3) OF THE

CONSUMER CREDIT ACT 1974 Taken from sced.6(1983/1553) regulations

(If you just want to find out, skip the bits in between the stars it’s just some extra information)

 

**What do we mean by unenforceable?

In the Consumer Credit Act section 127 there is a provision for making an agreement unenforceable if it does not contain certain pieces of information.

Subsections 1,2,3,4 state which pieces of information these are, and everything mentioned there must be included within the body of the agreement, if one is missing the agreement is unenforceable.

 

How does unenforceable differ from enforceable with a court order only?

When an agreement is unenforceable it means that the court or the judge cannot make a ruling on it. The court cannot make it enforceable.

When an agreement is enforceable only by ruling of the court it means that the agreement can be stopped by the debtor but the court has the power to re-instate it and allow the credit to continue to enforce.**

 

The Pescribed Terms are these

 

A Amount of credit

A term stating the amount of credit

 

B Repayments

A term stating how the debtor is to discharge his obligations under the agreement to make the repayments, which may be expressed by reference to a combination of any of the following-

(a) Number of repayments;

(b) Amount of repayments;

© Frequency and timing of repayments;

(d) Dates of repayments;

(e) The manner in which any of the above may be determined; or in any other way, and any power of the creditor to vary what is payable.

 

C Rate of interest

A term stating the rate of interest to be applied to the credit issued under the agreement

D Credit limit

This may be a term or the manner in which it will be determined or that there is no credit limit.

--------------------------

 

Which of these applies to you depends on the type of agreement you have?

 

For a Running Account (credit card) agreement

 

BC and D Apply

 

For a Restricted Use Debtor Creditor Supplier

• Where the dealer is the supplier and the creditor is the one providing the finance.
  
• The money can only be used for the purpose it is given.
  
• There is no interest on the purchase (the cash price is the same as the total price)
  
• And there is no advance payment

A is applicable

 

For a fixed Sum Credit Agreement

A conventional credit agreement with none of the above restrictions

 

A and B apply

 

For a Hire Agreement

 

B is Applicable

 

This paper only covers section 127(3) of the Act agreements can also be unenforceable by contravention of sections 1 and4 this will be the subject of the next paper.

Please note that these Prescribed terms where not changed in any way by the 2004/1482 Ammendments although the form in which they appear on the agreement was. Subsection127(3) was repealed on the 6th of April 2007 so that unenforceability due to 127(3) will only apply to agreemens executed before that date.

 

[stroke a badger]

I was JUST about to do a search for that!

[stroke a badger]

Argos have failed to reply to the letter I sent to them which means the only option available to us is to take it to FOS. Excellent!

[pt2537]

the only option available to us is to take it to FOS. Excellent!

oh no its not;)

[stroke a badger]

Hiya PT2537,

 

Any suggestions apart from FOS.

 

Cheers matey

[pt2537]

yep

 

Court, you can take action against them if you know that they have no signed agreement you could seek a S142(1) declaration under the Consumer Credit Act 1974

[stroke a badger]

After nearly three years inactivity, out of the blue comes a lovely letter from Ruthbridge with a generous offer to reduce the debt by a undisclosed amount if my friend phones them by a undisclosed date. I will have a copy of the letter tomorrow but it sounds like the Ruthbridge monkeys have failed to master the intricacies of the letter template.

[theghost]

weird

 

are you sure their response to your CCA has not just been misundertsood? sounds liek they thought you were asing for a summary of the account and not all the details to do with the agreement.

[markmont]

I have never thought that Argos were capable of such a negligence; you surely deserve some compensation.