GE Money

[seawall]

Posted one or two messages on the threads regarding this shower. I have remortgaged to get away from them. I had run up arrears, so had been receiving penalty charges each month which i now intend to recover if possible.

 

I'm pretty certain that an ERC was applied to the settlement fee, but oddly enough the solicitor that acted for me seems to be unable to verify this, having acted only on the settlement figure provided to them by GE Money. I have sent the latter a polite letter asking for a final statement of account, not referring to the ERC as such, and oddly enough have had no response whatsoever.

 

So, the next phase is to send them a SAR I assume. Question is, will the ERC show on this as a separate charge? I know what the penalty charges were, so even if they don't show on it I can work them out quite easily.

[zootscoot]

The ERC should show up as a separate charge on your SAR.

 

Best of luck

 

Zoot

[seawall]

GE Money finally sent me a set of statements covering my history of transactions with them. I had two accounts; a mortgage and a secured loan. Due to problems with my bank I got into arrears with the mortgage and they managed to get a suspended possession order on my home, but the arrears were thenceforth serviced.

 

However, I was sending them a combined payment each month for both accounts, and for several months they seemed to have credited all the payments to the mortgage, causing arrears on the loan, and surprise surpsrise went for a possession order due to these.

 

That's the background, now this is where a bit of advice would come in useful please.

 

Looking through the statements I can see five seperate types of charge to dispute with them. These are;

 

Penalty charges on both accounts amounting to many hundreds of pounds.

 

Early redemption charges on both accounts, on the morgage this is either £2.5K or £3K depending on which part of the statements you refer to.

 

Around £500 of solicitors fees that thet debited to my account, before they realised that they were probably in the wrong and applied for an adjournment at the last minute.

 

I intend claiming all of these back. Does anyone have a view on starting off four seperate claims for the penalty charges and the ERCs, or a calim for each account combining the penalties and ERCs on each account, or one claim combining the lot?

 

My favourite at the moment is to go with four seperate claims. I think that I will need to seek legal advice on the solicitors fees, unless anyone on here has some experience of this.

[zootscoot]

Hi Seawall,

 

It might be better to do 2 claims one for each account. This is assuming that this would keep it under the 5K. If the late payment fees bump it over the 5k then split by ERC and late charges. The problem with splitting claims is that the second claim could be struck out on the grounds that you should have brought the claims together and to split in order to remain in the small claims court would amount to an abuse of process. Although if you have two separate accounts this would be a legitimate way of separating the claims.

 

It is unlikely that the solicitors fees are recoverable as they are likely to be able to prove that this represented the actual cost.

 

Best of luck

 

Zoot

[seawall]

Thanks again Zoot. I can see the sense in that. One other thing occurred to me after I had shut the PC down last night - I will quote from their covering letter;

 

'Default on late payments and any disbursements will have accrued interest daily at the monthly rate, this is termed as 'additional interest'. A breakdown of all interest charged to the account is attached for your information'.

 

It amounts to a quite a lot of money, and looks as though they were charging interest on interest with it as the amounts grew each month. I think that this is claimable given that it is interest on penalties. Any views? Others who have taken on GE Money or I Group have probably noticed this one.

 

Regarding the solicitors fees, on the mortgage account I agree that I just had to live with it. However, the repossession process that started on the secured loan was as a result of their own lack of attention, and when this was pointed out to them the whole thing ground to a halt, yet I had already had charges debited to my account. That is why I think it is worth having a look at, but as a totally seperate item.

[seawall]

Prelim letters sent to GE Money today for both accounts, based on Zoot's template. So it begins....

[Guest peed orf]

Very best of luck to you, kick some butt! I'll be following right behind, should they decide to answer my SAR.

[Tazz]

Very best of luck to you' date=' kick some butt! I'll be following right behind, should they decide to answer my S.A.R - (Subject Access Request).[/quote']

 

How long you been waiting for your statements ? I have not heard anythig back from them yet..........

[seawall]

No response whatsoever from GE money to the prelims, so LBAs for both accounts in the post tomorrow.

[sowerby17]

I have just requested a statement of my account from GE Money for a car loan got them within 2 days and no charge for them. Was charged £600 in total for late payments.Will be starting claim tommorrow.

[seawall]

GE Money have finally cranked into action, reponding to one of my LBAs. As the two disputes are essentially similar but different in scale I guess this will suffice. The letter attempts to justify the charges, and draws my attention to the terms and conditions that I agreed tp when I took out each mortgage.

 

The Early Repayment Charge is justified as follows:

 

Early repayment charges are designed to help us recover the costs of customers settling early. These costs include:

 

The cost of specialist resources we use to set up our loans and assess our rsisks.

 

Our administrative expenses in maintaining your account.

 

Our funding costs

 

The commissions paid to intermediaries on loans which complete because (i)the specialised loans we make involve intermediaries carrying out more work than normal (for example, to satisfy our need to to be sure you can meet your payment obligations), and (ii) a high percentage of loan applications do not result in a loan being made, so the broker will receive no commission on these even if he has done almost all the work.

 

An element of our loss of profits caused by you repaying the loan early

 

An interesting stance, I think. From memory I believe Zoot countered most of the salient points in thisarguement. I think that the penalty fees arguement is countered easily due to my being unaware of the unlawful nature of these charges at the time I entered into the contract. As far as the ERC arguements are concerned, it would be interesting to see if they want to force the issue if it gets to court. In this respect, the clock is still ticking; the potential for court claims looms before the end of the month, a fact that they will be reminded of.

 

Comments, views and questions on this are welcome of course.

[seawall]

After an additional exchange of letters, GE Money have informed me that their stance on the charges stands. They have only addressed their comments to one account - and I am running two parallel claims. Next stop the courts then.

[seawall]

A little advice needed here. I am persuing two potential claims against GE Money.

 

The prime one was in regard of a mortage on my property of over £60K.

 

The second is on a secured loan on the property for just over £8.5K.

 

As previously mentioned an ERC has been charged on both, as well as various other penalties. I get the impression reading a couple of other threads that I may not be able to cliam anything back on the smaller account, or possibly only the penalty charges. Could anyone confirm this please?

[zootscoot]

Hi Seawall,

 

Its likely that the 8.5k secured loan is a regulated agreement under the CCA 1974. If it was taken out prior to May 2005 the old rule of 78 applies which means they are able to charge you 6 mths interest on redemption. There is nothing the courts can do to interefere with this ERC but any late payment fees are still recoverable.

 

Hope this helps

 

Zoot

[seawall]

Thanks once again Zoot. Stopped me making a fool of myself!

[seawall]

Court claim submitted against GE Home Lending Ltd as of Friday 8th. Watch this space...

 

Claim is for ERC and various penalties, plus interest applied to penalty charges.

[zootscoot]

Good luck Seawall,

 

Don't forget to pm a mod your details for inclusion in the litigation section,

 

Claim no

Date issued

Who you are claiming against

Amount you are claiming

 

All the best

 

Zoot

[seawall]

GE money (through Eversheds) have decided to defend. have until 9th January to file a defence. I wait with baited breath...

[Cazziebo]

Good luck Seawall! My fingers are crossed for you....

[Grapes]

Hi Seawall

In exactly the same position, eversheds to defend by 10th (My Birthday!) so we will have to compare notes!

[seawall]

Defence received today. It runs to 13 pages, so posting it would be a bit of a burden and take up rather a lot of forum space.

 

A brief syonpsis is as follows:

 

Firstly, the usual 'inadequately pleaded and largely unparticularised' which I think has been dealt with before.

 

A denial that any contractual relationship exists. This is due to the mortgage being with I Group Mortgages (afterwards GE Money Mortgages Ltd) and my claim, correctly I believe is against GE Money Home Lending Ltd.

 

Then many pages quoting contractual provisions regarding charges and interest.

 

They do argue in one paragraph that the charges levied were as a result of a breach of the mortgage agreement, but that they were the price agrred for related services provided by the defendant.

 

In the next paragraph they attempt to cover their arses by argueing that if the charges come within the scope of the law on penalties then they are in actual fact a genuine pre-estimate of the cost involved.

 

Also a lengthy arguement as to why the ERC is fair and reasonable.

 

Threat at the end to attempt to recover costs or losses incurred, which may exceed the value of my claim, together with a counterclaim.

 

Any of this sound familiar? All advice welcome, and I will be attempting to produce an OCR file of this minor epic if I can ever get the software running.

[:Boy:]

Sounds very similar to mine, they actually filed a counter claim with me. Case Management Conference for me on the 24th Jan 07, yippee (I am sh**ing myself mind you!)

 

Defence was 5 pages long, and the counterclaim (revised) was 2 pages long.

 

Good luck, I will follow with interest.

 

DT

[Grapes]

Hi Seawall

Mine is exactly the same as far as I can tell.

So we have to defend the counterclaim, not sure if we have to wait for the AQ to do it or can do it now? I know its 14 days, I assume from the official date of defense?

I am sure we will work it out!

[seawall]

My AQ arrived on saturday, so i will get on to it, and in the absence of any advice to the contrary, allow a postponement so that GE get time to make an offer, should they so wish.

 

Regarding the counterclaim, I personally don't think that they would want to go to court to argue this through, but you never know.

 

Not the nicest bunch of operators I have ever dealt with, glad I'm out of their grasp now.

[zootscoot]

Hi Seawall,

 

You will need to put in a defence to their counter claim within 14 days otherwise they will get judgment by default on this. There are some arguments in the stickies at the top of this forum which you can use and adapt to respond to your particular counter claim.

 

All the best

 

Zoot