Capquest/Drysdens Fairfax Solicitors

Hello,

Hope you are doing well! Was a member of the old GOODF website but I can see it is now rendered useless. Glad to know you have setup another forum!

I recently received a "Notification of Account Transfer to New Agency" from Capquest which I ignored. Two weeks later I received a "Letter of Claim" from Drysdens Fairfax which I also ignored. Now a month or so has passed and I have received a Claim Form from Northampton's County Court Business Centre.

Claimaint's Particulars

1. The claim is for the sum of £1200 in respect of monies owing by the Defendant on a credit agreement held by Defendant with Shop Direct under account number XXX upon which Defendant failed to maintain payment

[list=2][*]A default notice was served upon the defendant and has not been complied with.[/listi]
[list=3][*]The balance owed was assigned from Shop Direct to the claimant, and the defendant has been notified of the assignment by letter. Contact drysdensfairfax solicitors on XXX[/list]

I promptly acknowledged and replied to the court, defending the entire claim, mentioning the following in my Defence Particulars:

Claimant has failed to provide information regarding the Particulars of Claim in order The 'Defendant' to fairly assess and respond to the defence.

Defendant is unaware of any monies owed to CAPQUEST or DRYDENS and has never received any form of communication from them, including but not necessarily limited to emails, letters, phone calls or text messages
Please treat this Defence Particulars as a request made under CPR18 for the disclosure and the production of a verified and legible copy of each of the following documents mentioned vaguely in the Claimant's Particulars of Claim which is made by way of Service upon Northampton's County Court Business Centre:

- The Deed of Assignment
- The notice of assignment
- A true copy of the signed credit agreement
- The default warning letter
- The default notice

I deny any indebtedness to the Claimant for the sum of £1200
and as such I request full disclosure of the amount the Claimant
alleges to have paid for this alleged debt.

The Claimant's Particulars of Claim do not state the specific
Statutory Instrument in which they have commenced proceedings
under, therefore I request details of the Statutory Instrument
under which they have brought proceedings.

The county court business centre acknowledged the receipt of my defence by post within 2 days and a copy of the defence was served to the claimaint's solicitors, in this case Drysdens. The letter from the court did mention that the claimaint must contact the court within 28 days after receiving a copy of the defence.

38 days of not hearing from the Court or Claimant, I receive a letter from Drysdens solicitors acknowledging receipt of the defence and they are currently seeking their clients further instruction.

A week later I receive another letter from Dryden's stating "An application has now been made to enter a County Court Judgement against you.

A month after that I received a "Notice of Default Sums" letter from Capquest stating £170 in charges (fixed costs awarded on judgement, issue fees, issue costs).

At this point I'm confused about what I should do next? they failed to respond within 28 days and didn't respond to the Defence Particulars yet acknowledged it...your experiences and assistance would be appreciated at this stage?

I don't know what the knowledgeable admins on here think, but i might write back to the court asking for an Order to Show Cause to ask the court to dismiss the case due to estoppel by conduct because the other party did not perform.

If the court doesn't want to dismiss the case then ask for an Order to Show Cause to force the other party to send you the all discovery information you require

Reading between the lines a little I think what's happened is the claimant has received the defence but not responded to the court in time to prevent the claim becoming stayed.  So I guess what they need to do now is to apply back to the court to lift the stay, and pay a fee for so doing.  It may be that this recent correspondence is just them having another try to see if they can get you to concede without them running up court costs.

To be clear have you received anything from the court after they acknowledged your defence? I suppose it would do no harm to contact the court and confirm the exact status of the claim at the moment.

Good shout flyingfish.

yes i agree with flyingfish

contact the court and ask them the status of the claim, i would firstly e mail the court and ask them the status, which gives you written proof and then i would ring the court.

also i would get a letter typed up ready to send to Drydens asking why they have failed to send you a copy of their application to strike out the defence.

likely they have screwed up as drydens frequently do.

lets hope drydens have screwed up

LionsShare wrote:lets hope drydens have screwed up

They most likely will screw up as they can barely consider themselves ‘solicitors’ from what I have seen of their letters (the ones people have previously posted here*) e.g. never replying with the name of an individual who works there, let alone a signature. Very unprofessional and a tell tale sign of a Mickey Mouse outfit (in my opinion). But don’t take my word for it though, just google reviews of them...

*There are many examples on this site demonstrating how unprofessional they are and therefore the likelihood that they are the sort of outfit that will screw up

I’m sure the Solicitors Regulation Authority would love love to hear about anyone having a poor experience from them and the more the merrier