LINK Financial

Hello Everybody,

I use to be a member of the GOODF forum and thank you to everybody who has set up this forum as a replacement.

I am currently dealing with LINK Financial for an old Barclaycard Debt and a Egg Debt that was purchased by Barclaycard

I sent them the first letter from the set of three that was on the old GOODF Forum and recieved a letter back saying it had been passed on to their complaints department.

I have now received a response from their complaints department, which states the below

"Having investigated the matter further, out team are now able to confirm the following in regards to your complaint:

Please be advised that your Barclaycard account was opened on ***** 1998, defaulted on ****** 2014 and was assigned to our organisation on ****** 2016 with an outstanding balance of £ 5,0**.**

We write to acknowledge your recent correspondance. Please note however, that we do not except the content, nor any other "Freeman of the Land" style templates

As such, we do not consider your claim to be a valid dispute and any further correspondance received containing similar text will be logged and not responded to.

Your account will be passed back to our collection's team for review and potential recovery action 8 weeks post Final Response date of your complaint.

As of 13th November, you remain liable for the outstanding balance of £ 5,0**.** and we kindly request you to complete the enclosed Personal Budget Plan in order that we may agree a fair and affordable repayment plan with you.

If you wish to make a genuine complaint or dispute, we are willing to investigate the matter, however, as stated above we do not acknowledge "Freeman of the Land" style templates as a valid dispute.

As our Final Response has been issued, we will not be engaging in any futher correspondance regarding this complaint.

Based on the above, we wish to clarify that your complaint has been not upheld, and as such, we believe a reasonable explanation has now been provided and your complaint has now been closed."

What would you suggest should be the next course of action??

I have noticed on this forum that there are new/refreshed letters. Should I start the process again using the Debt purchased templates? If I do use them I have noticed within them it states that I have sent three previous letters to the Opening Account (Barclaycard) of which I havent. Do I leave this bit out?

I look forward to your comments and advice

Have you requested a copy of the agreement under Section 78 of the Consumer Credit Act and paid the £1 fee.

No Tiggy, how would I go about that?

Yes use the new letters ,adapting to suit .

You may wish to point out to them that whatever style of they may consider them to be these ('New letters are Notices always refer to them as such) are just as valid as their 'template letters ' and does not detract from there content.

DebtFree wrote:No Tiggy, how would I go about that?

You can send this to the alleged 'owner' of the debt with £1 fee, (for Credit Cards only, for loans change all references to S78 to S77 - do NOT use for overdrafts).

If they can't produce the agreement then after 12 days the debt is unenforceable (Section 78.6 of the CCA) unless they produce the agreement.

 
Request under s.78 Consumer Credit Act 1974

Dear Sirs
Re: Account / Reference Number: xxxxx / xxxxx

With reference to the above agreement, I require that you provide me a true copy of the credit agreement.

I am aware that section 78(1) of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 sets out clearly what is required to comply with my request and quote “shall give the debtor a copy of the executed agreement (if any) and of any other document referred to in it”. For clarification I require a copy of the agreement, any terms and conditions from the time when the agreement was executed, the current terms in force or in the alternative the notices of variation of each term as approved in Carey v HSBC Bank Plc and a copy of the cancellation notice if the agreement refers to “Your Right to Cancel” within it. I also require a statement as laid out also within section 78(1)(a-c). If there weren’t any terms and conditions then please confirm this in your response.

I am entitled to receive the information on request. I enclose a payment of £1.00 per account, which represents the fees payable under the Consumer Credit Act 1974. This request is a statutory request and should not be construed as any acknowledgment or payment towards any account.

I understand that Consumer Credit (Prescribed periods for Giving Information) Regulations 1983 (SI 1983/1569) at Regulation 2 sets out the required time frame for compliance with this request as being 12 working days from receipt.

In the event that you do not consider yourselves the “creditor” I direct you to s189 Consumer Credit Act and the leading case of Jones v Link Financial Ltd [2012] EWHC 2402 (QB) (22 August 2012) which confirms that assignees of an account are the creditor and must comply with statutory duties.

In accordance with the new FCA guidance, if the copy of the executed agreement is reconstituted, then I expect you to confirm this is the case and to confirm what steps were taken to provide this reconstitution as set out in the FCA handbook CONC 13.1.4 (2).

I look forward to hearing from you
Yours faithfully

I understand that Consumer Credit (Prescribed periods for Giving Information) Regulations 1983 (SI 1983/1569) at Regulation 2 sets out the required time frame for compliance with this request as being 12 working days from receipt.

I would personally leave this out for one good reason, they know the law on this and should know that they have 12 days to comply, if they do not comply within the 12 days then it becomes unenforceable, and they should know this also.

If you give them 15 days and send them a legal notice you have given them the required 12 days and been seen to be considerate in giving them an additional 3 days to allow for postage, and in the legal notice you can cite the fact they have only 12 days to comply and that you have allowed them 15 days as a courtesy and quote the legislation to them. They will have defaulted by their own voilition and you are not responsible for their staff and their failures, and you can also state that this is unenforceable and any attempt to enforce this action is now deemed illegal and harassment.

Basically you turn it back onto them and their failures.

I have an update with regards to my dealings with Link Financial

I sent the letter, as recommended by Tiggy and also omitted the paragraph as recommended by Assassin, on the 24th November 2017.
I did not receive anything in return until this morning.
The problem is that this morning a received a letter stating the following:-

"As requested please find enclosed your copy of vendor documents. We trust we have clarified matters for you.

If you have any questions or queries in relation to this letter please feel free to contact one of our account officers on ******** who will be pleased to offer any assistance in this matter that they can."

Accompanying the Letter is nothing, I mean nothing??? It is a small window envelope with just this standard letter inside???

How do you suggest I respond to this letter, bearing in mind it has taken them 8 weeks to send me nothing?

Sounds like they are playing games, in other words they have nothing to prove their claim & intentially did not enclose what they stated, instead "give us a call & we'll help you" translates as we will try to hoodwink you into paying up.

I'd 'write' back to them & state there was no correspondence enclosed & once again state what you asked for.

Do not speak over the phone in any circumstance.

You have an unenforcable debt, so now you can write to them and state:

That you as the alleged creditor sent a request under sec 78 and 79 on and insert date with the required £1 fee.

And, that under sec 78.6 of the CCA they have 12 days to produce the agreement and that having exceeded this by some margin, they have reddered any alleged debt as unenforcable.

You can back it up with any further contact by their company will be deemed as harassment and you will bring a civil tort against them.

I would be interested to know what happened in this case ?
I have a friend who has these rats on her back for 2 alleged debts totalling near £25,000 unfortunately shes been paying a pound per debt until I spoke to her recently ...

Hello memegirl777,

Please find below an update on my situation.

I also have two alleged debts with LINK Financial. The first one which I mentioned earlier that they sent me an empty envelope has progressed to the fact that they sent my details to a complete stranger. I received the information requested a couple of weeks later from the person who they sent it to and they forwarded it on. Which is absolutley appalling considering the nature of these documents.
Anyhow, in both instances the information contained just a photcopy of the terms and conditions and a letter from the original vendor stating that they are not currently able to enforce their agreement, but their rights continue to exist under the agreement and could I still pay them.
Also contained is a letter from LINK saying now we have cleared this matter up, can you contact us regarding payment.

I have not contacted them and I still get a statement from them every six months and a text twice a month asking me to contact them. But no more threatening letters.

I'm just waiting this out now until the alleged debt becomes statute barred.

I think this is the right thing to do? Unless anybody has some other advice that could end this quicker than the remaining two years I have left

I think what you are doing is correct wait it out ..
and dont remind them you are there...
in the event of it getting nasty put an official complaint in about your details being sent elsewhere that'll stretch it out a bit longer as that has to be dealt with manually ..
I personally would also threaten to report them to the governing authorities also ...
whether you do or not is another matter ...
I really feel these days that simply letting them know that you know how to play the game can be enough ....