Lowell / Paypal County Court Claim

Hi all, long time user of the goodf forums over the years, have spent a few days trying to update myself with things around here, and was asked by MrBlue2015 to start my own thread on this after I posted in living man 01's thread the other day

I am currently being taken to County Court by Lowell Solicitors on behalf of their ‘client’ Lowell Portfolio for an alleged debt with Paypal from 2017/18 for under £3K which they allege they have been ‘legally assigned (bought?) in early 2020. I received the County Court Claim Form late last week and have already completed Acknowledgement of Service and am aware I now have just over 3 weeks to now submit my defence to this claim, which I intend to defend all of. (I realise it might have been to my benefit to post this up earlier before it got to this stage… but better late than never seems to be a philosophy that follows me the older I get…).

I do have an outline of what my defence might consist of, based on a similar claim by another interloper a couple of years ago, (which got stayed due to their lack of pursuance with case after I submitted my defence via money claim site).

I would like to post up a timeline of ‘how it started / how it’s going’ if that would be ok, along with redacted images of letters I have sent / received, if that is still ok to do here?

My hope at least some of what has happened to me here might be useful to anyone else who gets hassle from any interlopers / Paypal in this manner and would would value greatly any thoughts / strategies anyone here might have done differently, or can help point out anything I might have done differently to address this matter to date / going forward.

Just in process of photo-ing / redacting final few images but will try to get as much up about my case today as I can spread over a few posts - again, I hope this is ok to do it this way… and thanks in advance to you for reading…


here goes…

Lowell Paypal Timeline


August - October  2020 - various letters received from Lowell Portfolio alleging I owe them money (just under 3K) - which were ignored as spam begging letters at the time.

Late October 2020 - ‘Notice of Acting’ letter from Lowell Solicitors alleging I owed money to their client (Lowell Portfolio) for a ‘former Paypal account’ with threat of Court action and potential added fees to take the total amount they claim owed now up to under £4K.

One week later in early November, before I had time to reply / rebut last letter, another letter was received  from Lowell Solicitors - this time entitled ‘Letter Of Claim - 30 days To Prevent Legal Action’. This letter also included a page ‘Background to your debt - before a claim is Issued’. and a ‘Reply Form’.

Main points laid out that they allege in Letter of Claim / Background  :

October 2017 an agreement for a Paypal account was entered into
Failure to make payment in accordance with terms of agreement and it was later terminated and assigned to Lowell Portfolio by Paypal Europe Sarl & Ice SCA in January 2020 - *(they claim a Notice of the assignment was previously given to me, but I do not recall ever receiving any such Notice).
A statement from January 2020 to Nov 2020 alleging I owe Lowell just under £3K
Threat that if I fail to make payment or respond within 30 days they will issue a County Court Claim
An invitation to ‘Engage with us now’
Letter is not signed by a human, it is done in a printed handwritten style ‘Lowell Solicitors’

will briefly pause here until someone can gimme a thumbs up I am ok doing this in right format / forum - thanks!

well really there is no "right section" because we dont give legal advice and the letter system is not designed to be a defence in court.

Lopsum wrote:well really there is no "right section" because we dont give legal advice

got it, thanks

ok for me to continue with where I am at, not sure of how much detail to add to get over gist and not looking for legal advice as such, just perhaps pointers to what I should be looking at for me to mount my own best defence

I replied to Lowell Solicitors within 10 days of their Letter Of Claim (early November 2020) with the 2 letters :

Letter 1 : an acknowledgement to their Letter Of Claim, advising them I take this to be a Letter Before Action / Pre Action Conduct Protocol on their part, stating to them I have never entered into a legal agreement or contract with them and that I do not accept nor acknowledge their assertion that any debt has been Legally and Absolutely Assigned to their client (Lowell Portfolio). In this letter I requested the following documentation under Pre Action induct Section 6 (c) that they provide me within 12 days :
A copy of the Original Signed Consumer Credit Agreement (pursuant to s.77-79 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974), along with a copy of the original Terms & Conditions and all subsequent changes to T&C
Statement of the Account referred to including details for all payments made and calculation of how interest was charged
Details of any Default Charge applied
A copy of the Default Notice and how it was served
A copy of the Legal / Absolute Assignment of the Agreement, including a copy of a Duly Executed Deed of assignment / Deed of Tripartite Novation
Certified copy of how Alleged Legal Assignment was served (s. 196 Law Of Property Act 1925)
Copy of Alleged Notice of Assignment sent by the OC and certified copy of how this was served
Notice to them that should proceedings against me commence if they fail to provide each and every document requested that I will make an Application to the Court to Stay the Claim / impose sanctions for failure to adhere to the above mentioned Practice Direction.
Notice that as part of my defence I will re-request production of every document under an appropriate Civil Procedure Rule along with a request under CPR Part 39a (3.3) for the original of every document to be brought to any hearing.

Letter 2 : A formal CCA request pursuant to s.77/78/79 Of the CCA 1974 requiring Lowell to produce a true copy of the credit agreement, along with a postal order for £1, only to be used for the fee payable for this request under the CCA 1974, not to be used for payment against any alleged debt.

I also returned a copy of their ‘Reply Form’ signed in capital letters and dated and struck through with the words - ‘see 2 x enclosed letters’ (as above). I declined to fill in anything else on those forms.

These letters and forms were sent off by me mid November 2020 by signed-for Royal Mail delivery, I have photocopy of Postal Order, receipt of posting and a signature that they arrived.

Lopsum wrote:well really there is no "right section" because we dont give legal advice and the letter system is not designed to be a defence in court.

Agreed with Lopsum. After all, this site is Get Out Of Debt Free (GOODF) and not Get Out Of Court Free

That said, we do have one or two members who might be able to help so hopefully you'll get some help at some point.

Mrblue2015 wrote:

Lopsum wrote:well really there is no "right section" because we dont give legal advice and the letter system is not designed to be a defence in court.

Agreed with Lopsum. After all, this site is Get Out Of Debt Free (GOODF) and not Get Out Of Court Free

That said, we do have one or two members who might be able to help so hopefully you'll get some help at some point.

thanks guys, appreciated. Will continue the saga later today.

No problem. I would also strongly recommend you do not create any more posts otherwise you will overwhelm whoever it is who might help you. Your first post was sufficient to at least hopefully draw someone's attention!

What response did you get from your november letters ?
What documentation have you ever received from them to support their claim ?

daveiron is spot on with this question, if you reply to a letter before claim then you should receive a response with documents before they take it to court. Have you ?

also i would put lowell aside for now, because the info we need here is what happened with paypal ? what type of agreement, did the account default was it terminated correctly etc etc

Lowell can only continue their claim with evidence / knowledge of what happened between you and paypal they have NOTHING of their own to win any claim you need to know that.

also a subject access request to paypal is a must and as soon as possible.

daveiron wrote:What response did you get from your november letters ?
What documentation have you ever received from them to support their claim ?  

In November 2020 I received reply from Lowell Solicitors. In this they state they enclose a copy of the Agreement, but in fact this was not the case (missing). They state that their client has not claimed to have entered into any contract directly with me, nor have been party to to any contract with the original creditor. In effect, confirming their client is but an interloper? They claim the benefit of the contract was ‘lawfully assigned to their client’ and a Notice of Assignment was sent to me. I don’t recall ever receiving such Notice prior to receiving this letter. They insist their client has no obligation to disclose the Deed Of Assignment to me. They state no interest, cost or fees have been added by Lowell and pending further documentation, ‘account is suspended’. They also include a photocopy of a default notice from ‘Paypal Credit’, which is the first time I laid eyes on this document.

waylander62 wrote:daveiron is spot on with this question, if you reply to a letter before claim then you should receive a response with documents before they take it to court. Have you ?

also i would put lowell aside for now, because the info we need here is what happened with paypal ? what type of agreement, did the account default was it terminated correctly etc etc

Lowell can only continue their claim with evidence / knowledge of what happened between you and paypal  they have NOTHING of their own to win any claim you need to know that.

also a subject access request to paypal is a must and as soon as possible.

Yes, I have received documents since, as well as the letter in previous post, also at that time this default notice from 'Paypal Credit' I mentioned in previous post


(Yes -i have since sent Paypal on 3 occasions SAR's, 2 via Royal Mail, 1 via email but as yet not had received what I have asked for)

to follow on from Lowell letter above received in November, in Decemeber 2020 they sent a follow up letter informing me that they now had received a copy of the Terms & Conditions and wanted to send to me via email - I responded with that I require them to contact only via Royal Mail, along with in effect a Letter 1 of the 3 letter process (not sure if this is the route I should have gone at this stage in hindsight).

Then just before Xmas, I received a huge bundle containing photocopies of what they claim to be Statements, Agreements, Default Notice etc. from Paypal. A lot of stuff.

It looks incomplete and missing key details such as :

No signature at all in the Agreement signature box, merely an ‘X’
No full first name is nowhere included in any of these documents, in that it merely states a Mr. (initial) (second name) i.e. ‘Mr. J. Bloggs’ and not Mr. Joe Bloggs or suchlike.
These Statements that Lowell have provided show no account details of who has paid off any of this alleged debt, no bank details, no bank account numbers etc. -

(I personally only have one bank account and have only had that same single bank account for more than 10 years and for the dates shown that payments have been made into this Paypal account I can show that statements from this, my only bank account, show clearly that no such payments came from that source on or near any of the dates shown).

Ok , it sounds to me that Lowell may have provided everything you requested before going to court ?
can you list just the stuff you have been provided by lowell to evidence their claim such as
i) copy of agreement
ii) terms and conditions
iii) default notice
iv) statements
v) notice of assignment

waylander62 wrote:Ok , it sounds to me that Lowell may have provided everything you requested before going to court ?
can you list just the stuff you have been provided by lowell to evidence their claim such as
i) copy of agreement
ii) terms and conditions
iii) default notice
iv) statements
v) notice of assignment

thanks waylander62 - here goes -

list of stuff I have requested that has at least in part been provided by lowell to evidence their claim :

i) copy of agreement - yes (in photocopy format - no wet signature, not signed by a human)
ii) terms and conditions - yes (a photocopy)
iii) default notice - yes (a photocopy, not a true copy)
iv) statements - yes (photocopies not in order, some information missing / illegible)


list of stuff I have requested (in subsequent 3 letter approach I took in December 2020 / January 2021) that they have not provided evidence to support their claim :

i) A true copy  of the Original Agreement (as specified I am unable to accept a photocopy)
ii) Verification of their claim via a sworn affidavit or hand signed invoice in line with the Bills of Exchange Act 1882
iii) Validation of the debt via the actual accounting
iv) A signed statement that Lowell are in possession of the Original Agreement and that this Agreement has never been sold or traded in any way, and if they are not in possession of the original Agreement, why they do not possess the Original Agreement and where that is it now.
v) A signed statement that no insurance claim has or will be made in respect of this account
vi) A signed statement that the Original Agreement did not create the credit, thereby making me the creditor
vii) A true copy not photocopy) of the default notice
viii) Notice of Assignment and Documents of Title and a copy of the sale agreement executed as a deed (Deed of Assignment?).
ix) Deed of Novation with signatures of all 3 parties

Still in process of digitising all the documents and can make available for viewing (don’t want to overdo it here or overwhelm, I get that…).
Would it be useful to add here the final letters back and forth from Lowell (including my 3 letter approach and their responses before going ahead with their claim?) - or gist of these at least, to present fuller picture of where I am at right now?

Thanks kindly to you all who have taken time to answer me so far in this… really has helped me focus and organise and help dissipate the anxiety a bit that comes when dealing with things like this. Can’t be said enough how much it means.

i just wanted the documents they have provided for now so will just look at that

i) was the agreement done online ? no wet signature and not signed by a human will not get you anywhere in court.
ii) doesn't matter that they are copies.
iii) a photocopy will be accepted , what makes you think it is not a true copy ?
iv ) not in order ? dont understand this but illegible is an argument.

most of i) through to ix) will not really win you an argument in court i am afraid

just being honest. will gladly discuss in more depth if you wish to ?