Psycho Warren

iTrader: (5)

What used to be the biggest name in the log book loan type of scams had all its licenses taken away last year:

http://www.oft.gov.uk/news-and-updat...ss/2011/125-11

D-Sport

Ok A few cases where some won and some lost, the simple fact is you will be required to provide evidence that you took all nessecary checks to ensure the car was debt free,
It's far from as clear cut as was originally led to believe way back at the start of the thread
I would have to argue that out of 100 cases maybe 2 would have the clout, cop on, finances to challenge the finance company repo- ing the car and it's as grey as grey can be

Isn't there a legal phrase for buyer beware?

brad

Caveat emptor

some of this is interesting to me seeing as my uncle lost his car after owning it for a year due to outstanding finance. Il have to let him know the courts owe him a car.

D-Sport

What were the facts of this case?

As in who came looking for the car?, were the cops there too or was it thru court etc?

brad

I dont remember all the details as its the side of the family that i dont have much to do with and happened around 5 years ago.
From what i remember, it was a toyota that he bought privately out of a local paper.
The finance company sent no letters just turned up on a saturday evening with two bailiffs, gave him a big wad of paperwork to read over and 15 minutes to remove his personal effects.
I believe one of the previous owners (not the one he bought it from) still owed around Ł2500(ish).

He took the case to court and lost, i remeber it only took 15 or 20 minutes for the court to make thier deciscion so must have been pretty cut and dry.


If you do a search on here im pretty sure a few years ago a pf member also bought a car on finance after the hpi report he/she had done came up clear.
iirc he/she still lost the car and was chasing hpi for the money. Im sure they were trying to get out of paying due to some loophole too.

Psycho Warren

iTrader: (5)

where does it say in the legislation that you are required to provide evidence of all "necessary checks"?? You keep using that phrase and yet there is nothing in any of the finance legislation that says that. Specifically the OFT documents and the 1964 and 74 legislation state nothing of the sort. The only thing it mentions on hpi is that if you have a hpi showing finance, then you cant use the "innocent purchaser" defence but that is obvious as you knew before hand

Where do you get youre 100 to 2 info from?

The legislation is pretty clear really. If you look on consumer rights websites you will find pages and pages of cases where people have won against HP companies.

True many of the cases dont get to court as they are often settled pre-court but that doesnt mean the legal defence enshrined in the above legislation is not valid.

Also cases where people have poorly prepared their defence and thus failed do not nullify the law either. had the guy appealed at great cost then they probably could have won.

Yes the ordinary joe stands little chance, mostly because they know fuck all about the law, dont have the motivation, will power or financial means to fight them or are just stupid. That doesnt mean what the finance companys get away with is right or legal.

Are you a debt collector by any chance??
well for a start, unless they had a court order, they were NOT baliffs. Someone can ONLY use the title baliff when acting on behalf of the courts. Eg a repo company acting on a court order can only use the baliff title when on jobs with a court order. They cannot use the title in any other debt collection activity.

So i seriously doubt they were baliffs. Also had they been baliffs, they would have been acting illegally as if he had been taken to court, he would have been served papers and a judgement at his address.

Once youve lost the car everything gets more difficult as you are now fighting for compensation rather than the original clear "innocent purchaser" defence. To get it through as a simple case you need to get a court injunction in place to stop them seizing the vehicle or selling it on. But again you have to be very quick to do so as once its sold on, its gone.

I remember a case of a guy who had a similar problem with a log book loan, he paid the loan off in full within the 14 day cooling off period (his loan was also regulated by consumer credit act) but the company shit a brick that he did it and denied theyd recieved the money. They illegally seized his car by force. The guy knew a good solicitor luckily and got an injunction against them and got the car returned, albeit trashed. Even now 2 years later he still hasnt got a final resolution on the matter as the log book loan company keep dragging it out. Since then they have lost thier licenses and the directors/owners have opened a new company under a new name

I suspect he will eventually win but getting any money or compensation out of it is another issue.

So far its cost him over Ł10000 in legal fees.

So yes it is possible to fight them and win as the law is pretty clear, however how many people in practice can do that???

D-Sport

No I'm not a debt collector, I'd rather clean up your shit of the bathroom floor

All I've learned here so far is the following

The chap that has 30 years experience in finance hasn't show me anything that would make me feel ok if I were in the situation of having bought a car with finance on it

We have direct evidence of a guys car being repo'd and no evidence of anyone who actually got away with it

Lastly it seems unless your very well clued up, related to a legal expert, minted with money for legal fees then you are pretty fucked

RWD_cossie_wil

iTrader: (9)

Why even take the chance?? Plenty more cars around without a dodgy past/present to buy without the risk of a lengthy, costly legal battle to keep a car that you KNEW had finance outstanding on it?!!

There is no such thing as a free lunch!

D-Sport

I agree 100% but our 30 year finance expert was making it sound like it was a free lunch and the fact that I was sceptical and not believing a word was pure bullshit to him

I would love to see at least 10 examples of where people and I mean average joes got away with it, 10 out of millions in the uk isn't a lot to ask for

I think we will all be waiting
I wonder how our finance expert got on with his meeting with the dept of finance he was saying he was going to speak with this am

fordnut

This sort of thing happened to me when I purchased my current car 5 years ago.
I saw an ad in autotrader (private), went and saw the car, liked it and put down a deposit.
HPI'd the car, all clear, went back 5 days later and brought the car home.
2 years later, I get a letter from a finance company saying that the previous owner had taken finance out on the car and had stopped paying the installments after 18 months.
Turns out, in the 5 days it took me to be able to collect the car he had refinanced it.
A few emails and a copy of the reciept said shitbag had given me saying on it that the car was HPI clear later, the finance company decided I was indeed an innocent purchaser and removed their finance marker from HPI and sent me an email and letter confirming they no longer had any interest in the car. (I do still have a copy of the finance company letter, lol).
Caused a few sleepless nights, but all came good in the end.

D-Sport

Glad this came good for you but you were extremely lucky to get a hpi check and also written confirmation from him

Not many go to those lengths

What kinda money was the car?

fordnut

The car was 8 grand, which to be fair was relatively cheap for what it was.
The finance company was Lombard and I have to say that the guy from them that dealt with my case was spot on.
I think the tosser who sold me the car refinanced it to try and keep his company going, then 18 months later it went tits up.
If he had kept up the payments I would have never have known unless I had tried to sell the car before his loan finished.
I did seek legal advice at the time which said as an innocent purchaser I had good claim to keep the car. They did advise that I didn't keep it at my home address until the issue was sorted though.

D-Sport

Not to keep it at your home address so they couldnt take it, that must have been a cunt, I wonder would they report it stolen and get the plod to become innocent car collectors for them?

Maybe I'm wrong but I suspect the fact that the car was finance clear when you bought it and he financed it afterwards stood great to your case, I'd wonder what would have happened if you hadn't of been so thorough or had the person from Lombard been a right company cunt looking for promotion or some oil doll on the rag

D-Sport

Also goes to show how loose the whole thing is if he can get a loan on a car he already owns. These are the logbook loans mentioned earlier?, I don't believe these were or are available here in ireland

fordnut

luckily i was able to swap cars with my mum for a couple of weeks. Also, after legal advice my invoice didn't say what condition the car was in so it would've been taken into work and stripped to a barely rolling shell had things gone badly.

Iain Mac

I think you need to go back and read again what I wrote because if I made it sound like a free lunch I didn't intend to.
In fact, I specifically said that an "innocent purchaser" had a defence, but that you may have to prove that you were an "innocent purchaser" before everything was finalised.
I stated that the lenders have whole teams of people devoted to countering the kind of collusion and fraud that you were suggesting (which, by the way would then make the car stolen and a whole new set of rules would come into play).
I've provided the specific Acts that offer the protection, and I've given you case law with outcomes - I don't know much about Irish law but you may find buried in your Irish HP Agreement a clause to the effect that "the laws of England will apply. In E&W, laws are often based on precedent, so the fact is that a majority of "innocent purchaser" cases never go near a court which is why it is hard to give you ten examples, but I've given you some and someone above has given you one from his own experience.

As for our finance people, I've given them your contact details and - if we are ever stuck for a barrister, they'll maybe give you a call, but did say that you shouldn't hold your breath waiting for the call.

Now why don't you go off and be offensive to someone else?

Psycho Warren

iTrader: (5)

To be fair, his example is a perfect case of exactly how it should go in the eyes of the law.

however as your clearly knowlegable experince of the 100 to 2 cases ratio shows, in practice things are different.

Again to an extent i agree with you, in that in practice many people just loose the car and get fucked over, However that doesnt mean it was legal or right.

In fact much of the debt collection industry operates by bending/breaking the laws otherwise they wouldnt get any money back. in this country, if you follow the law to the letter, in most unsecured debt it takes a long time to even get close to a court judgement and then a further court case to enforce the judgement, let alone actually getting any money back. if your a debtor with no real assets and in a rented home, in practice you can pretty much avoid paying your debts. Sure eventually they may try an attachment to earnings but few do. If youre a doley then you can get away with never repaying any debt.

That is why the debt collection industry is soo dodgy and will lie and cheat to get anything they can. They will even lie to the police and try and get the police to help them repo goods. Totally illegal as the police are ONLY allowed to be present to prevent a breach of the peace in civil debt cases.
HP and log book loans are different.

In UK HP is usually regulated as a secured loan and there are lots of hoops to jump through to sieze a vehicle.

log book loans are entirely different in that they work on an old 18th century act about "bill of sales" that makes it very easy to take back property. The law existed hundreds of years ago for the early money lending industry so that there was a legal way of having security for a loan. It has never been repealed even though it is outdated compared to modern financial legislation. Log book loans are already high risk operating in the sewer of the finaincial market so such a easy legislation to enable them to take back an asset suits them to a tee.

Where things screw up is often the log book loans due to the terms they have written fall under both modern consumer finance regulation AND the older bill of sale acts.

Psycho Warren

iTrader: (5)

Clearly youd be dumbfuck to buy a car knowingly with outstanding finance as you would not be an innocent purchaser and have no protection whatsoever.

vaughant

iTrader: (1)

Went through this myself about ten years ago in a similar situation to Fordnut above although mine wasn't as cut and dried as that as the hpi check I had was included in the car paperwork but I remember the finance company mentioning that because it had gone through three keepers after the boy who owed finance on it had sold it they couldn't do anything about it.
I never heard back and the car was sold to a mate who never had any issues with it.
Nice little rs2000 cabriolet,I do miss her!!
However I bought a ka 3 years back needing paint on an 04 plate for Ł500 which I thought was silly cheap,low miles,mint interior etc.
Ended up being on finance to the point where the boy had only made the first payment so owing about Ł5000 all in all.
We tried in vain to deal with the finance company who simply weren't interested and said they were coming to take the car from my business address,no negotiation.
I duly moved and stripped it as there's no way it was going for nothing.

A mate of mine has deliberately bought financed cars at least 8 times and got away with it,he's not very forthcoming in how he's done it but I know he has.
However he did try it on a pug 307 cab that was 6 months old and they refused to believe him and it dragged on for months and months and I believe he never got anything for it.
This was a few years back though and things may have tightened up in recent years.

Iain Mac

That works both ways - I repo'd a tractor unit and the cheeky wanker then called the cops and reported the truck stolen so my driver was stopped by the cops at the Forth Road Bridge. Luckily, I suspected that he might try that so I was at Police HQ with the paperwork when the call came in.

D-Sport

The whole thing started off with this quote above leaving me in no doubt that I can go buy a car and if it turned out to have finance on it I have full rights to it,

Clearly not the case as in it's not that simple as we have already seen and discussed

D-Sport

Then you go on to say the above which contradicts what you said earlier, if as an innocent purchaser you have clean and clear title why woul you need a hpi check PLUS written confirmation from the lender, how would you do that if you aren't aware of any lender,

As for your people ringing me and all that sort of smart ass stupid talk why don't you take a long walk and keep takin what ever meds your clearly on for old man syndrome

Iain Mac

If you buy a car and it turns out to have finance but you can show that you are an innocent purchaser you DO have full rights to it. Why can't you grasp that? The more you shout about your opinion doesn't change the law which has been in place and tested over many years.

I've asked the question - can you be an innocent purchaser if the seller tells you that there is finance outstanding but he was himself an innocent purchaser?. Why don't you tell us all the answer?

In the second part, I was talking specifically about the original post where the guy has been told about the finance issue so he wouldn't necessarily be an innocent purchaser - I don't know if the current seller can pass on his good title as an innocent purchaser having told the prospective buyer about the finance.

I simply wouldn't buy a car knowing or suspecting there is finance outstanding because if I did I wouldn't be an innocent purchaser and wouldn't have any protection. If I was desperate to buy THIS car I'd contact the lender and get their written confirmation that they have no further interest.

D-Sport

You want me to tell u what a persons liabilities if they are told by the guy selling that their is finance but he didn't know?

Run like fuck and if u don't u deserve everything the finance house throws at you

I grasp the whole innocent buyer bit but it means fuck all to me because as we have seen here it's not as you suggest in that you have free title

You MAY have free title if loads of different parameters all fall into place, the way you first suggested it worked led me to believe protections were in place from a legal and consumer point of view, if this were the case why did the chap earlier have to hide or threaten to strip the car and use alternative vehicles,

Bottom line it's a lottery as to what way things MAY work out which leads back to my million to one terminology earlier, it's impossible to legislate for because people lie

Psycho Warren

iTrader: (5)

D-sport you are confusing the technical law with the reality of debt collection activities in practice.

As iain says, the innocent purchaser defence is enshrined in law and is pretty easy to prove or disprove.

However how many people are aware of this when they get stung?? first thing most innocent purchasers know whats happening is when their car is gone or some debt collector illegally claiming to be a baliff and acting illegally and against the OFT guidelines makes up all sorts of bullshit about how he can and will take your car and often force is illegally used to do so if bullying tactics fail.

once the car is gone youre onto a loosing battle as your on the backfoot to start with and playing catch up.

Also the kind of finance companies who do such underhand tactics will play every trick in the book to fuck you over when you pursue them later on.

however none of that changes the legal principles the "innocent purchaser" defence is based on.

D-Sport

So if all of the above is true what "ombudsman" exists as a protector such as independent body's protecting consumers, those wanting the cops investigated for wrong doing etc etc, as far as I can see there is none,

Why did one of the posters on here have to hide the car on legal advice if the finance house chasing him were full of lies deceit and bullshit

Psycho Warren

iTrader: (5)

the office of fair trading for a start. FSA as well if its under a modern regulated agreement.

IPCC if the police intervene on debt collection activity.

The reason you are advised to hide such a car is if youre out it will likely just dissapear regardless of wether the law says you have good title. That is just how the debt collection industry works, legal or not. You are better off protecting your asset in the short term than trying to get compensation at a later date......


I dont see how you are struggling to understand the difference between the written law and the practical reality of what might happen in such a case.

vaughant

iTrader: (1)

To be fair that was probably some spotty teenager at the other end of the line being a bit "Hollywood" about it all!!!

I got a trader mate of mine to double check the hpi on it and they switched him to the finance company directly who asked him if he could detain the car while they sent an agent to collect it!!!
He reckons he was seeing a lot more of that in recent months,albeit 2 years back.
I think it's horses for courses really,some of them are aggressive and try to scare you whereas others try the softly softly approach.
Not a nice position to be in,although I'm lead to believe you only need to return the number plates and vin tags if they come looking.

D-Sport

Maybe because I'm naive and believe in some sort of fair play and protection against the scumbag type repo guys who act outside the laws

D-Sport

Least of all. Your own lawyers, surely they would be able to legally shout down these rogue repo guys

Maybe not and silly me

vaughant

iTrader: (1)

Tbh mate that's the boat most of us genuine folk are in,the boy I mentioned above who had at least 10 cars on finance was a bit of a rouge.
His ex still drives the Beemer about,one thing I did note was he always had private plates on them?the Beemer still does and I know it had at least Ł6k in finance on it,the boy selling it on finance didn't have a "pot to piss in" as we say in wales!!!

Psycho Warren

iTrader: (5)

how many people get screwed over on motoring offences despite the written law saying they have a case? loads

How many can afford to spend cash on legal representation after loosing a car they need for work etc?? again few.

An example where being rich means you are more likely to get justice. Also generally wealthy people are more careful with cash (you dont get wealthy or stay wealthy for long if youre shit with money...) so likely to make all the checks on the expensive car they are going to buy.

Your average joe is more likely to take a risk on a lower value car and hence more likely to get caught out.

debt collection companies arent stupid. They arent going to admit to thier activities. That is why most debt action groups or debt advice services always recommend doing everything by letter sent recorded delivery. Anything over the phone or talking to a debt collection agent can be easily denied or twisted around. Also keeping original paper work is essential. Many times the scum have been caught out changing dates on letters, default dates etc to gain an advantage.

Eg examples are debts about to be or just recently statute barred. The company has no legal means to pursue such a debt yet it is common practice that debt companies will buy shit loads of about to be/recently statute barred debts and to pursue the debtor aggressively in the hope they are stupid enough to not know the law and cough up. They pay peanuts for such debts and the gains can be great if someone replies as if they admit the debt, the 6 year time starts again and the debt company who paid a few pounds for hundreds of pounds worth of debt can pursue it again with full vigour.

Is it any wonder people get screwed over??

D-Sport

Any no protection from this by our government