oh goodness gracious -HSBC and their "in house" collections people............

[FAQinglovely]

I don't think they could organise a p*ss-up in a brewery.

Short version of story - all of the listed debts are with HSBC.

DH has arrears on the mortgage - that's getting sorted now he's getting the mortgage interest paymensts as he's out of work.

He also has a flexiloan, unsecured loan, overdraft and credit card with them.

The credit card is now back up to date with payments and is dealt with seperately from the others.

The flexi-loan, unsecured loan and overdraft are all being lumped together as one sum (we think?).

He's been in negotiations with the bank directly to try and sort out lower payments on the 3 that are lumped together. We filled in a means form and sent it off with an offer. they refused the offer and asked him to ring.

He rang and was told "your mortgage is in arrears, that's more important" - and was put straight through to the mortgage people - who told him "no we're ok with the current arrangement ring them back and make a payment on the loans/od if you want".

We've so far been unsuccessful in our attempts to make a token payment to them because of the "mortgage block" (their words on the phone.

Anyhow, move back to last Tuesday - got a letter in the post (nearly 7 days after the date on the letter!). From their inhouse collecion department telling us we had £XXXX amount owing on an account. It wasn't a figure that made sense, especially as the account number they quoted actually has the smallest due on it.

DH rang to ask them for a breakdown of the amount they were demanding, and after a long drawn out debate they hung up on him! They claimed they "only had the last 4 digits of the reference number and just want to set up a payment plan".

HE explained that we have a LOT of debts with a LOT of people and wanted a breakdown (the amount on the letter doesn't seem to add up no matter which of the HSBC amounts we add together) so that we could work out exactly what we were paying.

On Wednesday (the 15th) he sent a letter recorded delivery to them firstly asking for the breakdown of the money owed (as refused on the phone) and secondly complaining about how incredibly rude the man was.

Today - we got a letter in the post - dated the 14th (the same day that they hung up on DH) saying that as we have refused to make arrangements to pay the money we MUST phone them IMMEDIATELY (on their free phone number) or they'll be passing it onto DG Solicitors (their in-house ones) with a view to getting a charge on the house.

You know what - DH has been asking them if they can put the big unsecured loan onto the mortgage for a couple of years now and every time they have refused - and now they're threatening to do it via the courts.

So that letter crossed with the letter that he's sent. He's not going to ring them - they've proved to be "unspeakable" to.

We've offered to give them money, we've even rung up to pay some money on it and they've refused because of mortgage arrears. And now they're refusing to give him a breakdown of the amount that they demanded in the collection departments letter

and I now feel much better for getting that all down in writing .

Not really sure what to say FAQ, that's pretty crap organisation to be sure.

Glad you feel better anyway!

The only prob is of course if they put a charge on the house, what they probably actually mean is a charging order. They'll get a charging order nisi before you know anything about it and will apply for a charging order absolute with a return date when you have the opp. to go to court. Once the absolute's been made they'd normally apply for an order for the sale of the house to pay the mortgage and all the other debt which the charging order covers.

From memory I have a feeling the house is not occupied by you (????) so may not be a matter of making you homeless but obviously if it is repossessed with negative equity you still have to find that money somehow.

Have you tried to get CAB to help you?

FAQ - they are most likley going for a charging order like a lot bansk are right now in order to transform the unsecured debt into a secured debt on your property.

Even if you are in negative equity and they repossess your house, once they have the debts all secured on the property they can pursue you for up to seven years.

You must turn up to any hearings though to explain to the judge you have been trying to send them money and make arrangements and that they are not cooperating with you. The judge may well look sympathetically on you if you have been trying to do the right thing and have documentary evidence of that.

If they cannot justify the amounts they will not be able to get an order.

oh yes - I understand the turning secured into unsecured.

But I just find it odd that the mortgage department have now stopped threatening repossession, accepted interest only payments and we are in negotiations with them to pay back the arrears and refused to let us add the amount on to the the mortgage or make it secured previously.

I am living there - so if they forced a sale (ha they'd be lucky - we couldn't sell it before Christmas and it's worth even less now they'd still be chasing us - for more money than we currently owe ) I would be homeless.

Problem is that one hand really doesn't seem to know what the other are doing. DH rang HSBC (not the collections bit) yesterday to talk about the big loan and they said they would be looking again at our income form to come to agreement for payment - so goodness only knows what money the collections department are chasing - we've sat down and added together all the possible combinations of money owed to HSBC and no matter how we do it we can't get it to add up to the amount they're asking for (we owe more than the amount they've asked for).

just been reading about CO's - everything I've read seems to suggest that they need to obtain a CCJ against you first? Is that right?

If I was you I would be making an appointment to go in with all your documentation and actually sit down and speak to someone. I would make sure they know that you are not leaving until it is all sorted and all paperwork is done and signed. But I am a stubborn bolshy cow.

FAQ yes that's right they have to get judgement against you for the debt before they can apply for a charging order.

just been looking a bit closer and the bit we were concerned about was forcing the sale - but although they could do that - I think we'd have a strong case to get the judge to not agree to force the sale - may even have enough "evidence" to stop us getting the charging order (should they ever actually get round to getting that stage).

I used to be a debt collector (I know, don't shoot me) AND also used to have a lot of debt and the I found the most important thing was to only speak to one person at the bank. Refuse to have contact with the collections department as they won't know the full details. Once you have a name, record every conversation (not on tape, you understand, just note the date and time of your call) and copy every letter, especially those where you've made an offer to pay. If the collections department try to bully you, just say you're dealing with so-and-so and they have the full details.
Go as high up the ladder as you can. A manager may not know all the details but won't like being hassled so will get onto it quicker.
Judges, ime (and I accept it may have changed, but I think it unlikely) tend to be far more understanding if you can prove that you've tried to sort it out and the bank have been mucking you about.

FWIW I nearly had my first home repossessed- it went to court, but because I could prove that we'd been in contact with the bank, offering payments etc, they simply gave us more time to catch up. This was despite me not even having a job at the time. The CAB, incidentally, were enormously helpful. It's always worth contacting them because they keep copies of everything too and will write letters on your behalf as well.