Grant Thornton - EIC Letter

[Grant Thornton]

Grant Thornton – EIC Letter

There have been a number of posts regarding the above letter, so I thought it would help if explained further.

Firstly, I would emphasise that you do not need to be worried about the letter or its contents - it does not place any additional obligations on you.

As you may already be aware from other threads on this forum, the terms of any IVA requires you and your Supervisor to take steps to recover / reclaim any amounts that may be properly due to you or your IVA. This will include any sums in respect of unfair credit card and bank charges that may have been applied to your accounts by your creditors - whose claims in the IVA will, as a result, be incorrect.

We have selected Creditfix Limited - trading as Expert Insolvency Claims (EIC) - to assist in reclaiming any unfair credit card and bank charges that may have been incorrectly applied to our clients' accounts. It is not uncommon for clients to be unaware that unfair credit card and bank charges have been applied to their accounts - this is why we have asked EIC to help. As well as identifying the unfair charges, they will do all the work to reclaim any monies owing. EIC will not have to contact our clients during this process.

We do of course understand that, where an IVA is pending closure, our clients are very keen to move forward. However, both our clients and we have a duty to ensure that all possible amounts are recovered so that the IVA reaches a successful conclusion. In some cases, this may have an impact on our efforts to close your case as quickly as we would want - we will ensure that any such delays are minimised.

I hope that this clarifies the matter and reassures our clients that EIC will help more easily in meeting their IVA obligations.

[stormsylv]

Thankyou Karol

Hopefully this post will answer the some of the queries being posted by the affected GT clients at present.

[nickjohn]

Hi,

You say "EIC will not have to contact our clients during this process." yet the letter received says "we propose asking EIC to get in touch with you and explain how they can assist you".

We contacted GT as the letter also says "If you would prefer us not to share your data with EIC, please let me know" this we did and were told we must complete a disclaimer saying why we do not want them to contact us even though we had a conversation saying why.

As you will appreciate from our position it is yet another company who will be calling us and pestering to try and claim charges back and make a nice commission of us.

If it is easy enough to get a reclaim on charges please post the information on how to do it and we will do it ourselves, in the same way as we did the PPI reclaim which went into our IVA pot, this way the creditors get the full benefit..

[Niobe]

We're with Payplan and my wife went onto Payplan plus and found that she had made a payment she wasn't aware of - nothing out of the bank account at all. When she spoke to them they firstly said it was PPI until she told them we'd not claimed. She went away to check and it was, apparantly bank charges.

She also said that they don't have to ask for permission to claim thoose - they just go ahead and do it.

[Adam Davies]

Hi

I thought that banks had successfully defended excessive bank charges sometime ago ?

Are IPs looking to claim back both PPI and bank charges now ?

Regards

[Niobe]

They are - I seem to remember reading something recently about it and they have made a claim from RBS for the wife. All of £50!!!

[allancsn]

Hi Andy

The bank charge case has failed - but 'seemingly' this decision does not cover charges made via credit cards. Where a charge is excessive and for a charge to be made excessive it needs to be over £12. Then a challenge and a claim can be made for the amount in excess of £12. If the credit card company can justify the cost of the excessive charge then that is the end of the matter.

Monthly statement needs to be gone through line by line and charges noted. Where a charge is purely for interest or an account fee then this cannot be challenged.

It seems to me though that unless very high and regular penalty charges have been added to an account the amount of refund may be disproportionate to the work involved.

And should we also be mindful that where credit card companies have 'sold' the debt on or they themselves no longer exist unless the claimant has a full set of statements it may be difficult and time consuming try to piece together the evidence on what might be a small claim and who to even submit it to.

Also that once the claimants commission is taken out it may make little difference to the dividend payable in an IVA.

Is there also not some sort of statute of limitation -6 years I think- on companies being required to provide this information.

I for one don't want a further delay to my name being removed from the Insolvency Register for such a whimsical idea.

Perhaps we could suggest sending another £50 to save all the work involved.



T

so am a little surprised that
GT are 'introducing' someone to chase them.

The Office of Fair Trading lost its legal battle over bank charges with eight High Street institutions following a shock announcement by the Supreme Court in 2010.

[nickjohn]

Do GT get a fee for the introduction or can they charge a fee to the IVA?? or do they make no fee / commission / income at all whatever the outcome of an attempted reclaim may be..

[MerlinL14]

Personally it matters not if GT get some remuneration from the PPI or not. Karol has stated GT's reasons for carrying out the claims on behalf of our creditors. The chances are that we wouldn't have seen any of this money anyway, what is left from it after EIC have taken their costs goes to help pay off our debts. I am sure GT are well within the remit of the IVA in using EIC to release as much fiscal benefit to our creditors. Seems a lot of posts over a situation that is out of our control and wasn't in the minds of our IP's when they were asked by us to administer our bad judgement in spending.

[Niobe]

I've no idea what Payplan are doing - the payment just appeared in the account and I assume they will do the same for the rest of her accounts.

I had no credit cards in the IVA, mine were all joint loans so I can't see them getting anything back from me.

[Alderson]

font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">quote:<hr height="1" noshade>Originally posted by Grant Thornton

Grant Thornton – EIC Letter

In some cases, this may have an impact on our efforts to close your case as quickly as we would want - we will ensure that any such delays are minimised.

That's interesting, could you let those people know what you'll be doing to ensure their closure date doesn't disappear over the horizon again?

[allancsn]

I think EIC the company they are introducing will take a percentage of whatever is achieved - and it may well be that from that they pay GT an introduction fee. Only GT will know.
But GT must have a very good reason to outsource and in doing so distance themselves from the claims - which would be interesting to know.

[komakino]

Not convinced that this is leading anywhere good...

[allancsn]

Komakino

Please don't worry - a bit of open discussion is always a good thing.

By the time you finish in six months it'll all have sorted itself out.

[nickjohn]

font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">quote:<hr height="1" noshade>Originally posted by MerlinL14

Personally it matters not if GT get some remuneration from the PPI or not. Karol has stated GT's reasons for carrying out the claims on behalf of our creditors. The chances are that we wouldn't have seen any of this money anyway, what is left from it after EIC have taken their costs goes to help pay off our debts. I am sure GT are well within the remit of the IVA in using EIC to release as much fiscal benefit to our creditors. Seems a lot of posts over a situation that is out of our control and wasn't in the minds of our IP's when they were asked by us to administer our bad judgement in spending.

Whilst I am sure no one here would argue over the fact that they want to get as much money back into their IVA pot as quickly as possible and that should there be a basis for a claim in chasing the excessive charges incurred with credit cards it does have to be asked why should a third party profit from it.

As I stated above I am more than happy to do the chasing myself so that 100% of any refund can go into the pot but from what I have seen / read and from looking over the handful of credit card statements I have still there are no charges over the £12 limit, as I would expect most of the IVA's from after 2010 will find.

As for your comment "our bad judgement in spending" this is a somewhat sweeping statement and whilst it may be your own position my own is somewhat different.