Am asking this question on behalf of a friend I have used these boards before and found it very helpful. Basically she had a TSB visa card and everything was fine until february of last year when she hurt her back and was off work for five months, as she was still being paid sick pay she carried on paying her visa card, it was only after she went on to half pay (sick pay) she realised that she had card protection so she applied for the insurance company to pay the monthly instalments (she had paid in to this for five years and never made a claim) after a month or so after hearing nothing she kept ringing the insurance company who assured her that her claim was being dealt with, (in the meantime she was being hounded by phone calls from the tsb), anyway to cut a long story short the insurance company informed her that she was not entitled to claim as when she took out the insurance she had been unemployed (even though she had worked for 3 years) they said that she was not entitled to claim, so they that they were going to refund all the premiums she had paid on to her visa card which is not what she wanted, they did this without her permission and she has not paid anything for 6 months as she worked it out that there was no payments due until the end of january, she has now received a letter from a debt collection agency with an income and expenditure form they want to know details of her income and that of her partners (she lives with her partner they are not married) they want to know about the mortgage on the property which is also in her partners name, she had already offered a payment of 30 pounds a month to the visa company but they declined she sent a letter saying that as they had a lump sum refunded to them (they seem to of spent her money without her permission) that no payments were due till the end of january, what she would like to know, is A) does she have to fill in the income and expenditure form, and B)does she have to give the collection company details of her partners salary as she says it is not his debt so why should they demand to know what he earns, any help would be most appreciated. The insurance company took weeks to sort her claim out and she is disgusted that they can refund her money on to her visa card without her permission as these premiums were all paid in good faith and when she needed to claim, she could not, is this common practics

-- (Sevans8102@aol.com), February 02, 2001

Answers

I'm sure other people will chip in with better answers to many of your questions than I can give but I want to focus on one particular aspect of the debt collector's claim.

If their letter to her contains any kind of threat of court action or whatever then their request for her partner's financial details is being made under that threat. This appears to be a breach of the Data Protection Act.

So your friend should photocopy the letter and the I&E form and send it to the Data Protection Commissioner (details in the Blacklisted? section of this site) with a letter asking for an assessment of the debt collector's actions.

We'll be interested in the results.

As for the insurance company not paying up, does she have the original terms and conditions? Brochures?

By the way, this is why I no longer buy insurance except where I am required to by law.

Lee

-- Lee (repossession@bigfoot.com), February 02, 2001.

I have already sent in a complaint against Halifax of the sort that Lee is decribing, and have recieved a reply saying that the DPC will look into it but is a bit overwhelmed right now. Will post the results as soon as I get them. Lee, you may wish to note the the DPC is now known as the "Information Commissioner" in line with new responsabilities under "Freedom of Information Act". This was effecrtive on the 1/2/01. Tim

-- Tim Heath (tim_n_heath@hotmail.com), February 03, 2001.

Thanks for the udpate Tim.

Lee

-- Lee (repossession@bigfoot.com), February 05, 2001.