PPI charged in UK and claimed from France

[Quillan]

Very rare I use my Barclay Card in France but I just bought another freezer and I used it to claim my three year extended warranty from Barclays. I was just reading my statement with the telly on and one of those naff ads came on about PPI and I thought, I wonder.

Well I searched the web using the phrase Barclays PPI Claims only to discover you can skip the middle man and go direct by downloading a form from their website, filling it in and posting it off.

Before I go a bit further I would like to add that when I was cruising the UK canal system years ago I used to pay the minimum amount off, collect my post by Post Restante from a nearby post office then send a cheque for the balance.

Well I got a letter back telling me they only keep records of my transactions back to 2005 and were offering me £2,146 but if I had statements beyond them I could copy and post them back. Well I keep all my records so that's what I did (cst me a bit in postage mind). Just checked the post today (it was raining yesterday so didn't bother) and they are now offering me £5,872 plus 8% interest in compensation giving me just over £6,300.

I just got off the phone with them because I don't have a UK bank account anymore so I asked if they can send the cheque in Euros, no problem they said.

Have to say I thought I didn't stand a chance and if I did it would only be a couple of hundred at best. Needless to say Mrs 'Q' is now digging out her Lloyd's stuff to see if she can claim.

Happy days

[idun]

In France we had to take insurance on loans that we did not want or need and yet to get the loan we had to take it. A niggle that I have.

We have had a couple of loans in the UK in recent times, but said we didn't want their insurance and were not 'made' to take it either.

 

For us it would be nice if the french had to give back, I did ask recently and my conseillere, who is very very good, got flustered and said she had never heard of such an idea. Now as the head office treat the staff like mushrooms, it wouldn't surprise me if she had been left in the dark.

[NormanH]

What is PPI please?

[Quillan]

Payment Protection Insurance

It was all the rage years ago and also probably the most 'mis-sold' insurance, I say mis-sold because in many cases it was automatically given and charged to you on loans and credit cards (even mortgages). Many people had it who either should not have had it (in my case I was technically self employed) or were not really eligible yet got it anyway. The selling practices for this was very dodgy because those selling it got commission, bit like trying to sell you extra warranty cover on goods. It would apply every time you used your credit card to buy something. The idea was that if you become unemployed, ill or died it would pay off the credit but the rules on claiming it made it very difficult to ever make a claim. Basically a totally legal scam at the time.

If you have ever had a card or loan (you don't still need to have it) and were charged PPI it's worth having a go at a claim. I found an old Goldfish card (remember them!) and I had it on that as well. Best bit is Barclays bought Goldfish in 2008 and seeing as they have already said my PPI was mis-sold I might get even more money from then, who knows, might get lucky. [;-)]

As I said in my original text I never expected to get anything and if I did just a couple of hundred quid. It's not as if I need the money but for about 30 minutes work and a trip to the post office it's one way of spending time during the inclement weather.

[Benjamin]

It stands for Payment  Protection Insurance Norman and was massively oversold by UK banks as a way of convincing customers that if they were unable to repay a loan (or in Quillan's case a credit card balance) there was insurance in place to make the repayment.

In the UK there has grown an "industry" of quasi legal companies who offer to get you back past premiums if you were sold PPI where your circumstances meant that you were not covered and, ipso facto, you had bought insurance that would never pay out.

An article I read recently in the Sunday Times reported that something like 30% of the claims that Lloyds Bank had received were from people who had never had an account with them. The UK financial services industry never misses an opportunity to rip the public off.

The problem for those of us in the UK who do not make spurrious claims is that we end up paying for those people who do make claims which cannot be justified. Car insurance is one of these major areas.

I don't know if the offer that Quillan has received reflects the premiums he was overcharged or if there is also an element of "compensation" involved.

[Benjamin]

A cup of tea and a chat with Mrs Benjamin during typing my reply meant that Quillan got in first with his explanation.

[Quillan]

The compensation is the 8% interest that Barclays gave me on the PPI charges plus of course my money back.

I guess the point is that you don't have to go to one to these companies that advertise, you can deal direct. I read somewhere when browsing for the link that your more likely to get money if you go direct because there are no fees involved. Likewise I don't know if the figure is correct without going through all my statements but then if you didn't expect anything then who cares. The other relevant thing is that if you live in France and no longer have a UK bank account you can still claim and get payment in Euros. My biggest problem is how Mrs 'Q' is going to spend the money. [:'(]

[AnOther]

When it comes to financial acumen I don't really regard myself as anything much out of the ordinary but I sometimes think I must have been one of the few people in UK who knew what PPI was and that it was something not to be suckered into on a mere promise and a stroke of a pen.

In the days when I still had a UK mortgage and being in an unusual job for protection I sought out a specialist bespoke policy which guaranteed 2/3 salary until age 65 if I was unable to pursue my actual job.

Fortunately I never had occasion to make a claim and cancelled it when I paid the mortgage off as it had served it's purpose.

[Chancer]

I sometimes wonder if it pays to be astute, i systematically refused PPI on my credit cards as generally I paid them in full each month so what was the point in paying an extra X% on my purchases, also like Quillan I was either self employed or the sole director/employee of my limited company.

When it came to mortgages yes I was mis-sold, it was institutional blackmail, "we will give you the mortgage on endowment if we/our agent/my mate arranges the policy, if you insist on a repayment sorry the answer is no" this was from Nationwide with whom I had my previous mortgage and always paid on the dot, I didnt want to lose the house so looked elsewhere, same scam everywhere, finally I accepted a deal with Woolwich and Norwich Union because I could cancel the policy after one year which I did and converted to a 24 year repayment still with the Woolwich.

History proved me to be prudent but I ask myself who was the con? My friends who stuck with their endowments have all been weighed out huge sums, over £20K each and I guess now they will be doing the same for PPI compensation.

The thing is its all the customers who pay for the mistakes of the victims, whether they be savers or borrowers so I think the companies, the salespeople and the victims all got rewarded at the cost of the prudent.

I was surprised to see that Quillan had opted for or accepted what was to me such an obvious rip off but perhaps he had no choice to get a certain card or credit limit or maybe he used the card to finance the business or lived off of it in the eralier years of poor cash flow.

[Quillan]

[quote user="Chancer"]

I was surprised to see that Quillan had opted for or accepted what was to me such an obvious rip off but perhaps he had no choice to get a certain card or credit limit or maybe he used the card to finance the business or lived off of it in the earlier years of poor cash flow.

[/quote]

To be honest I collected credit and debit cards because of their perks. As I mentioned I got a Barclaycard Visa because they offered free three years extended warranty on any electrical items you bought with the card. However back in the early nineties, when my partner and I had a successful computer consultancy (and some forty employees working for us) these cards were issued with PPI as a matter of course with no option, it just came with it. I had and still do have many other cards which gave different benefits. I used to have an RBS card because it gave air-miles which I used for holidays, I used it all the time to buy petrol. I had a Grand Cherokee at the time which did about 8 mpg in London and about 12mpg on a long run and a Ferrari 308GTS (second hand of course), I was also still racing 4x4's at the time, I felt that I was buying half the worlds petrol running that lot. I got an American Express charge card because that came with free travel insurance and access to their lounge at Heathrow and other airports plus a load of other benefits (preferential choice of seat flying first class). Some cards which I no longer have, like Goldfish etc I can't even remember now why I got them but there was a reason at the time.

So actually my use of the cards was quite the opposite because I always paid them off at the end of each month with the exception of when I took a two years sabbatical to follow Tom Rolts route on the UK canal system when I paid the minimum via direct debit and the remainder when I collected the bill via Post Restante. You paid PPI on the purchase of the goods and for as long as you had them on credit so in my case I only paid the once on each item.