Morning it's about a ppi claim, Peterborough area, None at

Hello and thank you for your question. My name is ***** ***** I will be very pleased to assist you. I'm a practising lawyer in England with over 15 years’ experience. Please be aware that although I will endeavour to reply to you promptly, I am also in full time private practice and so I may not be available to respond immediately and it may also take me a few minutes to prepare a reply. The site will notify you as soon as I respond. I look forward to working with you to answer your question fully.

how may I assist in relation to the above please?

thank you. For the avoidance of doubt, do I understand correctly this relates to a claim you have already made in or around 2018 using a claims agency and they are chasing you for a fee?

thank you. Do you recall agreeing terms in relation to a fee? obviously, the agency would have sought to charge a fee but I wonder whether they made the fee clear to you and if you cannot recall, whether you have asked the agency to provide you with evidence of your agreement as regards fees?

I suppose only the company in question can answer that but conjecturing, my assumption is it is probably due to some sort of administration failure on their part. They have up to 6 years however to make a claim for any debt owed to them under the limitation act and as such, they claim in principle would appear to still be within time albeit of course that does not mean that you cannot challenge the amount of their claim.

from what you say, it is likely that you would want to contact the claims company or any debt collector and asked them to provide evidence of your agreement in relation to any fee that is now sought. The burden of proof is upon them to justify any debt they claim is due from you.

if you are not satisfied with the evidence or information they provide you, you can make a formal complaint to the company in question and from there, escalate that complaint if necessary to the financial ombudsman for an independent determination:

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumers/how-to-complain

if based on further information they supply you accept that you owe the amount claimed, it is open to you to potentially seek to agree an instalment payment plan with them for repayment of any monies owed to them by way of agreement

how has the cost increase by such an amount? i.e. what have they added to the charge?

thank you. Do you understand how the increase has been arrived at? e.g. interest, charges etc?

are you able to clarify for me what the charges are that of meant the bill has escalated so far? I remain slightly unclear on this point

thank you. On the face of it, there does not appear to be any obvious legal authority for the company increasing the bill by such an extreme amount of money. It may be that they could seek to claim some degree of interest on any unpaid amount but if they have forgotten to invoice you, I cannot see that even then they could claim interest prior to the date of their invoice.

From what you say, they have undertaken to provide you with an account of the increased charges on Wednesday.  If they fail to do so, or you are not satisfied with their explanation as would seem more likely than not, then in the first instance, you may wish to raise a formal complaint with the company. This triggers an eight week timetable for them to provide you with a full response and if you remain unsatisfied on the earlier of their full response or eight weeks, you can subsequently escalate the complaint to the financial ombudsman for independent determination to impose a decision on the company:

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumers/how-to-complain

I'm glad the above answers all your questions for now. If you have any follow up questions please revert to me.