Sneaky, underhanded finance companies and PPI

I am so angry.

I have a finance agreement with Black Horse finance and I have been paying PPI on this.

When I realised I wouldn't benefit from PPI I called them up LAST WEEK to cancel it and was told I had to send in a letter of cancellation, which I did the same day. That's the end of that I thought to myself.

WRONG.

This morning have a letter from them saying if I still want to cancel the PPI I have to sign and return to them the attached cancellation statement, and when they recieve it they will cancel the PPI. This 'cancellation statement' says the exact same thing I wrote in my letter to them LAST WEEK.

I immediately called them and said to the 'lady' (I use the term 'lady' very loosely indeed) that they have a cancellation statement from me and that I sent it last week, and that I want the PPI canceled from the day they received it.

She informed me that in order to cancel I MUST sign and return the one that they sent me.

'Why?' I asked.

She said it won't be canceled until they receive the one they sent me.

I refused, and told her they are using delaying tactics just to squeeze a few more quid out of me, I told her I am not one bit happy about it, and that the PPI had better have been canceled LAST WEEK when they received my letter, which by the way, THEY had asked me to write them in the first place.

What do you guys think to this?

I think they are using delay tactics and dragging it on to keep me paying this bullpoo PPI as long as possible.

I thought the PPI was already canceled until I received this letter from them today.

I am boiling mad.

What is PPI? Some sort of insurance? Guessing: Personal Property Insurance? Was that to insure the creditor's collatoral against the loan?

Just curious, USA here, and have never heard that acronym before.

Originally posted by JonInMichigan


What is PPI? Some sort of insurance? Guessing: Personal Property Insurance? Was that to insure the creditor's collatoral against the loan?

Just curious, USA here, and have never heard that acronym before.

I apologize, I should have said.

PPI is Payment Protection Insurance. It supposedly covers your loan payments in the event of being off work sick, or redundancy, and payments will be met by the insurance, and you wont get your car or whatever repossessed. It is very expensive which is why I canceled.

On monthly payments of £178, over £30 of this payment was for the Payment Protection Insurance premium.

But when you want to make a claim they start saying you have to be off work for, say, at least a month, before you can make a claim. Then it takes forever for the claim to process, by which time you have already defaulted on the loan. It's shocking. They dont tell you this when you take out the insurance, if they did no-one would bother.

Banks, finance companies and insurance companies are no better than crooks.

They are constantly 'moving the goalposts', and ALWAYS in their own favour.

Yeah. I figured it was something like that. We have stuff like that for credit cards and mortgages on houses, just called by a different name.

Personally I feel those add-ons are mostly scams mainly because if you do lose a job or get sick, they just make your MINIMUM payment for you, meanwhile interest grows until you get better or get a job. Then you have a much much larger balance to pay off.

I would just stay away from credit all together if possible. You will do much better in life just paying cash except for those unattainable things like a house or car (or going to university in the usa). No one needs to pay for things on consumer credit. If you don't have the money for it in cash, you don't really need it.

Over your life you'll save tens of thousands in interest and you will have a more grounded view about creditors being crooks... which they really aren't, it's just that you don't like their terms but no one is making you use credit to be brutally honest.

Probably the same as the PMI (Private Mortgage Insurance) we are familiar with in America, which is obviously a scam. If the bank has already investigated your creditworthiness then assigned an interest rate to your loan that reflects the risk they believe they are taking and obviously own the deed to the house/land, then why the hell would it make sense to any consumer to pay an insurance policy on behalf of the bank against themselves defaulting? Not to mention that due to fractional reserve banking they are forcing you both to repay and insure money that literally doesn't exist and is not actually a liability to the bank! In other words, banks really only dole up a fraction (say 1/10) of the "amount financed" on your loan out of pocket while forcing you to not only pay back principle that they themselves did not loan you, but interest on that same money they did not loan you. As if that is not enough they are also allowed to disguise the real interest rate they are charging due to the compound interest gov't also allows, turning 5% into 100+% over 30 years. It makes no sense at all when you believe the gov't is protecting the consumer, but makes perfect sense when you assume that they are protecting their partners in crime.

You can claim it back. I sued my lender for mis-selling my ppi.

I just won a £2700 payout from them.

If your in the UK I recommend Gladstone Brookes

Originally posted by JonInMichigan

Yeah. I figured it was something like that. We have stuff like that for credit cards and mortgages on houses, just called by a different name.

Personally I feel those add-ons are mostly scams mainly because if you do lose a job or get sick, they just make your MINIMUM payment for you, meanwhile interest grows until you get better or get a job. Then you have a much much larger balance to pay off.

I would just stay away from credit all together if possible. You will do much better in life just paying cash except for those unattainable things like a house or car (or going to university in the usa). No one needs to pay for things on consumer credit. If you don't have the money for it in cash, you don't really need it.

Over your life you'll save tens of thousands in interest and you will have a more grounded view about creditors being crooks... which they really aren't, it's just that you don't like their terms but no one is making you use credit to be brutally honest.

Yes you're right.

I have a mortgage and a car loan, that's all. No credit cards, nothing else.

Another thing with this PPI, if you're made redundant or off work with a long term illness your payments are only covered for about 6months and not for the duration of the loan term, then it stops.

Generally, people don't find this out until they claim.

Insurance companies make an absolute fortune because it is so expensive.

I know it was my choice to take on the terms in the first place, that isn't what my post is about.

My point was that I canceled the PPI by written statement LAST WEEK, and I found out this morning after opening my mail that it hasn't been canceled at all, which means I am still paying it.

When I spoke to them on the telephone last week they told me I had to send them a signed, written statement to cancel the PPI, which I did the same day.

But today, a week later, they now inform me that it will only be canceled when they receive THEIR typed up version of the SAME WORDS I sent. Meanwhile, they're making me pay by dragging it out with unnecessary to-ing and fro-ing.

They don't NEED a typed up statement, they've got my hand-written one.

reply to post by doobydoll


Insurance companies charge a fortune because so many people default on their loans. Your insurance premiums go, in large part, to pay for your neighbor's delinquencies which are out of control these days.

I won't agrue that insurance companies and banks do make a ton of money from a dollar/euro/pound standpoint, but percentage wise they make much less than most retail outlets.

Insurance companies in America, for example, average about 3.3% profits. (Big topic right now in the USA.)

source

But that small percentage leads to huge cash profits. Most business mark up their products and services 60% or more.

Insurance companies have to put tons of money away for when there are bad time or big disasters otherwise they wouldn't be able to pay out. Most people just hate them in general even though one would thank them when they need them.

Just as an example, I pay about $700 / year to insure my $40k vehicle. I pay $600 / year to insure my $200k house and $60k worth of contents. Clearly this only makes sense when you figure the risk and likelyhood that my car is more likely to be stolen or crashed vs my house burning down.

Since I have had a house for 20 years now, I have only paid out $12,000 in premiums in my whole life and if my house burned down they would owe me $250k. I don't see them as ripping me off in this case.

But I recently had to start paying PMI for my mortgage due to the declining housing market in the USA. I now have to pay $140 / month to insure that I will not default on my mortgage. Why? I'm upsidedown on my loan with respect to the market. The likelyhood of me walking away from that loan and sticking it to the bank is very very high. They are just protecting their investment. I really don't see why this is such a crime. No one likes to pay for high insurance but given the number of defaults on loans lately, I can't really blame them either.

Sorry I went off topic. Yes, corporate policies suck wind! They should have told you what form you needed right from the start.

are you paying them? stop payment, cancel any type of automatic withdrawal, ignore any bills, if they have your money withdraw it.

Originally posted by Red_xi
You can claim it back. I sued my lender for mis-selling my ppi.

I just won a £2700 payout from them.

If your in the UK I recommend Gladstone Brookes

Thanks for that

I'll find their number and give them a call today

Originally posted by JonInMichigan

Sorry I went off topic. Yes, corporate policies suck wind! They should have told you what form you needed right from the start.

No probs

They did tell me, I was to send a written statement of cancellation and it will be canceled when they received it, and I did what they asked.

Now they've changed their minds, which took them a week to tell me. And it will be another couple of days before they receive this typed up one that they've sent me, that's another two weeks they can charge me for.

Originally posted by filosophia
are you paying them? stop payment, cancel any type of automatic withdrawal, ignore any bills, if they have your money withdraw it.

The premium is included with the loan repayments, the two are not separate payments. They are bundled together into one when I took out the loan.

So when I pay the next payment as stated in the loan agreement, the PPI will still be paid out of it until they receive the cancellation statement they sent me. Even though I sent a hand written one a week ago.

I was under the impression any cancellation statement is sufficient as long it is dated and signed and the contents made clear. Am I wrong? Maybe I am, I don't know then.

It seems to me they're making it as difficult and as awkward as possible for me to cancel this PPI, which is my right to do, I don't HAVE to pay it.