Getting your first Credit Card with no Credit

The way credit card creditors can stumble on debt searches

Keith Harrison's recent case has identified an important topic for borrower and lender. A number of jurisdictions side with debtors when their creditors, such as credit card issuers, have not complied with the stringent standards of credit law. However, they have dared their creditors to show that they have leapt through all the tyres necessary to get their funds back.

78 of the Consumer Credit Act requires a credit card issuer, at the borrower's request, to supply a so-called "genuine copy" of its initial credit contract. It must contain all initial business and general business agreements (AGBs), inclusive of information such as the interest rates. Recent cases have shown that it can be hard to make a satisfying copy when a creditor has discarded, poorly filed or even discarded part of its own paper.

"It wasn't so important in the past - now the conditions we' ve set are an Exocet," he says. Harrison had gone to trial to stop a collections agency, Link Financial, which forced him to put more than £20,000 on his credit card. Ian Creswell, MD, at Birmingham County in January 2010, beat an effort by Phoenix Recoveries to collect funds on a credit card from HFC Banking.

Justice Worster ruled that the re-constituted arrangement made available to the Mortgagor was imprecise and void because it incorrectly indicated the interest rates actually disbursed by Dr. Creswell. John McCullagh, in February 2010 at Bromley District Courts, beat an MBNA bench attempted to get 15,753 pounds back on his credit card.

Judges said that the copy of the MBNA delivered Memorandum of Understanding did not contain Mr McCullagh's name and postal addresses and the unreadable condition was "clearly not a copy of the initial Memorandum of Understanding". Nathan Bachellier, at Hastings District in October 2010, beat an effort by Cabot Financial to collect £5,908 on an MBNA credit card.

Winslett decided that Cabot had neglected to provide all the necessary documents when it came to submitting a copy of the treaty and that it was unreadable, another violation of the rules on credit for consumers. Margaret Hayes, a July 2010 judge at Blackpool District Courts, reversed an order on her home that HFC had received early this year in search of a guilt of just over £5,000.

Richter Bell consented that the bench had sent her the arrangement of another and not her own, and that the restored arrangement was incorrect. In January 2011 before the Court of Appeal in London, Mr Davendra Kotecha reversed an attempted by Phoenix to obtain funds on his HFC debit card.

Appeals magistrates accepted that the institution had not been able to provide an exact copy of its initial arrangement, misstating both the interest rate and the name of the institution which was initially a non-profit institution. Sean Murphy, at Oldham District in February this year, has also rejected a lawsuit from Cabot Financial for reimbursement of 11,953 pounds on his Egg credit card.

Nigel Clayton, the Secretary, noted that the copy of the treaty was partially unreadable, that he could not see Mr Murphy's postal adress and that there was no information on the instalment premium payments made by Mr Murphy. Scott Paterson, at Doncaster County in February of this year, overthrew Cabot Financial, who was trying to recover £5,054 he had accrued on a Morgan Stanley Dean Witter credit card.

Judges Russell ruled that the copy of the Memorandum was unreadable, that the clauses did not correspond to those initially delivered to Mr Paterson, and that Cabot had neglected to submit a duly reconstructed paper. The High Court was convinced that MBNA, the initial card publisher, had probably not provided him with the necessary general business agreements when he first gave him the card in 1998.

This is a basic violation of the rules and can mean that the blame is totally infeasible. Part of the judge's ruling depended on MBNA not being able to supply a fully exact copy of the default credit line applicable to Mr Harrison, even though he was one of five million sent in a promotional mailing.

Card issuer told courthouse that it did not have a collection of pre-2004 standards. MBNA-Zeugin, a leading in-house attorney, said she should find the paperwork that was not stored in an archives, she should scan file lockers, the MBNA staff offices and even the loft in banking premises.

Watsons of Llandudno, his lawyers, say this is another issue for them. "We' ve had a number of cases where the banks have been unable to meet Section 78," says Paul Tilley, a trial attorney at Watsons. In 2009, Judge Waksman of the High Court in Manchester ruled that it was not necessary for a creditor to present the initial loan contract or even a copy of it, such as a facsimile or scanned.

It decided that it was quite reasonable to make available a copy of the arrangement reconstructed from other banking resources, provided that it had informed the debtor precisely and sincerely of the initial loan condition and any future changes. At first glance, the provision of a re-constituted copy for a well-organized banking or credit card company should not be too onerous.

"He says what you get is that the creditors with what they say are probably the conditions that would have been sent at that point in your life. "Sometimes during reconstruction, they just can't find the initial arrangements. They can sometimes, but they can't find all the necessary terms," he added.

An MBNA spokesperson said that until claim settlement firms began asking about them a few years ago, they had seldom been asked about historical and not actual circumstances. The spokesperson renounced that the bench actually had every difficulty to find old papers. "Because we have a complete set of arrangements and a set of general business practices, which is good business practice," he said.

"We may consider restoring a credit card contract in some cases because the initial contract is not easy to read or has been found to have been stolen from an archive, as permitted in the High Court case, Carey v HSBC Bank, 2009. "The Credit Services Associations (CSA) says that there are no statistical data on how often creditors have neglected to recover their loans because of incorrect documentation.

Also, he disputes that buyers of debts such as Link, Cabot or Phoenix are in for a bad shock because the initial creditors are sometimes unable to provide the right information. "Shoppers don't wake up and find they have a problem," says Mr. Wallwork. Several years ago, creditors were afflicted by cases, often brought by claim settlement firms, in which it was alleged that failing to provide an accurate copy of an initial credit contract resulted in the debts being rendered non-enforceable on a permanent basis.

A well-known expert in the field of credit for consumers, Bob Imrie questions whether it will again be an open seam for borrowers to defy their creditors. "â??The issue with paragraph 78 cases is that the liabilities are not enforceable only if the nonconformity persists,â he warned. "When they ( the creditors ) find the right information and make it available to the borrower, they can continue to recover their debts.

Nevertheless, Mr Cox sees an emerging issue for some creditors. "You ( the banks) have just counted on being able to return and find out what the conditions would have been," he says. "We' re going to get more of those cases where the courts are investigating exactly what's satisfying or not."