John Kruse has posted an interesting article on the latest round of hire purchase clamping.
https://bailiffscholar.wordpress.com/20 ... olved-yet/
It follows another brazen effort by the infamous Peter Felton Gerber looking for another way to defeat the hire purchase contract.
He continues to maintain that the hirer has beneficial interest before the hire agreement had ended, or the agreement is void because the lender did not file with HPI.
Over the last 12 months, I have examined hire purchase agreements for all the following lenders whose vehicles were clamped or towed by bailiffs.
247 Money Group Limited
Advantage Finance Ltd
Black Horse Limited
Blue Motor Finance Limited
BMW Financial Services (GB) Ltd
Close Brothers Limited
Fiat Financial Services
Go Car Credit Limited
Mercedes-Benz Financial Services UK Limited
Moneybarn Limited
Moneyway
MotoNovo Finance
NHS Fleet Solutions
Oodle Financial Services Limited trading as 'Oodle Car Finance'
RCI Financial Services Limited
Rix Motor Company Limited
Santander Consumer Finance
Shogun Finance Ltd
Startline Motor Finance
Toyota Financial Services (UK) Plc
Vansco Limited
Vauxhall Finance Plc
Volkswagen Financial Services Limited
Zopa Bank Limited
There is no standard wording for a hire purchase agreement. But they all state somewhere in the verbiage that the vehicle is the goods of the lender until the option to purchase has been exercised.
It has become a bailiff company's nightmare crawling the streets at night in ANPR vans only to find their target is not available because it's on finance.
Some defences by bailiffs fail because they argue the car is not on HPI, even when there is no obligation on lenders to file a listing with a private company.
It is still profitable to clamp the car and run in the hope the hirer stumps up the money to get the clamp off.
Other bailiff companies tow the car, which becomes expensive for the creditor. Especially when fork-lift truck imprints are found on the underbody of the vehicle on the post-injunction and recovery inspection.
Bailiffs are also falling foul by towing vehicles owned by vulnerable debtors. A fly-by-night ANPR bailiff has no way of knowing a debtor is a vulnerable person until it’s too late and the bill lands with the creditor.
I see John Kruse mentions the Local Government Ombudsman. I have never filed complaints with the LGO.
Solicitors make no money dishing out stage-1 formal complaints. But it shows that clamping HP and vulnerable debtors are much more widespread than what reaches me.