Illegal Credit Card Agreements - Unenforceable?

By Author: Nicholas Hunt
Total Articles: 432
Comment this article

The basic idea is to make use of a legal loophole in the consumer credit act that means that unless a credit agreement complies with a group of stringent regulations, then it is invalid and so cannot be enforced legally. The upshot is is that any money owed on accounts set up with one of these agreements cannot be collected, and so does not need to be repaid. There are plenty of web sites claiming to be able to speedily and easily arrange for your debts to be written off in this way, but is this realistic?

The first thing to be aware of is that only agreements arranged before April 2007 have the possibility of being declared unenforceable under this tactic. If this condition is met, there are quite a few reasons why the agreement may be uncollectible, including not being signed by both parties, the Annual Percentage Rate not being understandably shown, or copies of the original papers not being available on requesting them.

Attorneys specialising in this field will examine your credit agreement copies on your behalf to see if they are all legal. But here comes the catch: you usually need to pay a fee before an ...
... agent will even look at your case, whether or not you have any chance at all of having your debts declared unenforceable. If you have several credit cards, this can make it a costly and maybe futile exercise.

There's also the fact that some less honest suppliers of this service overstate the prospect of succeeding, which many dispassionate commentators say are not as high as they are being portraid.

So what's the upshot? Feel free to ask your credit card companies for copies of your documents and inspect them yourself, but before doing anything else talk to a free debt advisor. If you believe you might have an invalid agreement, then search out a solicitor happy to work on a no win no fee basis, rather than spending money at the outset in the mere hope of escaping your debt problems.

About the author: Nicholas writes for http://www.debtnation.co.uk/ where you can find out more on how to legally clear credit cards at http://www.debtnation.co.uk/illegal-credit-agreements.html