Very Sad Story---merged

[Thunderbird 900]

Utter Disbelief!

Read on...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2015342/Ive-just-doused-petrol-Im-going-set-alight-The-chilling-words-victim-left-250-000-debt.html

[GinAndPlatonic]

Utter Disbelief!

Read on...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2015342/Ive-just-doused-petrol-Im-going-set-alight-The-chilling-words-victim-left-250-000-debt.html

It is sad and should never happen but what I often find interesting in stories like this is they start in similar ways...........

Byron’s troubles began in 1997 when he took out a loan with Lombard Bank, part of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, to clear some debts and carry out improvements on the house he had bought three years earlier.

That says so much. He took on debt to try and clear debt...but that wasnt enough he took on more debt to spend on that house which he had only moved into about three years earlier. I havent read beyond that part, but I will now...I may change the way I`m thinking afterwards but I doubt it...

(read it)..Plus what does this mean "Byron is on police bail over his emotional visit to his home". The whole story is too vague and seems to suggest that its the PPI thats caused all this....it really isn`t. Ostrich & Sand springs to mind.

Edited July 16, 2011 by GinAndPlatonic

[OnionTerror]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2015342/Ive-just-doused-petrol-Im-going-set-alight-The-chilling-words-victim-left-250-000-debt.html

Byron Fraser’s voice is trembling as he talks to me on his mobile phone. ‘I’ve built a barricade but the police are kicking it down,’ he tells me. ‘And there’s another thing. I’ve doused myself in petrol. If they come through the door I’m going to set myself alight.’

The sound of frantic banging in the background tells me there are only seconds to spare, but somehow I manage to persuade this desperate man to put down his matches long enough for me to call Lincolnshire Police. When I tell them about the situation, their response is swift and decisive.

The officers who have been hammering on the door are pulled back, trained negotiators are brought in and after a four-hour stand-off, a petrol-soaked and emotional Byron Fraser finally gives himself up. Such extreme behaviour and unwillingless to face police must, surely, have followed some terrible criminal activity. Had Byron robbed a bank, been dealing drugs or kidnapped a child?

Actually, no. Byron, 55, is a perfectly respectable man — he worked as a head chef — whose only crime was to put his trust in a bank when he took out a five-year loan for £15,000. On top of that loan, Byron was talked into paying a huge premium — £4,345.44 — for ‘payment protection insurance’, or PPI, in case loss of work or sickness rendered him unable to meet his monthly repayments.

So when, two years later, he was in a car crash, lost one leg, crushed the other and broke his neck, you might think the last thing he had to worry about was that loan.

But you would be wrong. Not only was the loan not wholly covered by the insurance, but the relentless pursuit of Byron to repay the debt has resulted in his being made bankrupt.

Last month he lost his house and from the initial £15,000 loan he has been saddled with interest, fees and costs amounting, astonishingly, to more than £250,000. The result? He felt he had no option but to kill himself. Byron’s story is one of the most extraordinary accounts you will read of a far wider scandal that has affected enormous numbers of the British people.

In 2009, the Financial Services Authority ordered the banks to stop selling single-payment PPI insurance premiums like the one sold to Byron, following concerns that undue pressure was being put on borrowers to buy them. The scandal had been exposed by the Money Mail pages of this newspaper.

And in April this year, the High Court went further and ruled that the banks should pay compensation amounting to an estimated £4.5 billion to 1.5 million people who were sold PPI policies that they either didn’t require, didn’t want or, in many cases, which didn’t actually cover their needs.

That ruling came too late to help Byron, who was declared bankrupt five years ago and has been battling to save his home ever since.

But his story is a shocking insight into the way a small loan — a loan that was supposed to be protected — can become a debt of a quarter of a million pounds and destroy a life.

My call to Byron — the call he says saved his life — came purely by chance. I had been conducting research for an article on home repossessions and had approached the homeless charity Shelter for help in finding a case study.

They had recently been contacted for help by Byron and offered to put me in touch. By sheer chance, I made my first call to him at the precise moment he was about to commit suicide by setting himself alight inside his home, repossessed last month.

‘I realise that people might think I’m crazy to even consider setting myself alight, but I had lost the will to live,’ he told me the next morning, the day after the stand-off. Overnight, he had been assessed under the Mental Health Act to see whether he ought to be sectioned, but was found to be sane. In fact, a person would have to be mad not to feel as angry as he does. Meeting me in a McDonald’s restaurant in Grantham, Lincs, Byron, 55, is not some disorganised low-life. He is a middle-class former head chef, and despite everything he looks immaculate in a suit, a clean shirt and tie and a fedora, even though he tells me he slept in his car. ‘Everything I own is still in the house — my clothes, possessions, even my toothbrush,’ he tells me.

‘After it was repossessed I felt so angry that I just went back. I was still paying the mortgage right up until they took the house but that counted for nothing. I barricaded the door and poured petrol from my lawnmower all over myself. I thought there was no going back.’

‘I feel like I’ve been shouting in a vacuum. I can’t see what I’ve done wrong, but I couldn’t get anyone to listen. I took out a loan, paid for insurance and then had a terrible accident which changed my life and ended my career. I can’t understand why they’re chasing me like this. Frankly, I had nothing left to lose.’

Byron’s troubles began in 1997 when he took out a loan with Lombard Bank, part of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, to clear some debts and carry out improvements on the house he had bought three years earlier. A former farm cottage, it has two bedrooms and is quietly tucked away in Billingborough, Lincolnshire, surrounded by mature trees and shrubs. He lived there alone.

‘The loan offer was one of those that used to come through the door every day back then,’ he recalls. ‘I was self-employed at the time and when they suggested payment protection insurance I thought that might be useful. It was a big premium — almost one-third of the loan — but I thought better safe than sorry.

‘I had been working for Trust House Forte for 15 years. But I had gone freelance and at the time of my accident was head chef at a lovely pub restaurant in Nottinghamshire. It was an afternoon in August 1999 and I was driving from Billingborough to Grantham. I was doing 40mph on a 60mph stretch of road when I went round a corner and the car just slid into a tree. I think there was diesel on the road. Nobody else was involved. I hadn’t had a drink.

‘They had to cut one of my legs off to get me out of the wreckage. I was airlifted to Lincoln County hospital, where they discovered I also had a broken neck. The upper half of my body was put in a cast and I stayed there for four months. Before, I used to be very active — I was a kick boxer and I ran marathons. Well, that was all over and so was my career. You have to stand for hours on end in a kitchen and be light on your feet. I felt as if my world had come to an end.’

At least his protected loan should have been simple. But things grew ever more complicated. Byron says he rang Lombard from the hospital on several occasions but was told he didn’t qualify for a pay-out. ‘I was drugged up most of the time on pain-killers and I couldn’t understand why they were being so unhelpful,’ he says.

‘When I got out of hospital that December I looked at my correspondence with Lombard and realised that they had sent me a copy of my loan agreement, but not a copy of the insurance policy. I wrote to them asking for one but got no reply.’

Out of desperation, he went to the Citizen’s Advice Bureau and at their suggestion wrote to Lombard in January 2000 explaining the situation, asking it to suspend interest payments and offering £1 a month while he was unemployed.

‘I got no reply but they took the £1 every month,’ he says. ‘I was disappointed and puzzled that they hadn’t simply discharged the loan but I thought we had an arrangement and so I got on with trying to learn to live again, to walk on a false leg, all the new things I would have to get used to as a disabled person.’

The next Byron heard was when he received a letter in 2005 saying that his debt with Lombard had been sold on to a debt-collection agency called 1st Credit, which sued him for bankruptcy, saying the debt had grown to £19,000, once interest had been added. At the subsequent bankruptcy hearing, Byron told the judge he believed the debt should have been covered by his PPI — but he couldn’t get a copy of his policy. Lombard still hadn’t sent him one. The judge adjourned the case for him to get it, but Byron claims his appeals to Lombard fell on deaf ears.

And so, on January 2006, he was declared bankrupt and from that moment onwards the costs against him have spiralled. An accountancy firm, Kingston Smith, was duly appointed as Trustees in Bankruptcy with the legal rights to all Byron’s possessions and his home. And that’s when the debt really started to soar. Astonishingly, Kingston Smith’s fees and those of its solicitors, Ashfords, soon totalled more than £100,000, according to a statement prepared in March 2010.

In fact, the full amount of all his debts was by then £246,636.03, once extras such as £23,000 in ‘petitioning creditors’ costs’, £12,000 interest and £35,000 in standard bankruptcy fees had been added. Sixteen months on, that figure must be nearing £300,000. Far more, in other words, than the £100,000 equity Byron has in his house. And what of the PPI insurance policy that was supposed to have protected him from this sort of catastrophe?

Byron bought his Payment Protection policy from Lombard but the actual insurer was a company called Cardif Pinnacle.

For their part, Pinnacle says it wasn’t informed of Byron’s accident until June 2006 — six months after he had been declared bankrupt — after Lombard finally sent Byron his insurance policy and he got in touch. Pinnacle said that anOnce it had been informed, Pinnacle made a ‘final’ payment of £5,200 to cover one year’s loan repayments. Why didn’t it cover the full amount of the loan?

'I have no idea what the future holds'

This week exclusion in Byron’s policy limited his claim under its disability provision. It referred me to Clause 6, section (iv), subsection (d) which says benefits will stop after: ‘Payment of 12 monthly benefits per claim or 36 monthly benefits in aggregate of all claims.’

This would confuse most people.

But in plain English it means Byron could make up to three separate claims of a maximum of 12-months’ loan repayments each. And, according to Pinnacle’s records, he has made only one such claim for his accident. When I explain this to Byron, he looks shocked. ‘Nobody explained this exclusion clause to me before,’ he says.

‘Why was my premium so high — almost a third of the loan — if it didn’t cover me in full? What is the point of payment protection insurance if it doesn’t protect you when you can’t pay?’

This week, I put it to Pinnacle that the exclusion clause was vague and ought to have been explained to Byron but it said that the section was ‘clear’. It also said it wasn’t responsible if Lombard hadn’t explained the issue when selling it to Byron. So I asked the RBS — Lombard’s owners — to explain why Byron had been treated like this.

The bank said there was a dearth of correspondence in Byron’s case, which is odd because he has mountains of it himself, but the bank said it would investigate. RBS added: ‘At this stage RBS has no record of a complaint involving Mr Fraser and, therefore, we cannot comment on the specifics. Resolving customer complaints is very important to us and we invite him to formalise his complaints as soon as possible.’

As for the various debt collectors, accountancy firms and solicitors who have pursued him, when I contacted them this week they said that they have made offers to Byron to help prevent repossession, but they have been rebuffed.

Whatever the truth about this bureaucratic swamp the fact remains that a decent man was facing having his home repossessed, for taking out a £15,000 loan that, as far as he thought, was protected by PPI insurance. So fuelled by rage, frustration and despair, Byron decided it was time to make the ultimate protest.

After dousing himself in petrol, he was set to become a human inferno. And then the phone rang. For now, Byron is sleeping in his car and with friends when he is offered a bed. He has been put on a list for a council flat but he’d rather be in his cottage.

‘I have no idea what the future holds,’ he tells me. ‘I just spend most of my time sitting in my car wondering where it all went so wrong.’

RBS won’t say if it found in his favour, whether it would compensate him for the loss of his home and not just the useless PPI policy it sold him. In the meantime, Byron is on police bail over his emotional visit to his home.

[jammo]

Caveat Debtor. Makes you think though - always get the name of the person selling you debt/ debt insurance. Then if any petrol based action is required in the future, you can target the right person

[erranta]

http://www.dailymail...0-000-debt.html

Cardif Pinnacle is a trading style of Pinnacle Insurance plc

. Registered in England and Wales Number: 1007798.

Registered office: Pinnacle House, A1 Barnet Way, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire WD6 2XX.

The UK insurance arm of

banking group

BNP Paribas. That's why we're a

preferred partner

to over 200 of the UK's leading Banks, Building Societies, Finance Houses, Insurance Companies and Intermediaries.

Parent company Car-dif is French based (paying minimal Taxes thru French off-shore/Monaco/luxembourg based double dealing?) - look at all the countries they operate in

http://www.bnpparibascardif.com/

http://www.bnpparibascardif.com/' rel="external nofollow">

Ultimate Parent company

BNP Paribas is a

European leader in global banking and financial services

and one of the strongest banks in the world (Rated AA by Standard & Poor's i.e. 3rd rating on a scale of 22).

Present across Europe through all its business lines, the Group has

four domestic retail banking markets

in France, Italy, Belgium and Luxembourg. It has one of the largest international networks with operations in more than

80 countries

and

204,600 employees

, including 162,800 in Europe, 15,000 in North America and 12,000 in Asia. (31/03/2011)

[sleepwello'nights]

An accountancy firm, Kingston Smith, was duly appointed as Trustees in Bankruptcy with the legal rights to all Byron’s possessions and his home. And that’s when the debt really started to soar. Astonishingly, Kingston Smith’s fees and those of its solicitors, Ashfords, soon totalled more than £100,000, according to a statement prepared in March 2010.

In fact, the full amount of all his debts was by then £246,636.03, once extras such as £23,000 in ‘petitioning creditors’ costs’, £12,000 interest and £35,000 in standard bankruptcy fees had been added. Sixteen months on, that figure must be nearing £300,000. Far more, in other words, than the £100,000 equity Byron has in his house.

Of course the law says the fees must be proportionate. Yeah right!

As the debtor is unable to pay who will they sue for payment of their extortionate fees?

[bendy]

It is sad and should never happen but what I often find interesting in stories like this is they start in similar ways...........

Byron’s troubles began in 1997 when he took out a loan with Lombard Bank, part of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, to clear some debts and carry out improvements on the house he had bought three years earlier.

That says so much. He took on debt to try and clear debt...but that wasnt enough he took on more debt to spend on that house which he had only moved into about three years earlier. I havent read beyond that part, but I will now...I may change the way I`m thinking afterwards but I doubt it...

(read it)..Plus what does this mean "Byron is on police bail over his emotional visit to his home". The whole story is too vague and seems to suggest that its the PPI thats caused all this....it really isn`t. Ostrich & Sand springs to mind.

the suicide of nations springs to mind.