Does anyone have experience in dealing with Union Finance - Southend? We dealt with them in 1995 and were advised to use a loophole in the MG policy to hand in our keys and we would not be liable for any shortfall. Now after almost 7 years without a sniff of a letter (we were always on the electoral roll) we have received a one sentence letter from previous mortgage provider to contact them by phone. (We have just purchased a council flat with the help of a mortgage). Any views would help.

-- (elltell007@hotmail.com), April 19, 2002

Answers

Is your previous lender a signatory to the MLC code of practice on shortfall claims? If the answer is yes, then in theory they shouldn't be chasing you for a shortfall liabilty debt since you are more than 6 years beyond the repossession date. I would be extremely careful however, because they will claim that the six years runs from the re- sale date of the property, and this may have been much later in your case. Another possibility is that they will pass on information about you to the Insurance company who underwrote the MIG policy, and I don't think the same limitation necessarily applies for them.

-- Gordon Bennet (arsenewhinger@hotmail.com), May 02, 2002.

Ah the joy that was Union Finance. About as legitimate as the Kray twins were I'd say and just as dodgy. Allegedly. They had nothing to sell but a good line (re-hashed by Peter Walker in his various guises more recently, but also allegedly of course) and I know of no real cases where the Lender backed off permanently as a result of their poorly written threats. I was told the same about the MIG policy and handing in the keys (specifically by John Shepperd, Peter Walker and David Sutton) but I am still being hounded over a decade after the repo. Who was your Lender? The six year rule only applies to those subscribing to the voluntary code and many of the Lenders back then were not your regular Building Societies...so the 6 year thing is just ignored. The new mortgage is what alerted them to your "improved financial status" as some voluntary repo's seem to miss the blacklist, so you can get a new mortgage with little difficulty. Sorry you got caught by them too - my email name was created because of UF !

-- Too scared to say (iwasduped@yahoo.com), May 03, 2002.