Another Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) case from the Brunel Franklin files shows how PPI can be ‘hiding in plain sight’ on bank and credit card statements as one lady from London recently discovered. Brunel Franklin has just secured Ms Rachel Kelsey a refund of just over £3,600 on a credit card with a very well known top six bank, but until recently Rachel was convinced PPI was something that couldn’t apply to her.
“I had heard of PPI, of course as its been all over the news but I was pretty confident I didn’t have it,“ explained Rachel. “I had taken out a credit card with my bank a few years ago and when this PPI story hit the news I did have a glance at my statements and PPI wasn’t there.”
That’s the position Rachel was in when a chance conversation over coffee with a friend earlier this year made her think again.
“I got talking with a friend in January about the cost of Christmas among other things and she explained she had some money back from her bank as a result of some mis-sold insurance,” explained Rachel. “She didn’t say PPI at first and it was only at the point she said mis-sold insurance could come under several different names and not just PPI, that I realised I might have been a bit casual in checking my statements originally and decided to have a closer look.”
On further inspection, Rachel noticed she had been paying an ‘insurance premium’ of £30 per month since at least 2010 and similar amounts or less prior to this date. It turned out she was paying 7.9 pence per £100 of her outstanding balance, depending on what that was at the time. Still not sure even now if this counted as PPI, it was at this point she contacted Brunel Franklin for an informed opinion.
“The Brunel Franklin website said it was no win no fee, so I didn’t feel I had anything to loose by asking an expert to check over my paperwork for me,” added Rachel. It was clearly an insurance of some kind but I still didn’t know if it counted as a mis-sale as it had been on my card from the outset, I assumed it was part of the deal in having the card and having insurance sounds like a good idea, until you are paying £30 a month for it.”
Brunel Franklin looked at Rachel’s past statements and informed her she had a good case and she asked them to pursue it on her behalf. She was surprised and delighted just eight weeks later to receive a letter and a cheque – but she couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw the amount was over £3,500.
“I know I had been paying £30 a month for a few years, but I was flabbergasted when I saw the amount on the cheque,” explained Rachel. “I just couldn’t believe it had come to that much over the years. I would never have followed through on my own, but thanks to a coffee with a friend and a conversation with Brunel Franklin, those Christmas bills have been a bit easier to manage.”
“Mis-sold PPI can come under many different names and guises, so we always urge people to check their statements carefully,” said Brunel Franklin Managing Director, Sally Bowyer. “Rachel was paying her insurance premium from the outset and simply seeing ‘insurance premium’ on her statements led her to think it was a good thing and something she must have agreed to when taking the card out. One of these assumptions was wrong. We always make clear that PPI is not necessarily a bad product per se, but if you never knew you had it in the first place, or it was never properly explained to you, it is possible you have been mis-sold.”
To find out if Brunel Franklin can help you get a refund against a mis-sold PPI policy, just log on to www.brunelfranklin.com
Alternatively, you can telephone 0800 051 5451 free of charge.