Hire Purchase Payment Protection
If you have ever bought an item of significant value and paid for it using a hire purchase agreement you may also have been offered a financial product called payment protection insurance. Payment protection insurance is supposed to protect consumers by covering their debt repayments in the event they cannot work, but it has become notorious in recent years and has quickly risen to become the most complained about financial product of all time.
The issues surrounding PPI, including hire purchase payment protection, are numerous. It has been heavily criticised for being overpriced and representing poor value for money. The cover has also been extensively mis-sold. Mis-selling is the primary reason for complaints relating to the cover.
The term ‘mis-selling’ is actually quite a broad one and can relate to quite a few failures connected with the sale of a policy. These failures can be roughly grouped into two sections:
(1) the customer was given incomplete, incorrect or misleading information
Because the question of mis-selling centres on what happened at the point of sale, the information you were given is vital in determining whether your hire purchase payment protection policy was mis-sold. If you were told you had to have the cover or it would improve the chances of your application being approved this information is incorrect. Similarly, if the salesperson gave you a very biased account of the cover, over-emphasising the good aspects and disregarding any negatives.
(2) the customer was sold a policy they did not need or could not use.
If you already had a similar policy or were in secure employment with full sickness entitlement, E.g the civil service, you probably didn’t need this type of cover. If, on the other hand, you were aged 65 or over or had a serious pre-existing medical condition you may have been ineligible for hire purchase payment protection.
For more information contact our team.