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**AtW** · 29 November 2006, 23:06

I think it is some obscurely named firm owned by Provident that engaged into door to door lending to high risk people charging absolutely ridiculous amount of interest - way way higher than already joke-like interest of 25% on credit cards.

**lilelvis2000** · 29 November 2006, 23:12

How nice of HBOS to shut the Farepack company down. Take all (most) of the cash out for themselves and - really - not help out the customers. How nice of the other lenders to then swoop in at offer loans at loan-shark rates. This country is great!

**Sockpuppet** · 30 November 2006, 00:16

Originally posted by lilelvis2000

How nice of HBOS to shut the Farepack company down. Take all (most) of the cash out for themselves and - really - not help out the customers. How nice of the other lenders to then swoop in at offer loans at loan-shark rates. This country is great!

HBOS are a business not a charity. Would you work for free for your current client? No? Neither would HBOS.

**AtW** · 30 November 2006, 00:37

HBOS had issues with loan back in March, but they waited until October to allow more customer money to be accumulated in account - directors who knew about problems should certainly be criminally liable for continuing to "trade": I think some of them paid themselves big dividends very close to collapse.

HBOS should have called in administrators in March, but they chosen to wait longer to recover more money from those customers who would entrust their money to organisation - that's the issue, not that they demanded repayment.

**Ardesco** · 30 November 2006, 09:22

Swings and roundabouts.

If Farepak had managed to sort themselves out in the extra time that HBOS gave them it wouldn't have been a problem and nobody would have heard about it.

The bad boy here is Farepak, not HBOS. If they knew they had problems in march they should have restructured thier buisness to fix those problems rather than continuing to trade willy nilly and giving themselves big dividends.

**BoredBloke** · 30 November 2006, 10:09

I don't have a problem with the way HBOS have acted in this. As stated before they are a business. They were lending a company money and pulled the plug when it was obvious to them that they would be able to recoup the bulk of THEIR money. With the farepak business model I'd imagine that there would be loads of small payments in throughout the year and a series of massive ones going out at the end of the year. With that in mind if the HBOS had pulled the plug in March then they would have stood to recoup very little of THEIR money. HBOS have a duty towards their shareholders also.

Yes this isn't very fair on the poor sods who where effected by this, but who said business should be fair?

**tim123** · 30 November 2006, 10:30

Originally posted by AtW

HBOS had issues with loan back in March, but they waited until October to allow more customer money to be accumulated in account - directors who knew about problems should certainly be criminally liable for continuing to "trade": I think some of them paid themselves big dividends very close to collapse.

HBOS should have called in administrators in March, but they chosen to wait longer to recover more money from those customers who would entrust their money to organisation - that's the issue, not that they demanded repayment.

All of the above is the directors responsibility. A Bank is not expected to (and almost certainly won't) have, a day to day, or even month to month view of the trading conditions of a company. All they can see is if the company are meeting the repayment schedual agreed to. If that is happening (which presumably it was), there is no way that a bank should, or could, take proceedings against a company to close it.

The directors are the ones with the information to 'look forward' and calculate if the company can meet (or not) its future liabilities and decide to cease trading (or not) as soon as they calculate that they can't. There is no way that the bank have the information to be able to do this.

You are right that the company should have been closed down much sooner as if it was the bank would have got less money but the customers would have lost less. You are (very) wrong to attribute this (non) decision to the bank.

Finally, I very much doubt that the company directors took dividends from this year's trading, as there is certain nothing to justify doing so. The press reports that I saw headlining the amount of dividends that the directors had 'creamed' off, said in the small print "over the last 5 years". As if what happened 5 years ago was relevent, which it isn't.

tim

**AtW** · 30 November 2006, 10:32

Originally posted by tim123

All of the above is the directors responsibility.

Agreed - I think there is a case here against directors of Fairpak who had duty to call in administrators back when they could see problems happening rather than wait for more money to be paid in.

**Zippy** · 30 November 2006, 10:39

Originally posted by Alf W

So that's a £1200 loan over two years at £27 a week which makes total re-payable (tappity-tap) of £2808.

How nice of those lovely people at Provident to help out the poor Farepak customers at Christmas!

While I feel very sorry for these people, I'm appalled by the fact that someone who obviously has a low income is borrowing 1200 quid to fund Christmas!! Me and Mr Z spend less than 1/3 of that and we're not exactly tight fisted. I worry about what these folks are going to do next Christmas when they'll still be paying off this years bills.

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