Credit Card Debt Stands Despite Missing Agreement

A Barlcaycard customer recently failed in his bid to have his £13,000 credit card balance set aside on the grounds that Barclaycard could not produce the original document showing that he had agreed to their terms and conditions, following the credit card company's appeal to the High Court.

The judge who heard the original arguments said, “It would have been quite simple for the bank, if they have the agreement to produce it, if they have not to say so, and if they have secondary evidence that the agreement did exist, though it does not any longer exist, to produce the secondary evidence. If the deluge of requests means they need more time, they could have asked for it. To have done none of these things but simply in a blanket way flatly to refuse to produce the document is in my judgment unreasonable....in my view the entirety of the costs in this application have been incurred as a result of the unreasonable attitude of the bank. In those circumstances the bank should pay all the costs of the application.” He awarded the claimant costs.

However, the Honourable Mr Justice Flaux considered this approach to be ‘deeply flawed’. With regard to the line of reasoning that the customer could only be sure of what he had signed if the original document were produced, there was simply nothing to suggest that any other form of agreement had been used by the bank. If such an argument could be made out, the Judge said, “It seems to me inconceivable that, if the solicitors and claims management companies who lie behind this and similar applications had any evidence from past cases that, at any given time, more than one form of Barclaycard terms and conditions was extant, they would not have deployed it in support of this and similar applications.”

Barclaycard had a standard agreement to which all users had to agree: the absence of the man’s signed agreement was not proof that he would have been given a Barclaycard on different terms.