I've finally made a PPI claim

Of all the things that have irritated me when listening to commercial radio - such as LBC - the ads of those PPI (Payment Protection Insurance) claims firms get under my skin more than most. Grrrr.

And until now, I've taken a kind of pleasure in being able to say to them: 'You're not getting my custom! I know that I've never had any PPI. So there!' And to be on the safe side, I have got up into the attic and looked at some old records there, for both myself and Dad.

Dad's were on the skimpy side - he tended to throw out anything that was neither recent nor relevant - but it was quite clear that in his last years, at any rate, he'd had no PPI. I wouldn't need to go through the messy process of claiming it back on his behalf, as his executrix.

I'm quite unlike my father where records-retention is concerned. I keep the lot, weeding out only bills and instructions leaflets for things long gone. I literally have all my bank and credit card statements back to 1970, when I started work. I also have every salary payslip back to 1970. I have kept all the papers relating to my property transactions through the years, and all the papers that record my efforts from 1992 to get a divorce (finally successful in 1996).

Why have I kept all this stuff? Basically, it's 'just in case'. And now I feel justified. Having all these documents has shown me that I do in fact have a proper PPI claim.

Why didn't I think so previously? The general reason was that my former Inland Revenue job was well-paid and redundancy-proof - especially after a promotion in 1985 - and thereafter I was always able (without the slightest qualm) to refuse all forms of payment protection insurance, whether it was on a loan or on my credit card. I simply didn't need the cover - and it was surely obvious to people like mortgage lenders that I didn't need it. So I wouldn't expect it to be offered, let alone added as a matter of course.

Another reason was that for many years I was able to call on the Bank of Mum and Dad, and didn't need to go to commercial sources of short-term finance. So PPI was never usually in question.

All the same, in the last couple of years I have looked for PPI in my records, but stopping my search at the later 1990s (that's still twenty-odd years back). I should have gone back just a little further! There was some PPI, on a small mortgage taken out when I moved from London to Horsham in Sussex in 1989.

How did I find this out? Well, I was researching past fountain pen purchases, and had spent a morning wading through bank and credit card statements, working forwards from 1970, looking for notes on them that would tell me things I wanted to know. When I came to the beginning of 1992, I was amazed to see 'Mortgage Protection Insurance' written on a bank statement. What? Up I went to the attic for more records.

Hmm. I'd forgotten all about this! In August 1989, with time tight, I'd approached Girobank for a loan of £20,000. After faffing around a bit (at the time they'd been moving my account from Bootle near Liverpool to Ashford in Kent) they had said OK to that loan - but on condition that that I pay mortgage protection insurance. They knew what I did, who I worked for, and what I earned, but still wanted this extra money every month.

I remember thinking it was all most unnecessary. What, insurance against non-payment on a small mortgage, taken out by a career middle-manager with a rock-safe government job? Ridiculous. But I went along with it, never suspecting that a money-making scheme had lately been hatched by the lending sector and that I was going to be one of its earlier victims. In particular, I was juggling two house transactions: I didn't want the London house sale, and the Horsham house purchase, to fall through by introducing the slightest delay. I signed, and got that small mortgage.

So I paid £13.99 every month from September 1989 to June 1996 (when the Horsham house was sold and the mortgage - and the PPI - ended). That's £13.99 x 82 months = £1,147.18 altogether.

I'm now claiming it all back - with interest, of course - on the basis that it was mis-sold. I do feel I've got a reasonable case, and I'm hopeful of a successful outcome. But nothing hangs on being successful: I'm not relying on getting a biggish refund.

And there will probably be a long wait. Girobank were taken over by Alliance & Leicester, who handled the redemption of the mortgage and the cessation of the protection insurance payments, and in turn were swallowed by Santander. I shall be dealing with Santander, whom I understand are not the fastest-reacting bank around. And although they would have taken over Alliance & Leicester's records, would it be a quick computer retrieval, or a slow manual search in some vast storage facility for a bundle of papers?

What, anyway, were the mechanics of claiming?

As soon as I realised that I did, after all, have a claim, I resolved to bypass those awful claims management companies and attend to it personally. No way was I going to hand any of them a fat share (plus VAT) for doing something I was perfectly capable of doing myself. But what exactly did I have to do? What was the right approach?

I did the sensible thing and looked on the MoneySavingExpert website for information, and discovered that it had a link to Resolver, and on that site was a claim template. More than that; Resolver would send my completed claim as an email to Santander. One extra bullet fired them in the name of Consumer Rights, joining thousands already sent. It was immediately clear to me that a standard, well-designed approach through a consumer champion might get results faster than if I put together my own claim. I couldn't see any obvious flaw in this free service, and so I did the deed, working through Resolver's online claim form. I was able to attach copies of various relevant documents, including the original loan offer insisting on that PPI policy.

Well, it's now gone. I will await the outcome with great interest! Resolver will keep in touch, and give me prompts.

I suppose I've actually made my claim at a good moment. The cut-off date for claiming is still several months away, so I may have got in before the last-minute rush begins.

And it may go through without fuss. I suspect that every lender will be trying to process all claims on hand as fast as possible, so that no gigantic backlog develops. And perhaps every claim (like mine) that contains easy-to-check details will get looked at first - the simple-to-deal-with stuff always tends to get prior attention, doesn't it? So it's fingers crossed.