Where We Are Now

The house

We live in the house they want to take.

We wake up in it. We eat breakfast in it. We sit in the room where we opened the letter that threatened to put a charge on it. We sleep, when we can sleep, in the house that Funding Circle has been circling for months.

We don't know when the next letter will arrive. We don't know if it will be an answer or another threat. We don't know if today is the day they file proceedings, or if they'll make us wait another month first. We don't know anything, because they won't tell us.

What we do know is this: every step since our business failed has pointed in one direction. Our home.

The pattern

If you've read the rest of this site, you know the individual stories. The call. The sham evaluation. The numbers that don't add up. The vulnerability they dismissed. The questions they won't answer.

This page is different. This page is about what it looks like when you step back and see it all at once. Because when you do, a pattern emerges. The same pattern, repeated at every level, by every person who has handled our case.

It goes like this: they tell us what we owe. We ask them to prove it. Instead of proving it, they escalate to someone more senior. The new person tells us what we owe. We ask them to prove it. They escalate again.

The number changes every time. The demand never does: pay what we say, or we take your home.

Recoveries

Our business entered insolvency in late 2024. We had paid Funding Circle every month for over two years. Never missed a payment. When the business failed, we didn't disappear. We came forward immediately.

The defaulted statement arrived. It claimed we owed more than we had originally borrowed. After returning almost two-thirds of the loan, the amount had grown, not shrunk. Interest for the remaining years of a loan that no longer existed. A collections charge nobody could explain.

We offered a settlement. Everything we could scrape together. Then we waited.

Weeks passed. We provided every document they asked for. Bank statements. Income and expenditure forms. Sent the same day, every time.

More weeks. A phone call. The agent quoted the inflated figure as settled fact, demanded we increase our offer before reviewing it, raised bankruptcy when we told her about the cancer diagnosis, and insisted on a charge over our home for one pound a month. We have the recording.

We asked for the figures to be explained. An agent apologised in writing for the discrepancy. We asked for our settlement to be properly reviewed. It was rejected the same day they said they needed more information to evaluate it.

Then the complaint was raised. Not by us. By the agent. On her terms. In her words. We were never asked to confirm what we were actually complaining about.

Complaints

Remember: this wasn't our complaint. It was the agent's version of it. She framed it. Funding Circle investigated her framing. We were never asked to confirm the scope.

And that framing mattered. The complaint they investigated covered three things: delays reviewing the settlement, conflicting balances, and threatening language. They could uphold all of that. Yes there were delays, sorry. Yes the tone was poor, sorry. Complaint upheld. Case closed.

But what about the things that actually mattered? Is the interest for the remaining years of a terminated loan actually enforceable? How is the collections charge calculated? Was the settlement evaluation genuine, or was the outcome predetermined before they asked us for more information? Why did the broker tell us remaining interest would be waived when Funding Circle now claims the opposite? Who actually owns this debt?

None of that was investigated. Because none of that was in the complaint Funding Circle chose to investigate.

The Final Response arrived one week before Christmas. It upheld the complaint but changed nothing. The agent's written apology for the figures discrepancy? The Final Response said no evidence of incorrect figures was ever found. Both emails exist.

The complaint was closed. The debt remained unexplained. And the questions that should have been at the heart of it were never asked.

Laura

The case was "formally passed" to Funding Circle's Head of Litigation and Legal Counsel. Laura. The most senior person yet. We expected substance. We expected engagement with the documented problems.

Instead, Laura declared that our vulnerability, the apology contradiction, and the settlement process all had "no bearing on the legal position." She narrowed the discussion to four topics. She refused to engage with the rest. She threatened a charging order on our home.

Then she proposed a 30-minute phone call. Not to answer our questions. To discuss "repayment options." Off the record. Laura versus two people who aren't lawyers, with no agreed minute and no paper trail.

We declined. We insisted on written answers. We put every unanswered question in writing, each one requiring either a written response or an explicit refusal with reasons stated.

We asked for our own personal data under data protection law. The response came from Laura's department, not data protection. The department pursuing us decided what we got to see about ourselves. What came back had holes in it. We told them exactly what was missing. Silence.

The deadline for the questions passed. No answers. No refusals. No acknowledgement. Just silence, and the knowledge that our home was still the target.

Solicitors

Then the external lawyers arrived. A firm we had never heard of, writing on Funding Circle's behalf. They promised a "substantive response" to our outstanding questions "in due course."

We waited. Weeks of silence. Not knowing what was coming. Not knowing when.

What arrived was not a substantive response. It was a formal Letter Before Action. A legal threat to take us to court. With a deadline, a settlement figure, and a demand for security over our home.

The letter couldn't agree with itself. Different figures in different sections. A claimed total that didn't match any previous correspondence. A fabricated deadline for a payment arrangement that their own documents show had no time limit. And the identity of who was actually bringing the claim changed between documents sent on the same day.

Of everything we had asked months earlier, almost none of it was addressed. A handful of topics acknowledged. The rest? Unanswered. Not answered and we disagree. Not declined with reasons. Unanswered. As if the questions were never asked.

And security over our home? When the payment arrangement started, one pound a month was accepted without security. Then it required a charge on the home. Then it was "not an unreasonable requirement." Now the solicitors say it's mandatory. The same company. The same case. The same home. A different position every time they write to us.

On one occasion, Funding Circle's Head of Litigation, Laura, sent two letters on the same day. One open, one confidential. The positions on security were not the same. The more helpful statement was in the letter that can't be quoted publicly. We don't believe that's an oversight. It looks to us like a choice about what goes on the record and what doesn't.

Meanwhile

While all of this was happening, we were doing everything we were supposed to do.

We filed a complaint with the Financial Ombudsman Service. They acknowledged it. They contacted Funding Circle requesting information. Five days after the Ombudsman contacted them, Funding Circle's solicitors sent the Letter Before Action.

We filed a complaint with the Information Commissioner about the incomplete data response. We wrote to every department, met every deadline, answered every request, provided every document.

The response to all of it, every question, every complaint, every legal right we exercised, was the same: escalate.

The waiting

People ask us what the worst part is. It's not the letters. It's not the threats. It's not even the numbers that don't add up.

It's the waiting.

Weeks between each response. Months, sometimes. They can afford to wait. They're a company with lawyers and time on their side. We can't. Every week of silence is another week of not sleeping. Another week of checking the post. Another week of not knowing whether today is the day they file proceedings or whether they'll let us twist for another month first.

We don't believe the silence is negligence. It feels deliberate. The pressure builds on its own when you're the one waiting. And then, when we set a deadline, when we insist on a written answer by a date, that's when the next rung appears. Someone more senior. The clock resets. And the waiting starts again.

The closed loop

Step back and look at it. We believe the debt has been inflated with charges and interest that have never been itemised or explained. The inflated debt is used to justify pursuing the family home. Pursuing the home requires solicitors. The solicitors' fees get added to the debt. The larger debt further justifies pursuing the home.

The number grows. Nobody explains it. Someone more senior appears. Costs get added. The costs justify the home. The home justifies the costs. Round and round.

And at the centre of that loop, a set of basic questions that nobody will answer.

We've already explained why they want the house. A charge is patient. It waits. Cash closes a file. A charge keeps it open. Sale or death, they get paid.

This page is what it feels like when they come for it.

Back to: How They Treated Us

Next: The Takeaway →