relationships in court. Some shared appreciation mortgage customers and their families consider that the arrangement whereby a loan which is 25% of the initial value of a property is repaid by 75% of the appreciation in the value of the property, plus the amount of the loan, could be an unfair debtor-creditor relationship. The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999, Regulation 7, states that a seller or supplier shall ensure that any written term of a contract is expressed in plain, intelligible language and that if there is doubt about the meaning of a written term, the interpretation which is most favourable to the consumer shall prevail. Regulation 8 provides that an unfair term "shall not be binding upon the consumer", where an unfair term is one which causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations arising under the contract, to the detriment of the consumer. Early dissension In October 1997 Harold Fisher and his wife borrowed £90,000 from Bank of Scotland under its Shared Appreciation Mortgage Scheme. By year three of the loan, Mr Fisher realised that the large increase in house prices meant that their debt to Bank of Scotland had increased by a much greater amount. He wrote to the bank to express his fears but they said he had signed the contract. Mr Fisher then took his claim to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which ruled against him. They said that in shared appreciation mortgage disputes, they usually ruled in favour of the banks. Another couple who borrowed money from Bank of Scotland under its Shared Appreciation Mortgage Scheme, £72,000, were Geoffrey Cooke and his wife. Mr Cooke was planning to make an application to the High Court in September 2003 to have their mortgage contract dealt with under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1994 (and amendments). He thought there was evidence that the entry and exit procedures from the loan breached statute law and European Union law. After The Times reported on Geoffrey Cooke's case in August 2003, they said they were inundated with letters, telephone calls and e-mails from readers who similarly ended up facing crippling debts. Shared Appreciation Mortgage Victims Action Group (SAMVIC) As the Financial Ombudsman Service was ineffective, shared-appreciation mortgage customers contacted their Members of Parliament and in 2003 created the Shared Appreciation Mortgage Victims Action Group (SAMVIC), a body of 500 homeowners who felt that they