I Need Consumer Revenge

---lee---

Abridged version (honest) . Sorry this post is long, but the situation is complicated and I would like some advise.

Ordered a fridge through a high street retailer with 0% credit for a year. Cancelled the order the next day and of course never received the goods.

Retailer was satisfied that I had cancelled the order and never received the goods but the finance company started chasing me for the payments for it a year later.

Naturally, I explained the situation to the finance company several times, but they continued to harass me for months with calls from India every other day.

In the early stages, I tried to get the retailer and finance company to talk to each other but this was blocked by the finance company hiding behind the data protection act. The finance company suggested that I go into the retail store, ring them from there and give permission for them to discuss my case. Even when I did that, they still continued to harass me.

A few months on I got a call from the finance company (this time from someone who could speak English). I explained the situation to her and she insisted that I would have to make payment. She told me all about the late payment penalties that they had imposed on my account. I told her I was not paying a penny as I did not owe them anything. She got very annoyed and told me I had best seek advise from a solicitor and that they were going to damage my credit record and default the loan.

This was the final straw for me. I called the retail store and after spending about 3 days on the phone (not continuously) I managed to push my complaint up to a high level. A senior manager at head office raised a manual receipt which showed that the transaction had been cancelled and sent me and the finance company a copy. This was exactly what I had requested when the problems had started!

I then got a letter from the finance company to say that the account had been cancelled and closed. No apology of course.

I wrote a letter of complaint to the finance company. The gist of my complaint was that this could have been resolved immediately if they had only engaged in dialog with the retailer in the first place. Instead of throwing everything they had at trying to collect from me. I also complained about the high level of harassment and the attempts to extort money that I never owed. Finally, I referred to the last call that I had which had mentioned damaging my credit history.

In the reply I received, I was basically told it was my fault for not providing the cancellation number (I never had a cancellation number until I was sent the receipt from head office and they knew this). I did get an apology for what was said to me in the last call (they had listened to the tapes). I was also assured that my credit history would not be affected.

I got a credit report recently and yep you guessed it, despite their assurances, they gave me 3 black marks before marking the account as settled. 1, 2 then 3 months in arrears. The only blotch on my otherwise perfect credit history for credit that I never even had.

I sent them a polite letter 3 weeks ago with a copy of their assurance that my credit history would not be affected as well as copies of the history that they recorded with Experian and Equifax. I’m still waiting for a reply. I know that they have to correct the entries as they are clearly wrong and that if they don’t, I have recourse to have the credit reference agencies correct them.

Sorry, I know this post is really long. Now for the question. This company (the finance one) has really annoyed me. The level of harassment and their attitude toward me during this whole sorry mess was unbelievable. Then to top it off, they mess up on my credit file despite assurances to the contrary.

I could just let the whole thing drop, but I feel the need for revenge :mad: There must be some form of legal action or similar I can take against them. At the very least, they could have offered to pay for my expenses in sorting this mess out. Anyone out there got any similar experiences or can offer advise?

Lee.

System

Hi Lee - Welcome to the forum!

If you want legal advice, try https://www.clsdirect.org.uk

If you want revenge then why not name and shame them on here - I'm sure people would want to steer clear of a hopeless retailer.

Re your Credit File, you can go thru procedures (see info that came with your report) to have incorrect info removed from your file, but I'd presume it'd take a while. You can also have an explanatory note added to that file entry so that anyone searching your file can see why you appeared to be 3 months late on that a/c.

Regards
Dave

---lee---

bham-dave wrote:

Hi Lee - Welcome to the forum!

Thank you!

If you want legal advice, try https://www.clsdirect.org.uk

Some light reading for me for the rest of the night and the next few days.

If you want revenge then why not name and shame them on here - I'm sure people would want to steer clear of a hopeless retailer.

Actually, the retailer were not to bad, although not being into S&M, I would not care to repeat the experience.

If you like guessing games, their name is the same as the plural of a very popular cuisine/take away in the plural, but spelled differently.

If you don't they were Currys

It was the finance company that were the problem though – like banging your head against a brick wall. They were HFC bank, grr :mad: :mad:

frosty

Hi Lee,we had a problem with hfc,we purchased a fridge from currys on o% for 12 months(we had to pay the balance in full at the end of the 12 months)I was a bit careless with our bank statements and I had not noticed that they were taking £28.00 a month out of our account,they had been doing this for about 8 months,when I phoned them they were not very helpful,after a lot of hassle they did send us a cheque for the money they had taken out of our account,the strange thing is my husband said he did not remember filling in a DD form at currys.Like you we got no apology.

Loretta

We keep hearing this over and over again. ----Lee---- has done nothing wrong but has had all the hassle trying to sort out something with no help from the people who made the mistake. It is their job to sort this out, and presumably they are trained although you can only wonder about this from reading this board, but Lee has had to try and deal with this, even thought it is not his job and he would have no knowledge of how their system works, although now he probably knows more than the employees of this company

I wish we could find a way of turning this round so that these firms have to do the running around and have the agravation

YorkshireBoy

Loretta_Tucker wrote:

We keep hearing this over and over again. ----Lee---- has done nothing wrong...

To be fair though, Lee entered into a contract with HFC by signing the credit agreement.

Yes, he notified Curry's he didn't want the fridge - but he should possibly have done more to ensure the credit agreement was also terminated. A phone call or letter to HFC may have prevented all this trouble now.

Also, I'd be very surprised if the need to contact HFC under their 14 day "cooling-off" period wasn't expressly detailed in his credit agreement.

Having said that, I tend to agree that Curry's could have done more to help.

jobbingmusician

Why not send the finance company a bill for all the costs you incurred in sorting this out, plus an amount for umm... well I suppose it might be defamation of character as they have blackened your credit record. (Cls might be able to help with this bit).

Then, if they don't pay, take them to small claims court for the money and reclaim everything you can possibly think of!

Lawbag_2

HFC are part of the HSBC group for the record.

It all goes to show, its all about keeping the documentation, and putting everything in writing!

My favourite letters to get at the moment are demands for payment from companies who I have Direct Debits set up with! - Most recently my daughter's new nursery!

---lee---

YorkshireBoy wrote:

To be fair though, Lee entered into a contract with HFC by signing the credit agreement.

Yes, he notified Curry's he didn't want the fridge - but he should possibly have done more to ensure the credit agreement was also terminated. A phone call or letter to HFC may have prevented all this trouble now.

Also, I'd be very surprised if the need to contact HFC under their 14 day "cooling-off" period wasn't expressly detailed in his credit agreement.

Having said that, I tend to agree that Curry's could have done more to help.

The way I understand it (after the event) is that Currys system should have cancelled the whole process automatically when I cancelled the agreement but in the event something went wrong.

When I called to cancel, I did ask if anything further needed to be done and was told no – I also mentioned the credit agreement.

HFC did imply that it was all Currys fault. I can accept that they made an error in the first instance by not notifying HFC, but bear in mind that from the first phone call (and every subsequent one), I told HFC what the situation was and they basically did not believe me and instead of working with me or Currys to sort it out, they just wanted the money off me!

I found it surreal that I could have a conversation with HFC for 10 minutes explaining the circumstances and that I did not owe anything and it would conclude with how was I going to pay the money that I owed them.

I wish I had taped the phone calls.

---lee---

Lawbag wrote:

HFC are part of the HSBC group for the record.

It all goes to show, its all about keeping the documentation, and putting everything in writing!

My favourite letters to get at the moment are demands for payment from companies who I have Direct Debits set up with! - Most recently my daughter's new nursery!

I agree with that. I normally stick to writing for everything and since this incident, I've returned to doing exactly that. It only takes a bit of time and the cost of a stamp to knock up a decent letter.

I can also understand how people can make mistakes when they are in debt and starting to run into problems. When a single creditor can be so harassing and unhelpful, I hate to think what a pack can do.

A summary of my lessons learned:

1. Keep everything in writing.
2. Record and log any phone calls.
3. Steer well clear of HFC.

youngandreckless

I had a similar problem with DFS. They gave me the wrong credit period - 18 mths instead of a year, so asked me to sign new paperwork to rectify the error and ASSURED me the old agreement that was incorrect had been cancelled. Of course you guessed it they started to charge me for the sofa after a year as arranged and then again after 18 months. It took phonecalls, faxes and tears from me over several weeks - I was threatened with court the lot for not paying the second agreement on one set of furniture and I felt utterly desperate by the end of it. Eventually I managed to get DFS to talk to the finance company and it was resolved. My experience was the other way round - finance company helpful as much as they could but DFS terrible.
I sympathise Lee. It's not so much they made a mistake, its the fact you're treated like a criminal for trying to straighten it out and not paying what you don't owe. I'd like to know how much money I spent trying to get it all sorted....