What are Egg 'Collections Specialists'?

[Deleted User]

A few points you should note.

Collections is where your account will be passed to if you are in arrears and/or overlimit, i would be highly suspicious of somebody calling you from Collections if you are up to date as you say you are. As a business it would prove a pointless exercise to call you and say "you were late paying, dont do it again..bye."

None the less, if you have been asked by your card provider to call them, then that is what you should do, its common courtesy, they are providing you a service, not trying to "Harrass" you.

With regards to the fee, all it would have taken was a call to them and suggest to them as it was a rare occurance, would they mind waiving the fee, 9 times out of 10 they will agree to it. Though someone has pointed out you could claim it back, this is not the case as £12 is deemed a fair charge now.

Most Lenders will request means and ways of getting in contact with you, usually this includes your address and two contact numbers, if you are unhappy with people calling you on a withheld number then get withheld call barring activated through your phone provider. When you said you dont answer calls from withheld number all i can picture is you hiding behind the sofa when the phone rings:rotfl:

I hope you get your problems resolved soon, it does somewhat confuse me when i hear of these problems, Egg or any other company isnt interested in stories etc, all they care for is the money that is owed, if its not paid on time they will call you.

JesseJames_2

They have now obviously blocked your card since you have not phoned them.

While I think that Egg are being over the top on this occasion, I also think you are being over the top by not phoning them and making this drag on.

They too had blocked my card just before Christmas when I had a few largeish transactions in one day, and was asked to phone them back from the message on my answer machine.
A quick call to them and they asked me to verify the transactions and the card was unblocked there and then.

Chris2000

bargains83 wrote: »

I'm not been funny but I thought normally when you went overlimit on a credit card you get next months statement and you find a charge at the bottom of it of £12 - £15 along with the interest for your mistake.

That sounds more like what happens for late payments. For overlimit, the T&C will almost certainly state that any amount due over the credit limit must be repaid immediately. As previously mentioned, they will include transactions that have been authorised but not yet debited to the account in this calculation.

Not sure why they chased payment after the account was brought back under the limit, but ignoring the calls is not going to help and could ultimately lead to a demand for full repayment.

Swans1912

No matter how ill I was, I would have called Egg to sort this out! It is only a couple of quid! If you had got in contact that second they may have written any over-limit fee off and you could have avoided the bad credit file stamp!

bargains83

iKennett wrote: »

No matter how ill I was, I would have called Egg to sort this out! It is only a couple of quid! If you had got in contact that second they may have written any over-limit fee off and you could have avoided the bad credit file stamp!

Being overlimit doesn't cause a 'stamp' as such, though other credit companies searching my file at the time the account was overlimit would see the account was over the allowed maximum of the account and this would go against me. Once it is payed back its not on record for other lenders to see like repayment history so is irrelevant.

bargains83

Supercharge_Me wrote: »

A few points you should note.

Collections is where your account will be passed to if you are in arrears and/or overlimit, i would be highly suspicious of somebody calling you from Collections if you are up to date as you say you are. As a business it would prove a pointless exercise to call you and say "you were late paying, dont do it again..bye."

None the less, if you have been asked by your card provider to call them, then that is what you should do, its common courtesy, they are providing you a service, not trying to "Harrass" you.

With regards to the fee, all it would have taken was a call to them and suggest to them as it was a rare occurance, would they mind waiving the fee, 9 times out of 10 they will agree to it. Though someone has pointed out you could claim it back, this is not the case as £12 is deemed a fair charge now.

Most Lenders will request means and ways of getting in contact with you, usually this includes your address and two contact numbers, if you are unhappy with people calling you on a withheld number then get withheld call barring activated through your phone provider. When you said you dont answer calls from withheld number all i can picture is you hiding behind the sofa when the phone rings:rotfl:

I hope you get your problems resolved soon, it does somewhat confuse me when i hear of these problems, Egg or any other company isnt interested in stories etc, all they care for is the money that is owed, if its not paid on time they will call you.

It wasn't really a problem when they were calling, I have cordless phones and if I don't want to take the call you can just press the red button and the phone stops ringing but continues to ring at their end. As I said the big issue was that even though I was over the limit, a payment came into the account and was cleared on the same day the transaction taking me over the limit hit the account, they only chose to pester to talk to me AFTER the account was all back square.

The issue with communication with Egg is a nightmare. Very rarely lately with them will a transaction go through smoothly, I wouldn't dare use a card issued by Egg for any transaction other than ones over the phone or online for fear of embarrasment as they seem to treat every other transaction as fraudulent, they refuse payments and then an automated computer phones you to confirm the transactions. There are plenty of other threads on here regarding this issue. If you write to them they take months to reply. As an online bank having a decent secure messaging system they'd want to talk to you properly using that but yet they'd rather use the old fashioned dog and bone instead.

I have secure messaged them today outlining my disgust at the attitude they have taken over this issue including declining transactions over the christmas period, refusing to pay my internet subscription for 2 months now that has always been paid with this card for years. The fact the account was put back right within days of me going over the limit and then they chose to start hounding me with several calls a day from collections after all this. Said that I had always paid and will continue to pay my direct debit on time and felt I managed my account well generally then basically asked if they would lift the block on my account or if I need to move my internet subscription elsewhere.

I have no Idea why they have blocked my Egg card as well as my Egg money but if they refuse to remove the block or still expect me to speak to the collections department then I will just ignore them, continue with the direct debits then close the accounts. I am absolutely not having some nosey hypocrite at the other end of the phone poking about through my finances. If they think im in financial difficulty they aren't very good at detecting problems & want to take a look at the people who have gone into arrears and do more to get them to pay up. Pity they don't get the MD at Egg to run for Prime Minister and save this doomed country a few bob. :rotfl:

bargains83

Chris2000 wrote: »

That sounds more like what happens for late payments. For overlimit, the T&C will almost certainly state that any amount due over the credit limit must be repaid immediately. As previously mentioned, they will include transactions that have been authorised but not yet debited to the account in this calculation.

Not sure why they chased payment after the account was brought back under the limit, but ignoring the calls is not going to help and could ultimately lead to a demand for full repayment.

It was all repaid immediately, on the same day the transactions which took me over the limit hit the statement a much larger payment clearing it all along with any charges or interest also did. If you want to be picky about clearance then it was put straight within within days at worst, The phone calls and letters started 7 days after all this.

They cannot demand full repayment just for not answering phone calls, there is no clause in the T&C's states this. Overdrafts usually come with a term which states they can ask for the money back at ANY time and it must be repaid in full immediately but credit cards usually have no such terms. At best they can ask for the money to be repaid as per the terms of the credit agreement. If I was dealing with a reasonable, helpful, friendly human company I would gladly speak to them but If I had to speak to these idiots the poor call centre worker would feel my wrath and get some abuse which I don't want to inflict on them as they only work there and are not the people ulitimately causing me problems.

YorkshireBoy

bargains83 wrote: »

Overdrafts usually come with a term which states they can ask for the money back at ANY time and it must be repaid in full immediately but credit cards usually have no such terms. At best they can ask for the money to be repaid as per the terms of the credit agreement.

Condition 19.2 (of the Egg Card, but presume Egg Money is the same) seems to suggest otherwise. However, it depends on their definition of "serious".

bargains83

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

Condition 19.2 (of the Egg Card, but presume Egg Money is the same) seems to suggest otherwise. However, it depends on their definition of "serious".

Oh come on, that clearly states if your bankrupt, die or otherwise fail to adhere to the agreement. Whenever have you heard of a Cc company demanding full repayment for refusing to take their calls. if they demand it back I can pay it them in full immediately but if they got any funnier i would arrange payment of £1 a month with frozen interest through a solicitor. That suits me better than the £100 a month I'm paying at the moment on £1200 with interest.

YorkshireBoy

bargains83 wrote: »

Oh come on, that clearly states if your bankrupt, die or otherwise fail to adhere to the agreement. Whenever have you heard of a Cc company demanding full repayment for refusing to take their calls.

I deliberately left out that bit when I quoted you. I was merely pointing out that they can ask for immediate payment....as I say, depending on their definition of "serious".

I agree that returning the account to order almost immediately (as you did) would not be classed as "serious" though.

Have you managed to get the cards unblocked yet?