Can I make a formal complaint?

peneloperigby

I'm very upset on behalf of my sister. She was involved in a serious accident last year which left her in a coma and later with hearing and other motor difficulties. Because of all this she ended up in arrears with Littlewoods, she has no other debts at all and is very good generally with money.

I was sorting out becoming her representative in her affairs when she started receiving threatening letters/calls from Nationwide Debt Recovery. On the spot, and worried, she agreed to repay well beyond her capabilities.

Today she decided that she couldn't cope with this (after somehow keeping up the payments for 2 months). As she has to go back into hospital. She called Littlewoods who referred her to Nationwide so she called them. They referred her back to Littlewoods who then referred her back to Nationwide! At this point she was quite frustrated as you can imagine. The lady she spoke to in Nationwide was extremely rude to her and as a result she was left in tears. She is already suffering from depression as a result of her accident and the impact it has had on her life. I am disgusted that this woman, who fully knew my sisters situation could be so unkind.

I also feel that Nationwide/Littlewoods were deliberately trying to impede her from sorting out her repayments so that they could continue to charge astronomic fees for every letter/phone call etc.

Shouldn't there be some kind of system where vulnerable people are treated fairly? Can I make a complaint to someone?

GeorgeUK

I would write an official complaint to both head offices - they should know who is dealing with the debt.

For solving the debt, your sister should write to Nationwide with an offer of payment, highlighting what has happened to date. Tell her not to discuss it over the phone. There are some template letters available to stop calls if she needs them.

Also get her to reclaim all charges that have been applied to the account. They are not allowed to make profit from these charges so if more than £2, i would definately claim it back.

peneloperigby

Thanks for your advice.

I didn't know she could claim the charges back, I will look into that. I suppose she just wanted to sort it out asap and thats why she called them. They have arranged a new agreement, which was unbelievably hard to do. The new agreement will reduce her minimum payments but she will be charged a further sum of interest.

Apparently when she agreed the minimum payments in the first place (it was several hundred pounds a month!) she didn't realise she was only allowed to do this once with Nationwide. This was technically counted as a reduction in payments as they had previously been demanding the entire balance. She was not made aware of this and I think she just agreed to anything to get them off the phone at that time.

Its not such a huge debt and I think we'll be able to manage it, I'm just very annoyed at the behaviour of the company. I think its actually quite predatory as they KNOW she was in a serious accident and is vulnerable.

It just ticks me off! :mad: