GE Money problems

injaroc

Hi I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this so please feel free to move it if it isnt. Thank you.

I'm asking on behalf of my MIL She bought an item from Comet about 5 years ago and took out the pay over time offer which was supplied by GE Money.

A while after setting it up she missed a couple of payments which she admits to and agrees that she was late paying them. However this week she received a Notice of Default from them even though her payments have been on time for over a year. She phoned them up and they said that yes her payments had been on time lately but because her agreement was supposed to be paid off by last month (the original amount) and because of the late payment charges not being paid yet she was technically in arrears and there was nothing they could do to help her unless she paid it all off now.
These charges add up to almost £400 which the man said were late payment charges and interest on those charges!!!!!
She has been paying £26 a month and now wants the remaining balance immediately.

My question I guess is can they default her for having outstanding late payment charges and expect her to pay it all immediately or do they have to let her have time to pay this?

I will ofc be sending a letter to try to reclaim these charges as that must be a heck of a lot of charges for it to be that much money!! She was in such shock as she was not expecting that much in charges, as she never received any statements or letters to say she had been charged during the whole 5 years.

injaroc

Ok an update to this. After numerous phone calls where people have been giving her conflicting information they say this:
In the middle of 2006 she missed a payment and the late payment charges are 1 for every month since this because every payment made was technically for the month before. Now we don't know how that happened and we've never had a letter from them informing her of a missed payment or that all payments were late etc nothing at all.

Now they have passed it on to their in house DCA even though they said they wouldn't as long as monthly payments were made- and they were.

I don't really know how to help her next with this, should I proceed as asking back for unlawful late payment charges?

Any help would be appreciated.

standupguy

Sounds like the first thing is to get your mil to contact them and ask for a full statement of account detailing all late payment interest and charges.

£1pm late payment interest can only add up to circa £50 from what you say?

Once you have the statement - check any charges or lpi against the terms and conditions on the agreement - have they applied the correct amounts?

Next, even if amounts added correspond with the original agreement then you may still complain if they could be deemed to be unfair.

One step at a time may be best - first get the full statement