Email from Cahoot re Flexi Loan

milliemonster

My limit was reduced by £200! (hardly worth it)

clarab_3

danthemoneysavingman wrote: »

Great ideas? What exactly is it you want to do?

It does indeed appear that Santander are trying to take away all of the things about cahoot that are great to get everyone to leave so they can close it down. Sad day. It'll be 0% interest on the current account next.

Really what I want to do is any way of getting it on a better interest rate now its one redeeming feature has disapeared.

Im happy to be paying it back but the interest is crippling.

Badass

First time poster. Be gentle.

I had a £9000 limit on my Cahoot loan which overnight has been reduced to £1554. This has irritated me greatly as I normally use the loan to boost my current account during expensive months, as the month after Christmas tends to be - hence the whole point I set up this FLEXIBLE loan in the first place!

Has anyone heard any offical response from Cahoot/Santander regarding this? Has anyone complained? Is what they're doing all above board?

fiscalfool

Hi Badass and welcome.

From what I understand, and I'm prepared to be corrected :

They can change whatever they like as they are giving more than 30 days notice.

However you can go to the ombudsman if they hike the interest rates unfairly, Im not sure you can go to them for changing the product to be something different to what you originally bought into.

I too am annoyed that I signed up for a flexible loan, which is no longer flexible, but still has the crippling interest rates!

SeeSay

1st post also so this issue must be important for many.

I've had a £3000 drop. I'm annoyed about it too. Checked out all my financial products and I think I'll still be able to pay all my debt off.

It's taught me two things...

1) I need to have a couple of grand in my current account to allow a flexible load like the Cahoot one I used to depend on.
2) This particular loan now has low priority as it's a dead pit. Be aware chaps that some have a £50 or 21% which ever is lower enforced for min payments. So you may not feel the real benefit of paying off once you've hit that £50 mark.

I asked them if they was going to decrease the % since the loan is now inflexiable.

They sent this in reply:-

Thank you for contacting cahoot in Coventry.

Rates on our flexible loan accounts are not due to change when the withdrawal option is removed. The rates on these accounts are still comparable with other loans on the market.

Please note that you can apply for a fixed loan with another lender in order to pay off your cahoot loan.

Kind Regards,

*sigh*

fiscalfool

Guess they really are trying to get rid of the business in any which way they can.

SeeSay

Either that or cash in on all the money people owe them

System

For some unknown reason I was £14 in credit on my account. Within a day of transferring that out and my balance reducing to zero the credit limit followed suit, effectively killing the account.

Badass

I've sent them a message via their website (apart from the phone is there a better way?) asking that they reinstate my limit for 30 days to give me sufficient time to reorganise my financial affairs.

It seems unfair that they can make such a huge cut with absolutely no warning whatsoever. This can't be right surely?

SeeSay

I agree with you completely Badass. Let us know how you get on asking that. For me it wasn't too bad but I can imagine it's going to hurt a few people quite badly.