Is this allowed??

beccak_2

Hello, I would be grateful for any help. I took out a cahoot flexible loan in 2002 at an interest rate of 7.4% This type of loan has now been discontinued, although I do still have an outstanding balance. Cahoot has now put my interest rate up to 21%. I have never missed a payment but when I spoke to them I was told, due to the terms and conditions they could put the rates up whenever they like. I would never have taken out this loan had I known it would be like this and I also have no other means of paying it off. Any help/advise would be very welcome.

blue_haddock

If it states in the terms and conditions that they can change the interest rate then yes they can. Surely if you have had the loan for 8 years you should be close to paying it off?

halifax71

blue_haddock wrote: »

If it states in the terms and conditions that they can change the interest rate then yes they can. Surely if you have had the loan for 8 years you should be close to paying it off?

Not entirely true. Terms have to be fair and transparant.

http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/before_you_buy/think_of/unfair-contracts

Also http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/business_leaflets/unfair_contract_terms/oft143.pdf

I'm tackling my bank on this point, it's not easy and the regulators won't help. The OP will need to go to court for a ruling.

[Deleted User]

the clue is in the original post "flexible loan"

immoral_angeluk

woodbine wrote: »

the clue is in the original post "flexible loan"

Yep.. that's essentially it. They call it flexible for a reason. They can change the interest rate as and when, with the required notice obviously.

CLAPTON

sadly cahoot are a well known lot of crooks; in a long line of dubious financial institutions that set out to mislead and cheat .... pension mis-selling, PPI mis-selling, endless saving a/c with decent rates that sudddenly reduce their rates and get replaced by a similar sounding products and sadly cahoot loans that had very good rates for the first year or so and then hiked them up.

However they are probably legal so you only real option is to find an alternative lower cost loan and pay this off.

27col

I would imagine that the word flexible when applied to this loan, means that it is flexible as far as Cahoot are concerned. But not as far as the borrower is concerned.

beccak_2

Thankyou for your replies. The reason it was called a flexible loan was the fact that you could borrow more as and when you needed to up to a credit limit, kinda like a credit card. This is the reason it is not paid off yet, as I have needed from time to time to use it. It is 'funny' now that I have now reached my limit, that the interest rate has shot up. I think my best bet is to try and get a fixed rate loan to take care of it.

CHR15

No such thing as free money.

This loan obviously gave you some freedom and flexibility in the past, moreso than you would have had from any "standard" type of loan.

This is the payback time, you had the good times, now the bad times have arrived.

There is an argument that the Interest rate could have gone down, but that was never going to happen!!

I agreee getting a "normal" loan to repay this lot off is the best bet, always assuming you can get one!

ILW

beccak wrote: »

Thankyou for your replies. The reason it was called a flexible loan was the fact that you could borrow more as and when you needed to up to a credit limit, kinda like a credit card. This is the reason it is not paid off yet, as I have needed from time to time to use it. It is 'funny' now that I have now reached my limit, that the interest rate has shot up. I think my best bet is to try and get a fixed rate loan to take care of it.

I think it is funny that when the credit is available, the need to spend seems to arise.

miss_missy

beccak wrote: »

Hello, I would be grateful for any help. I took out a cahoot flexible loan in 2002 at an interest rate of 7.4% This type of loan has now been discontinued, although I do still have an outstanding balance. Cahoot has now put my interest rate up to 21%. I have never missed a payment but when I spoke to them I was told, due to the terms and conditions they could put the rates up whenever they like. I would never have taken out this loan had I known it would be like this and I also have no other means of paying it off. Any help/advise would be very welcome.

hi
im probably going to be hated for what im about to say but have to say it as im sick of hearing people complain about the cahoot flexible loan
when i went to cahoot to get my loan i looked at the flexible loan as i thought the idea was great i could spend, pay off some then spend some more, however as i read about it the thing that put me off was the fact that the apr was not fixed, and therefore it was more than likely to rise over the years
so i decided on the fixed rate loan and got 5.8% apr and have to say i have had no complaints with them i got exactly what i had signed upto

beccak you say if you had know the loan would be like this you would never have taken it out so did you not read about the loan? they didnt hide the fact the the apr was varible

sorry if i have offended anyone but people constant complain about cahoot because they took out a loan that they wanted because of the flexibility of it but dont like it when the company do something that was clearly stated was a possibility of this loan