Sainsbury Personal Loan

slicsav

Has anyone had experience of trying to reach an agreement outside of the initial terms and conditions of a loan. ie. in financial difficulty and freezing interest/reducing payments?

I have a loan with Sainsburys and have sent them a financial statement explaing why I will be unable to meet the agreed monthly payments.

I've received a letter telling me to get in touch which I did last night. I was surprised to find that the operator did not have access to my letter and their answer was to infact transfer my current loan over to a fresh loan and extend the terms, or to go into a default status and be transferred over to their debt management team. I've never defaulted on a payment and have always paid the correct amounts when required.

She also told me that if I was extra helpful with my answers they (the debt service) would look at me more favourably. Basically I'd signed the contract and they weren't obliged to help in any way; and that loans were different to credit cards.

The loan is unsecured.

GeorgeUK

I think you may need to be careful here.

You have an existing agreement that has not been breached yet. Is it possible to ask for a payment holiday or is this going to be a long term problem you have?

1 Transferring the loan to another loan and extending the term - this will increase you costs in the long term. Are you in a position financially that this would benefit you or are the payments you would be able to make going to be too low for them to consider? Did they say whether the rate would be the same or if it would be a higher rate? Was your original loan made before April 2007?

2 If you are unable to meet the payments, then you will go into default. That will be when the debt management team get involved to try to get you to pay as much as you can.

Don't know what she means in that loans are different to credit cards??

Do you have payment protection insurance on the loan?
Was this missold? If so you could try to reclaim.

Have you posted up a SOA incase there is a way for us to reduce your expenditure?