Credit Card Problems (Capital One)

benjamin_4

I'm sorry that all figures are approximate, but here is the situation:

My mother got into a mess with her Capital One (standard) card around 18 months ago. The credit limit is somewhere around 1500 pounds. It was the common story of ending up slightly over the limit only for the charges to spiral out of control. She went on a 6 month payment plan, paying 67 pounds per month. All payments were made on time, but at the end of the period she was 3 pounds below where she started! Having queried Capital One about this, she was told that this period was just 'breathing space' and not intended to bring the balance down at all. Amazing how they could place her on a payment plan without that information!

In the last year her financial situation has improved. She has consistently paid between 100 and 200 pounds for almost a year, and yet she is STILL over the 1500 credit limit. We estimate that maybe 1000 pounds has been paid off a 1600 pounds balance, but Capital One insist that every payment she has made has counted as 'late' due to the areas. They slap charges on like there is no tomorrow!

My question is, if we come up with some definite figures (something in the region of 1000 regularly paid of a 1700 limit, bringing us down by maybe 200 pounds), then do we have any redress? Could the citizens advice, trading standards, or someone in the media do anything about this blatant rip off?!

This company clearly do not want people to get out of their mess!

Oh, and to get the figures I have asked her to request 2 years of statements (fair enough, she should have been more organised here.). I'm betting that they can't supply them or charge 10 pounds a page. Couldn't we request them under the data protection act or something like that?

daveboy

Nice to see people understand the Data Protection Act. Not.

benjamin_4

FYI. A large part of the Data Protection Act involves the right of access to personal data.

Subject to the following provisions of this section [...] an individual is entitled [...] to have communicated to him in an intelligible form [...] the information constituting any personal data of which that individual is the data subject.

Read up on it. It would indeed be nice to see more people understanding the data protection act.

daveboy

If you want that information under the Data Protection Act then all companies are going to have to keep all details of all transactions forever. Supermarkets would have to keep an electronic record of each transaction in case someone decides they want to go back to the past.

Requesting a statement doesn't fall under the Act. Even the Freedom of Information Act wouldn't cover it. The charge applied is to cover the cost to the company in manually sending them out. The chances of going back two years in my opinion are zero.

I always wonder why companies are blamed for an individuals inability to deal with money.

Reaper

Some not very helpful replies there.

First the Data Proetection Action does cover past statements. It covers any information they have on you in electronic form. I remember articles exposing how some building societies were making huge charges for past statements, but if you uttered the magic word "Data Proection Act" you could suddenly get all your statements going as far back as their records went for £10.

You question is really about managing debt. You should start by reading Martin's article here. In it you will find references to free agencies which will work through her finances and help reorganise them, even phoning up and negotiating with the companies on her behalf. eg https://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk, https://www.payplan.co.uk, https://www.cccs.co.uk

Having done some reading if you have any questions head for the Loans and Debts forums where there are some helpful people who give good advice.

Essentially it is vital to get the money off the credit card and into a cheaper form of borrowing if at all possible. Otherwise, as you have found, the repayments are never going to get the capital down.

deemy2004

benjamin wrote:

I'm sorry that all figures are approximate, but here is the situation:

My mother got into a mess with her Capital One (standard) card around 18 months ago. The credit limit is somewhere around 1500 pounds. It was the common story of ending

Since the dataprotection bit has been answered..... I think ?


I doubt you will have any redress, because as you say she has gone over her credit limit, and therefore the terms and conditions would show the monthly interest rate charge.

The only leeway she may have is with the penalty charges i.e. £20 per letter ? .... maybe. But I doubt she can do anythign about the interest charge itself.

What she needs to do is try and transfer the debt to a 0% card, which having gone over her limit is going to be a hard thing to do. Since were talking about your mother, why don't you do her a favour and pay off the debt and ask her to pay you monthly to the value of the debt, problem solved. (don't forget to cut up the card afterwards).

jonesMUFCforever

I can confirm that under the Data Protection Act the maximum any financial services company can charge is £10.
Eric

InsuranceLiability

...and I can confirm that a Credit Card company has to keep no more than 3 of your last statements and in most cases they keep no more than 6

InsuranceLiability

The reason your credit card company would not hold copies of YOUR statements after 6 months is that data storage costs money

Galstonian

I don't think it is about whether they keep a record, it is about whether it is easily (i.e. cheaply) accessible. Data is archived and quite possibly kept forever but if it is copied to a long term media (like tape or optical disk though these solutions change all the time) then shipped to a fire safe vault in a different building from the data centre then surely a £10 charge is quite reasonable?