Ford Finance / HFC Credit - Charges & PPP!

jooshy

Hope this is in the right forum, took ages looking for a car finance/hfc forum!

I've got a Fiesta on finance with Ford card which has been open and being repaid for the best part of 3yrs now. The repayment date is the 1st of the month, which is a total pain in the !!!! for me as my payday is the 20th. I have explained this to them on numerous occasions and asked them to move the due date for me or make some sort of arrangements as i cannot always make the payment on time. They have always refused and keep slapping me with a £25 late payment fee every other month for missing my monthly payment of £138.65 by a few days despite my efforts to address. The late charges total to £175 and i would like to do something about reclaiming these if possible as i have around £3,100 left on my credit and am trying to tie it up asap without overpaying.

Also while looking at my annual statement from Ford i noticed some interesting figures in the statement. When i took out the car they told me that the car (05 Fiesta ZS) was £8,000, and a part-ex for my old Saxo of £2,000 - so my credit agreement was according to my contract is £5,900 - amount repayable with apr of 16.9% is apparently £8,539?? YET my statement and contract for total amount repayable is £10,634!? Looking through the fine print it says that there is a charge for credit of £2,419? What the hell is this?

If necessary i will scan docs to help my case further. Please help as i am under the impression that this £2k charge is ridiculous, and should pretty have my car paid off!

Help please!

onlypaddy

jooshy wrote: »

.......The repayment date is the 1st of the month, which is a total pain in the !!!! for me as my payday is the 20th.

Why is this such a pain? 20th - 1st is 9 days minimum between pay day and your payment date. Do you spend your wages in that time?

jooshy wrote: »

.......Also while looking at my annual statement from Ford i noticed some interesting figures in the statement. When i took out the car they told me that the car (05 Fiesta ZS) was £8,000, and a part-ex for my old Saxo of £2,000 - so my credit agreement was according to my contract is £5,900 - amount repayable with apr of 16.9% is apparently £8,539?? YET my statement and contract for total amount repayable is £10,634!? Looking through the fine print it says that there is a charge for credit of £2,419? What the hell is this?

Statements are usually set out like this - amount of credit, and interest over the life of the loan is given as a 'charge for credit'. To know if this is correct we need to know the duration of the loan and the interest rate.

jooshy

Ah right OK, i will scan the contract up later and we'll see what's what.

Consumerist

OK. As an example, if you took out a loan of £5,900.00 over 60 months at 16.9% then your repayments would be £142.59 per month

Total repayments = 60 x £142.59 = £8,555.40
Subtract loan amount : £5,900.00
Charge for credit : £8,555.40 - £5,900.00 = £2,655.40

In your case, (60 x £138.65), £8,319.00 - £5,900.00 = £2,419.00 is the charge for credit.
i.e. the charge for credit is included in your repayments.

Don't quite know where the £10,634 has come from. This might be something to do with charges on late payments but you need to ask the lender. Sneaky PPI ?

CHR15

I'm struggling to see why you are incurring late payment fees.

You seem to get paid in good time to ensure the money is available in the bank.

Can you not set up a DD/SO to send the money on the 24/25th of the Month?? plenty of time for your pay to clear and plenty of time for the payment to clear.

I can't see any possibility of reclaiming late fees from the info you have given.

onlypaddy

just as an aside - this seems to be pretty identical in theme to your other thread - the payment date is no good for you as you are paid on the 20th. Is the real issue an overspending and budgeting issue?

LeeSouthEast

This will sound a little blunt, for which I apologise in advance, but the date the payment is taken should be irrelevant, if you're managing your money well. I have some DD's taken on the 19th (and payday for me is also the 20th), but knowing they are coming out, I always ensure I leave sufficient to pay them. The other point of your post as others have said is pretty standard, and hopefully correct (we can check with the details someone else said we needed above). It's just so you know in black and white

Consumerist

Was notice of the late-payment charges included in your finance contract or since ?

If not then Consumer Direct (Tel: 08454 04 05 06) may be able to give you some adivice.

Arrears notices
If you fall behind with payments by more than a certain amount, the lender will be required to send you an arrears notice from 1 October 2008. This must include an OFT information sheet [http://www.oft.gov.uk/advice_and_resources/resource_base/legal/cca/CCA2006/information/]. A notice will also be required if the lender imposes a default sum – for example, because you are late with a payment.

If information is not provided
If the lender fails to provide information when he is required to under the law, he is not entitled to enforce the agreement, or to charge interest or default sums, until the correct notice has been sent. If in doubt, speak to a Consumer Direct adviser.

This might give you some leverage during any negotiations.

jooshy

Thanks for the advice guys but the main issues is this £10,600 and not the late chgs so i'd appreciate more help with that when i get the contract up later.

Consumerist

I have a hunch about this £10,634.

Your instalments of £138.65 and total repayment of £8,319 are consistent with a 60-month loan. Is your loan for 60 months ?

I seem to remember that CCAs are required to indicate the total repayments on an illustrative example loan at the same APR. All my credit-card Ts&Cs seem to have one too.

Since a total repayment of £10,634 is entirely inconsistent with any of the other figures you have posted, is it possible that this is just an example repayment (over, say, 7 or 10 years) which they are quoting to comply with the regs ?

Common_Sense_2

The 10k figure will be the total amount payable (for the goods) which will include the deposit (or in this case the 2k px value for your old saxo), so we have, loan (5.9k) plus charge for credit (2k interest) plus the px value (2k) and voila - there is your 10k.

Understandably the way that companies have to show things on annual statements and agreement docs can be confusing!