M&S loan

sonicduke

Hi all

I recently needed a personal loan to replace my car. I researched the market primarily using Moneysavingexpert to find the best rate and the lowest penalty for paying back the loan early - I was also in the process of looking for a new job so there was a chance that I wouldn't need the money after all.

So, I got a loan with M&S at 6.9%. I borrowed 10k. All of which was very straight forward.

After just over the 14 days cooling off period (18 days to be precise) I was in the fortunate position that I no longer needed the money.

To cut a very long story short, I spent several hours on the phone with M&S after they announced that the interest that I would need to pay them for this very early cancellation was 10% of the total interested - the loan was for 36 months. That was around 130GBP - the monthly interest is less than 20GBP.

Now 4 weeks on I'm still battling with their completely inept customer services team – I even sent a letter to their complaints department over a week ago, of which they have no record.


So please beware anyone that has believed M&S' literature which very clearly shows that you pay 1 months interested (“or less”) if you cancel the loan early.


For those that are interested, I'll post the conclusion to my saga – they have committed to calling me on Monday morning with a resolution.


If anyone else has had a similar experience, please let me know how you got on...

opinions4u

[STRIKE]
How much did you borrow?

How much did you have to pay to clear the debt?

(apologies to the OP, but I am getting really frustrated at what seems like an increasing number of posts that give no end of the written word but leave out the basic figures that are needed for anybody to give educated comment)
[/STRIKE]Edited due to this poster's inability to read! Sorry sonic!

I'd estimate interest to be just under £60 a month at the start.

If you had the loan for a month and a day I'd expect you to pay double this in interest (roughly).

If you had the loan for less than a month, then just under £60 would be the right interest charge.

agrinnall

opinions4u wrote: »

How much did you borrow?

How much did you have to pay to clear the debt?

(apologies to the OP, but I am getting really frustrated at what seems like an increasing number of posts that give no end of the written word but leave out the basic figures that are needed for anybody to give educated comment)

While I agree with you that in too many cases the information needed to give sensible advice is missing I don't really think that is the case here. The OP has said that he borrowed £10,000 and that he had to pay around £130. He has confused the issue by thinking that monthly interest would have been £20, at 6.9% it's actually £57.50, but that's not really relevant to the debate on whether £130 is the correct amount.

chalkie99

Did you take a £10,000 personal loan at 6.9% - Total Repayable £11,064.60 or, did you take their car buying plan, £10,000 @6.9% with £4,000 deferred - Total repayable £11,441.92 ?

Did they actually say "there is a 10% charge" or is this some figure you have arrived at by working out their redemption quote?

How long did you actually have the loan? Forget the cooling off period and the day you realised you didn't need the loan any more. What is the actual number of days you had the money?

The problem is your figures don't quite stack up as the personal loan would involve interest of £29.57 per month (spread evenly over the 36 month period) and the "car payment plan" loan would be £40.05 interest per month (spread evenly over the 36 month period).

Your calculation of less than £20 per month interest has to be wrong so we would need answers to the above to give you a more precise reply.