Santander are now refunding interest payments on Cahoot flexible loan's

Herewego

I just called them this today told them everything and they have completed the forms and will post out for me to check and sign, I also mentioned how rubbish the letter was and the dodgy photocopy.
The call took no more than 5 minutes and if nothing comes from it at least i tried

MCSAVE

Hi folks, I've been following this thread for some time now and decided to join the forum and get involved. I've had a Flexi loan since 2003, paid it off a few times but still have a £3k left to pay. I wrote to Santander and received the generic knockback letter last week, along with the usual copies of T&C's. I sent my letter off to the FOS today and in case it helps anybody, this is the content *** In 2003 I took out a Flexible loan with a creditlimit of £10k with Cahoot, which was owned by Abbey National. The accountoffered the ability to draw down funds within the £10k limit without the needfor a further credit check. In October 2006 the account interest rate wasraised by the company in an unfair manner, these interest rises continuedunfairly. Santander bought Abbey National in 2009/2010. Santander continued to raisethe interest rate to the account's current level of 16.61%. Santander alsochanged the account to a "non flexible loan account" removing theability to withdraw funds, the account limit effectively reduced with therepayments I made and forcing the account in to a fixed loan condition.Unfortunately they did not let credit reference agencies know that as they toldthem that my account limit was still £10k, meaning that any other companylooking at my credit history would wrongly believe that I had access to fundsthat I did not, this had an adverse affect on me obtaining credit. I havereceived a generic response to my complaint, in which they state that thereason they raised the interest rates so high was to “ensure the product, withthe flexibility it offered to customers, could continue. “ They also state thatthe interest rate was “in line with other flexible variable loans that wereavailable" but the account is no longer flexible!**** I also handwrote some notes on the form as the text box limits the amount you can write. Good luck to everybody!!

Denza

FOS referral filed today.

Will update the thread with the results nearer Halloween, have a great Summer!

Aurora79

Hi All

I have taken everyone's adivce and I sent off an email complaint to Satander in January, they sent a letter saying they will look into it and come back to me following further investigations. I opened the loan for 5K in 2003 and I decided before Santander took over to pay a diredt debit of £200 per month to pay this back in 2005. I am still paying the loan off and have £1300 STILL outstanding. I wrote this all on my original complaint and after no response plus most of you recieving a "standard response letter" I thought I'd email again. My response email is as follows:-

Thank you for your email.

Regrettably we have not yet concluded our investigations and are therefore not in a position to provide you with our final response.

At this stage, I am unable to provide an expected date for resolution but as soon as we've completed our investigations, we will be in touch.

In the meantime you can refer your complaint to The Financial Ombudsman Service.

Regards

Executive Complaints Team

Santander UK plc, 201 Grafton Gate East, Milton Keynes, MK9 1AN (AHM245)

Should I contact the FOS or leave it for a while? I am in a position to pay off the remainder today so I will, but I wonder why I didn't recieve the standard response?

Angie

Denza

Aurora79 wrote: »

Should I contact the FOS or leave it for a while? I am in a position to pay off the remainder today so I will, but I wonder why I didn't recieve the standard response?

Angie

Personally I would hound Santy for their final response before going to the FOS, which is exactly what I did.

Unfortunately I have no doubt that it will be a standard rejection letter however there will then be no loose ends for your FOS referral with the letter in hand.

Also waiting for the official response will demonstrate both your goodwill and patience and their own patent disregard for FSA defined customer complaint handling rules and procedures.

Good luck.

Cell

Rejection finally received. Interestingly based solely on the terms of the contract allowing interest rate increases.

No reference to the alleged offer to transfer loans (which is as well, because there were none) or anything else which has been mentioned.

Denza

Hi Cell,

Indeed there was no "offer" to transfer loans but there was effectively an advert for Abbey Fixed Rate Loans which you, like me, could have been rejected for due in part to existing loan commitments (aka Cahoot Flexible Loan)!

This was explained to me by an Abbey Loan representative circa January 2007 even though I was trying to swap out the flexible friend for the fixed rate as advised.

Not to be outdone Santander, for their, part have subsequently refused to re-finance my loan on two separate occasions since.

In other news; now confirmed through my complaint and SAR returns, they hiked my rate from 20% to 21.94% in February 2010 with absolutely no notification and maintained "20.0000%" on my statements. Now maybe I am mistaken but I seem to recall something in the T&Cs regarding interest rate rise notifications!

I would urge other loan victims... sorry, customers... to double check their rate histories.

May the FOS be with you.

ronnie123_2

Cell wrote: »

Rejection finally received. Interestingly based solely on the terms of the contract allowing interest rate increases.

No reference to the alleged offer to transfer loans (which is as well, because there were none) or anything else which has been mentioned.

Cell, I had the exact same rejection letter yesterday - no mention of offering alternative loans etc, and was based entirely on the clause to vary the interest rates.


Looks like Satander are tightening up their story before the inevitable wave of FOS Complaints.



Ronnie

Cell

Denza wrote: »

Hi Cell,

In other news; now confirmed through my complaint and SAR returns, they hiked my rate from 20% to 21.94% in February 2010 with absolutely no notification and maintained "20.0000%" on my statements. Now maybe I am mistaken but I seem to recall something in the T&Cs regarding interest rate rise notifications!

I would urge other loan victims... sorry, customers... to double check their rate histories.

May the FOS be with you.

I am reasonably sure that the 20% as quoted was the annual rate EAR), which translated to 21.94% APR. While this in itself is extremely misleading on their part I would check this out before telling the FOS that it was an interest rate 'increase'.

I could be wrong, but better to suggest it now (as I did much earlier in the thread) than to let you waste your time down a blind alley.

oracleman

Denza wrote: »

Hi Cell,
In other news; now confirmed through my complaint and SAR returns, they hiked my rate from 20% to 21.94% in February 2010 with absolutely no notification and maintained "20.0000%" on my statements. Now maybe I am mistaken but I seem to recall something in the T&Cs regarding interest rate rise notifications!

Is the difference one the nominal rate and one the APR rate ? Santy use two figures - I have been caught out in the past with a noninal rate of 16.61% and 17.94% APR.