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

newcook

bertatswad wrote: »

I have had a Cahoot flexi loan since 2001 with an outstanding balance of £1700. I have refused to pay any payments for over a year and am now being chased by DCA for the outstanding balance which I am refusing to pay until I am refunded overpaid interest. My account is now in dispute. Will Santander pursue me through the courts for the outstanding balance ? :mad:

as far as I am aware, if a debt is in dispute the company are not allowed to pass the details to the debt collection team.

I had a similar thing with Npower a couple of years ago and rang the number on the debt collectors letter - the lady I spoke with was rather pee'd off to say the least as apparently the debt collectors can get into a lot of trouble and be reported for harrassment (through no fault of their own) because the company has passed a debt in dispute!

Im guessing if it did end up in court the judge would not look too kindly on santander!

bobdauilda

This is the Ombudsman's response to credit card fairness (taken from MSE Reject Credit card Rate increases) so surely this should translate to loans also? In my case and no doubt many others, the credit limit has been clandestinely reduced to zero in the past few months despite still owing over 4k not to mention the name change of the product which was again done in secret.
"Is it fair for overdraft and credit card limits to be reduced BELOW the amount people currently owe?"

"We've only seen very occasional complaints like this. It would depend on the circumstances eg, had proper notice been given? How much had the credit limit been reduced by? Generally, we'd expect credit card companies to reduce a credit limit in increments, giving notice to the consumer of what they are intending to do.
"We would not generally consider it fair, if a consumer was using a £1,000 credit limit, for a firm to reduce it in one step to £500 - because this would mean a consumer would need to suddenly find £500 to prevent them being from being subject to charges. If a consumer in these circumstances found that they were getting charges they may well have cause for complaint."

pheonixrising21

happy_bunny wrote: »

I complained about the 999 months to Santander, they fobbed me off saying that its set to that as its no fixed term as you can over pay.

What?

Will send it to the FOS and see what they say if they say. At least it costs Santander money and in my opinion its just wrong. Could screw over anyone looking for a mortgage I expect

I've complained about this too and according to Santander its accurate, as we no longer have a credit limit as we can't draw down additional funds, but have flexibility to make differing payments, hence £0 credit limit and 999 months.

I challenged them by asking if I make the minimum payment each month, will it take exactly 999 months, less, or more? They didn't answer that one, surprisingly. I'm pretty certain that using Excel, I could work out exactly how many minimum payments it would take to pay off my loan. I don't see why they can't do that and report it accurately. E.g you owe £2000 and make a minimum payment of 2% of balance each month. The interest rate is 1.4% each month (calculated daily). It would be quite easy to calculate this right down to the end of the loan, as I'm pretty sure that they have a clause of x% of balance or £y, whichever is greater. Should be a fairly simple calculation for a bank which has increased our interest rate based, in part, on spending more on IT - they should use those computers!!

Denza

Actually, if you pay the minimum each month you will never pay back the loan as; taking 2% per month as an example; 98% of something is always something else ad finitum.

But in the real world, starting at £10K and paying 2% off the loan each month (i.e. repayment plus interest added = -2%) it would take you 41.5 years to get down to a point when 2% represents less than 1p and the repayment itself would not breach the next penny down, your balance at that time would be 44p.

That does not include overpayments of course, let us not forget the great flexibility of this product for which we pay so much extra for!

gibbskr

Hi All,
Like many of you I'm awaiting an update from FOS after submitting a complaint in October.
When requesting my full account statements, which was eventually sent to me from Cahoot. There was PPI payments which I did not recall making/being informed of.

So I have made a claim for miselling ppi.......check your statements, this may be the best way of getting money back off the robbing sods.

rubble2004

hello all
as many of you are im awaiting an adjudicator;s decision [have no optimism after reading previous posts
in the meantime have sent email to oft [thanks Denza for this advice] their reply yesterday in brief says;-
they wont act on individual complaints but" we have noted details of your complaint and we will consider this alongside any other complaints we have received....if we do take action against this trader we may need to contact you again"

so c mon everybody get emailing to oft
i also have e mailed mse disappointingly no reply yet
btw my timeline is;-
rejecion by Santander march 2012
contacted fos april 2012

good luck to all

trsisko

Yea, I pretty much consider this a dead end as the Financial Ombudsman seems to be kicking customers in the teeth and siding with banks in most cases.

So it's easy for the banks to get away with murder now...

pheonixrising21

Denza wrote: »

Actually, if you pay the minimum each month you will never pay back the loan as; taking 2% per month as an example; 98% of something is always something else ad finitum.

But in the real world, starting at £10K and paying 2% off the loan each month (i.e. repayment plus interest added = -2%) it would take you 41.5 years to get down to a point when 2% represents less than 1p and the repayment itself would not breach the next penny down, your balance at that time would be 44p.

That does not include overpayments of course, let us not forget the great flexibility of this product for which we pay so much extra for!

Doesn't this loan have a "physical" minimum payment per month i.e. 2% or £25 (for example), whichever is greater? These sort of loans and credit cards usually have such a thing. If so, then it should be quite straightforward to work out how long it will take as once 2% of the balance equals £25, then £25 becomes the minimum each and every month after that.

MCSAVE

I recently chased the FOS for a reply to this complaint, having waited since the start of the year and have received an update stating that they are reviewing whether the changes Santander made were fair and that they should issue an assessment by 14th December. I'll look forward to their response and hope they are true to their word when they say that each case is treated on it's merits.

rubble2004

that's interesting
14th december is the 28th day of them letting me know the decision "within 28days" on the 16th nov
i do have my doubts that each case dealt with independantly
here's hoping