were we missold a credit card?

mildfuzz

before my time, my partner managed to run up some £10,000 in credit card bills from a single company (BarclayCard) whilst earning a pittance as a salon assistant.

There was never any real way she would pay it back, not now and CERTAINLY not at the time.

I am curious as to whether there should have been anything in place that prevented her from mounting this debt, any financial procedures that BarclayCard clearly did not follow.

It's a bit of a long shot

secretshopper75

As far as i know it's your choice to take out the credit, they normally ask over the phone for salary details and do a credit check but otherwise the decision to use credit lies with yourself...sorry that doesn't help does it..

rising_from_the_ashes

Unfortunately it's another case of the banks being willing to lend more than is "reasonable".

The same thing happened to me - although mine was on 4 different cards, I ended up with over £20k on them .... and my salary at the time was around £10k/year.

This will sound harsh but isn't meant that way - at the end of the day your partner could've said "no" to the credit card, refrained from spending on it or asked them to lower the limit so couldn't spent the money etc (as I could have done too & also didn't).

If you could you post up a SOA for your partner, I'm sure you'd get loads of advice on where savings may be possible etc. Good luck

Tixy

Not nothing at all.

She wasn't sold the credit card at all - she applied for it and spent on it, and presumably as they put up the credit limit she continued to spend. Unfortunately a lot of people in a similar situation and its no comfort that the banks have since tightend their criteria and it would be harder for someone to do this now.

As she is struggling then I would suggest either contacting one of the debt charities or as rising suggests if you could post up a statement of affairs we good see what options might be suitable for her in her current situation (eg if she can meet minimum payments then she might want to consider a debt management plan or a DRO or bankruptcy as possible options).