Very.co.uk - Am I missing something!!?

timberflake

Ok, so I have a Very account which hasn't been used for a while and I'm steadily clearing the balance down.

As my balance has been coming down, so have my minimum payments (naturally). However, this month my minimum payment has shot up for seemingly no reason and Very are clutching at straws!

Last month I had a balance of £x,xxx.xx with a minimum payment of £xxx.xx.

This month, my balance has decreased by £148, but my minimum payment has shot up by £30 or roughly 12% of what it was last month.

Now, I've not bought anything on the account for a long long time, I've had none of those Buy Now Pay Later deals, the APR on both statements is exactly the same and my balance has decreased by £148 since last months statement (this £148 is after they've applied this months interest), so how on earth can they increase my minimum payments by 12%?

I've had no notification in a change of the % of my minimum payment and all Very have said is that it's interest, but that doesn't hold up as my balance is still less than last month even after interest has been applied.

Anyone else had any experience of this and how I should go about resolving it? I'm doing everything in writing at the minute but it's like banging my head against a brick wall!

SnowTiger

timberflake wrote: »

This month, my balance has decreased by £148, but my minimum payment has shot up by £30 or roughly 12% of what it was last month.

IIRC I received a letter from very.co.uk about some changes they were making to their terms and conditions.

IIRC (again), one of the changes was to section 4 of the T&C to increase the minimum payment from 5% of the outstanding balance to 6%.

timberflake

SnowTiger wrote: »

IIRC I received a letter from very.co.uk about some changes they were making to their terms and conditions.

IIRC (again), one of the changes was to section 4 of the T&C to increase the minimum payment from 5% of the outstanding balance to 6%.

I had that too, but 4-5 months ago. When did you get yours?

And if it is a 1% increase in the minimum payment why do Very not seem to know!?

Esoog

timberflake wrote: »

I had that too, but 4-5 months ago. When did you get yours?

And if it is a 1% increase in the minimum payment why do Very not seem to know!?

Bad training for that particular CS rep?

I had an email not too long ago, quite possibly afer last months statement but obviously before this months (gone up despite me paying quite a lot off)

Esoog

Could try;

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/member.php?u=1296918 if you really want an answer :]

goodz

I love this notion of terms and conditions and they include words to the effect of and we can change the terms and conditions any time we want.

So we can agree a deal with you at a certain price and timescale and whatnot but, actually, now we've decided that we'd like some more or quicker, so, yahboo sucks to you, cough up.

Oh, and by the way, this is a good game so we fancy doing it again, actually. So we'll probably change the terms again next week, and, of course, more in our favour, and sting you for a load more. We're onto a good thing with this, if we do it enough then hopefully we ought to get rich out of it. Beats working for a living, just screw the customers, it's all they deserve anyway, they're all sinners so take 'em for everything they've got and a whole lot more, they can't take it with them so we might as well have it off them.

Don't be a spoilsport, why not, it says we can do this in our terms and conditions so, hey, we might as well make the most of it and bleed you dry as much as we can. Na na na na na. If you don't like it, well, er, tough biscuits mateypeep! Yup, life's unfair, then you die.

timberflake

Well they're now claiming that my minimum payment has gone up in December due to interest charges which were added to my account in October!

They simply haven't got a clue whats going on. I've had replies from 5 different reps, each one worse than the last!

Does anyone know when the change in minimum payment came into effect? It looks like I'm going to have to point them in the right direction and ask them if it has anything to do with it, to which they'll probably reply "oh yes, that's it, bye."

I've had nothing but one line answers, their customer service is utterly useless!

timberflake

Finally got to the bottom of it!

They've increased the minimum payable % from 6% to 7% of your balance.

They claimed to have informed me of this in November, but I received nothing! There they go, changing the T&C's again!

SnowTiger

timberflake wrote: »

Finally got to the bottom of it!

They've increased the minimum payable % from 6% to 7% of your balance.

They claimed to have informed me of this in November, but I received nothing! There they go, changing the T&C's again!

But earlier you wrote you received the letter informing you of the changes to the terms and conditions four or five months ago.

Look on the bright side: you'll pay off the balance on your account earlier.

timberflake

SnowTiger wrote: »

But earlier you wrote you received the letter informing you of the changes to the terms and conditions four or five months ago.

Look on the bright side: you'll pay off the balance on your account earlier.

Correct, but the letter I received months ago was advising that they were upping the rate from 5% to 6%. They've obviously put it up again & neglected to inform me!

SnowTiger

timberflake wrote: »

Correct, but the letter I received months ago was advising that they were upping the rate from 5% to 6%. They've obviously put it up again & neglected to inform me!

I received an email from very.co.uk on 6th November:

Changes to your Credit Account Terms and conditions

We are making some changes that apply to your Credit Account Agreement. Please click here to read and save the details of the changes carefully and keep it for future reference as it contains changes to some of your terms and conditions.

The changes will take effect from 23/12/11 and will make changes to clause 2 of Key Financial Information, clauses 3 and 5 of Other Financial Information, Key Information and clauses 1.3, 13 and a new clause 1.6 under Further Terms and Conditions of your credit account agreement and will be replaced by the correspondingly numbered clauses within the document which can be accessed in the link below. With effect from 20/01/11 clause 6 of Other Financial Information and clause 1.1 of Further Terms and Conditions will be replaced by the correspondingly numbered clauses which can also be accessed within the document in the link below.

Click here to view the changes to your Credit Account >>>>

However, those changes don't appear to marry up very well with the online version of their Credit Account Terms and Conditions, which appears to have been updated to include the new 7% minimum payment details.

The Notice of Variation doesn't mention any change to section 4 of Key Information in the T&Cs, however it's this section that contains details about the minimum payment.