Capital One debt

Legacy_user

My wife has several credit card debts and has managed to get nearly all of them to agree to freeze interest and charges. She is slowly but surely whittling down the debts, which is great.

However Capital One have been a complete pain in the neck from day one and unfortunately the largest of the debts is with them.

They haven't sent any letter or statement since around October last year. I am hoping that they've just 'given up' and stopped adding interest and charges, but we're really loathe to get in touch with them incase all the nonsense we had before starts again.

My wife has continued to make the same payments each month.

If anyone has had a similar experience - are they still allowed to add on interest and charges and not tell you? Or are we fairly safe to assume that they've just accepted my wife's payments and are not adding anything further? It would seem wrong to me that charges were still being added if no communication were being sent out saying so.

Again, we are really NOT wanting to get in touch with them at the moment just to find this out!

[Deleted User]

i dont see any way of finding out without requesting a statement

HappyMJ

They are allowed to continue adding interest and charges but then on the other hand they must be sending you a bill for that every month so if they aren't doing that I would dispute any charges.

happy_bunny_2

You could check her credit report to make sure they still own the debt.

It should also show if defaulted etc and what the current balance is, that way if you knew what it was in Oct you should be able to see what they have added.

Have they issued a formal default notice? Even if not, they should be sending monthly statements, notice of £12 charges and notices of sums in arrears as required by the credit act.

If you do feel the need to get in touch, I would write a formal complaint about total lack of communication and see what part of teh consumer credit act/OFT guidelines they have broken.

chappers

I would never assume they have agreed to your request, surely you would be better knowing so you can try and put more pressure on them than your debts just blindly increasing.

MusicalLawyer

My Capital One CC was switched to online statements by them. They may have done this with your wife. Or it could have been sold on.

If your wife isn't making the minimum payments as per her T&C's of the original agreement - they can charge her each month, even though she is paying something to them. They do, however, have to inform you of the charges. They will also continue to add interest, as per the original terms of the agreement.

mellonicoley

I was behind on my payments with Capital One. Wrote to them requesting that they no longer call me at work as I was getting lots of calls, despite asking them not to call me twice.... Received a nice letter back, they reversed default charges on my account.... but i can no longer log into my Capital One online account; I get this instead:

Access to your Online Account has been changed. To discuss your account, please call us on 0800 952 4966. If you are calling outside of the UK, please call us on +44 115 993 8002. Calls may be monitored/recorded for training purposes.

Perhaps they've done a similar thing with your wife's account and that's why you're no longer receiving statements. They're trying to force you to call them. My advice is to write to them requesting a statement instead.

Iris_Blue

It sounds like the paper-free option has been selected, so that statements are only available online. I opted out of this. Have you both tried logging in online?

They wouldn't just give up and stop sending statements or letters if the money is owed. I'm not being rude, just saying that they like to constantly remind you that you owe money, they wouldn't just stop.

If you can log into the account you can always send them a secure message through their message center. They are normally quick to respond.

I hope you sort it out.

System

OK, sorry for taking a while to get back -and thank you all for the replies.

For the record, there has been no request to go to paperless statements, nor have Capital One told my wife they have done this. She's never been given login details!

Iris_Blue

What did the last communication you had from them in October say?

System

Oops - time for an update. Sorry it's taken so long to get back.

Well, my wife took a deep breath and called CO last week. Turns out my suspicions were correct. The debt had been passed onto a DCA and all interest and charges HAD been frozen. Excellent! Not only that, but it seems they took off some of the accumulated interest as the current balance was quite a bit lower than she was expecting. They're quite happy for the payments to continue subject to the usual 6 monthly checkup phonecall.

So it seems we shouldn't always suspect the worst!