WARNING! Carphone Warehouse

koster

My wife has had a particularly bad experience with Carphone Warehouse, so thought I would share.

Last month she tried to apply for credit to help pay for a new car, but was refused. She's had a few of those lately. Having never had a problem before, we investigated her credit report.

Out of 30 or so financial relationships, all were perfect except for one. The culprit was Carphone Warehouse, it being the only negative aspect of the report with a default that was nearly two years old... for £14.

We didn't know what this £14 was, so we tried to sort out the issue with Carphone Warehouse. Apparently it was the amount remaining, unpaid, when she cancelled her account with them 2 years prior.

Unable to remember any outstanding balance with them, we asked them to supply details as she was already with another supplier for two months and not using Carephone Warehouse's network. It was discovered that the extra charge related to her calls to Carphone Warehouse to cancel the agreement after they failed to do it two months previous. (She had to call them several times to cancel the account and used the CPW network to do it)

They were arguing with her regarding the fact that the calls to them were still made by her. We paid the £14 anyway just to clear the account and to help her credit score which is marked as 'poor.' (We can't understand how this one default for such a tiny amount could impact her score so dramatically - there is nothing else negative on the report)

Anyhow, CPW refused to clear the 'default' rating on the credit report and as such, she has difficulty obtaining credit solely because of this £14 left outstanding over the two years. They had zero sympathy for her over this.

To boot, their customer service is rotten and the whole incident has soured her relationship with all phone companies. Consequently none of us or our friends will ever be using Carphone Warehouse again!

MrSilk

It's vital that after you have terminated a contract with a mobile network to keep the Direct Debit in place for around 2 - 3 months after the termination date to enable them to collect the final payment from the account. I suspect what you wife cancelled the Direct Debit just after she cancelled?.

If that's the case then CPW are well within their rights to mark a default against the account.

The default will remain on your wife's credit report for 6 years, however as it becomes older it shall have less of an impact with regards to credit applications.

grumbler

koster wrote: »

..The culprit was Carphone Warehouse, it being the only negative aspect of the report with a default that was nearly two years old... for £14.
...It was discovered that the extra charge related to her calls to Carphone Warehouse to cancel the agreement after they failed to do it two months previous.

Wait... Do I understand correctly that she believed that the contract had to be cancelled 2 months ago, but used the 'cancelled' sim to call CPW and expected the calls to be free?

That said, CPW should have contacted her to collect the money due before reporting the default. Assuming that she didn't change her address, this can be the only reason for a formal complaint to CPW, then to the ombudsman.

MrSilk

grumbler wrote: »

Wait... Do I understand correctly that she believed that the contract had to be cancelled 2 months ago, but used the 'cancelled' sim to call CPW and expected the calls to be free?

I totally missed that, damn me and my skim-reading!

koster

Thanks for the replies, folks!

Memory is a bit hazy (it was two years ago), but she did have a new contract with a different company for a couple of months, still receiving mail from CPW (with account cleared) and about to go live abroad for a while, we were trying to close it down.

Amidst the chaos, we were trying to sort everything out but starkly remember CPW being a pain to cancel. Thinking the calls would be free, she was using the still-connected phone to cancel the contract with CPW.

The £14 relates to the charges for actual phone calls made to CPW. There was another amount removed from the record as it related to the final month's contract charges that CPW had applied (wrongly, and they admitted that).

You would have thought that because we had to jump through hoops to cancel that, having settled with them on the £14 we didn't know about, they'd have the heart to cancel the default on Experian.

Because of their indignation, they've lost several customers within our immediate family and friends already.

Some companies still don't get "customer service."