Now with Third Party thanks to Virgin Credit Card!!!

pk219

After closing my Virgin Credit Card account over 3 yrs ago and just wanting to pay back what I owe, last year Virgin decided to increase my minimum fee from approx £85 up to £190. I had closed my account and did not want to get heavily in debt until now.
I spoke to phone reps time and time again and they were not interested in my case at all in regards to changing my terms and conditions after I had closed my account. So telling them I was seriously struggling with this increase they did allow me 5 months breathing space, but this obviously increased my figure of what i owe them.
They have now referred my account to a third party which I am awaiting correspondence from them. Can anybody advise me as to weather they can suddenly increase my minimum fee overnight AND after my account has closed. I am now in even more debt and having worked for the NHS for many years and ever hour god sends, keeping up repayments is impossible. Please help/advise.
pk219

forgotmyname

I have seen threads say if your not happy with the change in terms higher interest etc then close the account and they cannot then charge the higher rate.
But you must continue to pay as agreed in the terms.

Have you missed any payments or on a payment plan? 5 months breathing space. Did you make any payments in this time?

I remember my card company sending a letter saying i didnt have to pay the next months bill if i didnt want to.
I had a think about that and though ang on they will still charge interest. So the point of not paying would be they earn an extra months interest.

pk219

Thanks for the reply. I never missed a payment in the two yrs and was always on time until towards the end when i started to struggle. I never paid anything in the time they gave me as breathing space and yes your are right it was building up debt as they told me they were going to cease the interest.
So now after i could not pay because of the huge increase, I am in a worse case as when I was using the card and building up debt. All I wanted to do was pay off what I owe and what I used but because they were greedy they wanted the money back quicker I have now defaulted for six yrs blacklisted etc.
This has been so unfair as I never did anything wrong. I just wanted what was fair as pay my debt back at the original term payments we agreed at the start of the contract.
I will never ever use any Virgin product again and warn people of these corrupt people who are very very greedy

nomoneytoday

AFAIK weren't the rules around minimum payments changed back then, as so people didn't have to take 20+ years to pay off debts at the low minimum amounts?

SnowTiger

nomoneytoday wrote: »

AFAIK weren't the rules around minimum payments changed back then, as so people didn't have to take 20+ years to pay off debts at the low minimum amounts?

There have been a few thread here about it, including this one.

Generally, this is probably a good move by the credit card providers. However, it does mean that many customers have seen a large jump in their monthly minimum payment.

I think the only options available to the OP are cutting back and finding an extra £100 a month from somewhere or debit management.

As this will probably be a long-term problem for the OP, debit management might be the better option. Painful, especially at first, but they [STRIKE]would[/STRIKE] may be able to get the crippling interest—which I guess is probably most of the £85 minimum payment—stopped eventually.

aleph_0

I'm not sure about the legality of increasing the minimum payment - one is certainly allowed to reject increases in the APR, but it sounds as if Virgin were just increasing the minimum payment to the level the regulator recommended for new customers. Paying at the old minimum payment rate would have probably taken many, many years to pay back, the new minimum payment rate attempts to reduce this to something more reasonable.

I expect you might be better off positing in the Debt-Free Wannabe board, where the members have more experience in putting together SOAs, and how to deal with lenders in these situations.

Being a little judgemental - you firstly talk about the importance of trying to pay back what you owe, and then talk as if you've totally defaulted and don't intend to pay back the debt at all. This isn't really consistent.

There are two issues muddled here - after the 5 month breathing space, you've continued to not pay, and the lender has given up and sold off the debt. The lovely folks at the DFW board will know more about how best to deal with things now.

The second issue is that of what happened earlier, and whether they could change the minimum payment. But they offered you a payment holiday, which you agreed to, and presumably they agreed to this because the breathing space might give you time to look at your monthly outgoings, or other debt, so that you would be able to repay after the payment holiday. Even if you had the right to reject the minimum payment changes (not sure you did), you appeared to accept them by accepting the payment holiday.