Argos store card - and CPP dual thread please help!!

money_maker_mummy

Hi, In 2007 my partner got a Argos store card. He was working full time. He also agreed to CPP protection for all the cards in his wallet which was £36.99. The argos sales woman said that it was a 12 month contract which protects your cards, and no payment will be taken until he sends the details of his cards. The payment was took for that year even though my partner never sent the details of his cards (so what was the CPP protecting?)

Anyway, my partner was then made redundant, so he cleared the outstanding balance for the purchases he had made so owed nothing. We thought that was that and it was over and done with. However a few months later he received a statement form Argos saying he owed £36.99 for CPP plus late payment fees from Argos as we hadn't paid this. We contacted them and they said it was a rolling contract and has automatically renewed without his permission. He said he didn't want it and want working so could not afford to pay and they said there was nothing they could do and he had to pay. He was not told that it would automatically renew he was told pay just £36.99 for 12 months of cover - plus which cards were protected if they did not have any card details?

We refused to pay for something that was not needed or wanted, or agreed to, so Argos continued to charge us for late payments, (and letter costs I think, but cant remember?). It has been 5 years sine he got the card, and he paid off for what he bought. The debt was passed on to debt collection agencies and we ended up owing £280!!! We have spoken to them many times but no help. Debt currently stands at about £120. And we gave no account numbers or contracts to refer to anymore as we disposed of them.

So what are our options? And...
1) Did argos sell coversave to everyone who got a store card and is this PPI? Could we claim it back?
2) what can we do about the CPP? And who would we contact about it? argos or CPP themselves?
3) What about the charges we recieved due to the automatic renewal for CPP? We never asked for it and charges are about £253?
4) if we have a claim could I charge interest? And what exactly can i charge interest for? Both years CPP, just one years CPP or CPP and charges total?
5) could i get compensation?
6) could we get it removed off our credit report if we claimed successfully.
7) how do i go about this?
8) what should we do as we have no contract or details anymore.
9) Clarify please exactly what we can claim.

As you can see im very confused.

Please help. Simlar stories also welcomed :-)

[Deleted User]

You can complain of mis-selling if you have valid complaint reasons. Look here;
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/ppi-credit-card-insurance

You can only complain to the seller in such a complaint, so in this case it would be Argos.

However, you say you agreed to this protection so it's difficult to see how you can say it was "automatically renewed" without permission. In addition your account remained open while you continued to owe money, so you cannot say you had no card to protect.

If successful, you'll get a full refund of your CPP plus 8% simple interest.

You can't claim for late payment charges, nor will your arrears be wiped from your credit file. You will continue to owe the debt collection agency and it will be up to you to pay this off from your redress if any is awarded to you.

magpiecottage

There seems to be a view at the FCA that this type of cover was unnecessary for most consumers and therefore generally missold.

With that in mind, I suspect the seller would have a hard time defending a complaint.

money_maker_mummy

Firstly we say it was automatically renewed because when he agreed to it the woman said it was for 12 months only. She never said it would renew itself. It wasn't until the 12 months were over and we called them about the statement that came through the post that we actually found out that it automatically renews.

When we phoned up we complained about it and all they said was there was nothing they can do.

Yes our account was left open but we did not owe anything. The balance was £0.00 as he paid it off. Then it renewed automatically hence all the charges. All charges are a result of the CPP renewal, not from anything we bought. And the insurance was to cover all the cards in his wallet, e.g. bank cards, not just the argos card. Additionally how could the argos card be protected if he never sent the details in the first place? It wouldn't be worth £36.99 for 1 store card.

Also it was taken in the first year before he sent his details. The sales woman said it would not be taken until after his details were received which he never even sent off.

Surely we shouldn't have to pay the charges for something that was mis sold in the first place?

money_maker_mummy

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

You can complain of mis-selling if you have valid complaint reasons. Look here;
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/rec...card-insurance[/url
.

This link doesn't work

[Deleted User]

money_maker_mummy wrote: »

This link doesn't work

Try it now
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/ppi-credit-card-insurance

money_maker_mummy

Has anyone else got any advice on this?

magpiecottage

money_maker_mummy wrote: »

When we phoned up we complained about it and all they said was there was nothing they can do.

Did you complain to Argos?

When?

money_maker_mummy

magpiecottage wrote: »

Did you complain to Argos?

When?

Yes to Argos. When the cards protection was supposed to 'run out' (which is what the Argos sales woman said when he bought it - only 12 months) we received a statement from Argos.

The statement was supposed to say £0 as we had cleared the balance a few months previous but instead it said CPP £36.99 plus late payment fee (but I can't remember what that was)

We called up straight away to query it and complained that we did not agree to a second year - only the first. She said there was nothing they could do. This was in Nov/Dec 2008. We also called two times in 2009 about it and received the same answer.

saras_2

Quite a lot has happened to CPP since 2009. Try putting a complaint in writing to Argos to explain your concerns, they should look in to it given the FSA fine for CPP in the last year.