Oh My God, Amex Just Killed Me

Robflh

No, it is just you being an airhole

owensmum75

idiot wrote: »

Is it just me that thinks it is really taking the biscuit to be property developing whilst on benefits but "too ill" to work??!!

That did strike me as odd.

Robflh

I am not a property developer, I am just tarting up my own home.

Robflh

Hi Nicola
I am not a fan of claiming back charges and I do not see the point in doing it. If I have miss managed my credit card and I been charged for it, it is up to me to get my act together so I do not get charged again.

Credit card companies are not stupid. If you get them to refund your charges, they will get the money back by increasing the APR on everyone’s credit card. Have you not noticed the increase in the last couple of years?

I keep an amount in my cheque account at all times, which enables me to make a payment within days of the statement arriving, if other funds arrive late. I always make my payments at the bank and never ever post my payments. That way I never have a late payment charge let alone a missed payment.

As I normally only use one card for purchases and that card in never allowed to get anywhere near its limit, the balance is regularly transferred to one of my other cards. I never get an over limit charge.

However, since I effectively lost £3,000. I am at my limit on all my cards. That will slowly change but for now I have a sheet of paper that has four columns on it. One column for each of my credit cards. At the top of each column is the name of the card and the amount of interest that will be paid next time. Under this, I have drawn a line and under that, I have written how much credit I can spend.

For an example, I have just received email conformation of my last Amex payment and my available credit is £240. When my next statement arrives, a little under £115 in interest will be added to my outstanding debt. That means I can only spend £125 of the £240. If I spent more then that, I would go over my limit when the interest is added and I will be charge £12.

As I did not get any warning of the £3,000 reduction. I went to pay for something with my Amex card only to have it refused. The only other card I could use was my Mint card and when the interest was added to that card, I went over my limit and was charged £12.

As I am very short of money at the moment, I do not have the money I normally have to pay a card as soon as the statement arrives and by the time I had enough to make a payment on my Mint card, it was already past the pay by date. A few days ago, the latest Mint statement arrived and I have been charged £12 for the late payment, this also put me over my limit, so they have charged me another £12 for being over my limit.

I am going to write to Mint to explain to them what has happened and ask them if on this occasion they would be willing to refund me those charges. This time it has not happened because I miss managed my CC’s, so I think it would be ok to ask for them back.

meme_3

Robflh wrote: »

As I did not get any warning of the £3,000 reduction. I went to pay for something with my Amex card only to have it refused. The only other card I could use was my Mint card and when the interest was added to that card, I went over my limit and was charged £12.

As I am very short of money at the moment, I do not have the money I normally have to pay a card as soon as the statement arrives and by the time I had enough to make a payment on my Mint card, it was already past the pay by date. A few days ago, the latest Mint statement arrived and I have been charged £12 for the late payment, this also put me over my limit, so they have charged me another £12 for being over my limit.

Rob
This is where the difficulties start.
You have reached your credit limit everywhere, hence the charges.

I know you weren't expecting Amex to reduce their limit, but the fact is that they have - you have to stop concentrating on apportioning blame to others and, instead, put all your efforts into thinking about what you're going to do to cut your outgoings. More credit is unlikely I think.

This is how it goes:
One month you get one charge, this leaves less money to cover your minimum payments etc next month. The result is that you end up having to choose which of them you don't pay.

Then the next month, you're two months behind with one of them, so you have to pay double on that card, probably meaning that one of the others has a missed payment, possibly two of them.

Then the next month it starts to snowball the wrong way, and before you know it you're behind with everything, including the mortgage.

I'm sorry if this seems a little blunt, and I know that it is probably quite a scary prospect, but I've been through it. You're teetering at the top of the slippery slope.

Before you know it, the bank is taking away your cheque book and debit card as well. Then you have to phone them regularly and ask for special permission to go over your overdraft limit, which means an even higher interest rate. Each time you have to explain what the money is for. It is very embarrassing, as you also have to go into the bank and collect the cash personally.

In the background, the credit card companies (and loan companies as well in my case) are also phoning you on a daily basis demanding their money.

THEREFORE, you simply have to stop spending money now, and sell, sell, sell whatever you can, if need be, to help to make ends meet.

At the moment, you are in a good position. If you cancel cable TV, sell the car, sell the house (whatever you need to do not necessarily all of these things, but possibly more), you will come out of it all with a decent credit rating, and a big sigh of relief.

Repossession should be avoided at all costs - you may think that this won't happen, but it can creep up on people. It didn't happen to me, but only because I stopped spending unnecessarily.

Also, and this is important, it didn't happen because the credit was cut by the card issuers - they did me a big favour. Letting me have more would have spelled complete disaster.

Those times were difficult, but I'm so grateful to the push from the banks.
I needed it.

melodytoon

I've been reading this thread with varying degrees of interest & amazement. One thing sticks out to me in a recent post - you asked two of your friends to each lend you £1000, which you would repay with 20% interest within a year. Are they prepared to lend you the money? If so, the problem of the renovations is pretty much solved. If they didn't go for it, that tells me they probably see you as a bigger risk than you see yourself, & that they know you well enough to think the risk isn't worth taking. If that's the case, they're doing what Amex have done - looked at your ability to repay the money & decided it wasn't for them.

As for "effectively losing £3,000", you've done nothing of the kind. You can't lose what you didn't have in the first place - you had a line of £3,000 CREDIT which isn't now available. That isn't the same as having £3,000. It's treating credit as if it's our own money & spending it accordingly that got a lot of us into debt in the first place.

As others have pointed out, you're living on if onlys & buts, & expect others to be understanding/accepting of that. If you're already in a position where you can't meet your credit card bills with your usual speed, how on earth would you have managed if you still had the Amex to rely on?

The Duncan Bannatyne/Richard Bransons etc of this world took risks, but they had their health, the thing that stops you working & earning money to fund your renovations & hopes of property buying. Duncan said, following him serving a six month sentence for violence towards a senior officer in the Navy, that "I'd walked away from that whole naval experience realising that nobody else was going to stand up for me, or help me realise my potential. If I was going to succeed in life, then everything was down to me. Back home in Clydebank, I woke up realising that while I was not master of the seas, I was master of my own destiny. It was a major turning point." That's what you need to do - instead of the dreams of selling property to provide your pension, you need to realise that the only person to blame for the mess you're in is you not Amex, & take charge of that instead of looking for ways to increase your debt that could very easily leave you even worse off than you are now. Duncan & calculated risk? Your risks aren't anything like the same - you didn't calculate how you'd manage if you lost your line of credit, or what you'd do if you were out of work for a period of time (I think you said it's now been 12 years), you didn't calculate how you'd afford to pay your bills if your lodgers didn't pay the rent or you didn't get new lodgers to replace ones that left, you didn't calculate how living on benefits might affect your ability to continue renovating the house. Unless you count relying on credit to get by, of course, the very thing you can't rely on having.

I'm not going to tell you to sell your home, but only because others have done that & you're not prepared to do so without the renovations being done first. What I will say is, illness or no illness,you're blaming the wrong entity for the position you're in now, & chances are there'll be more blame to be apportioned in the future when you're in even more debt. You said that getting rid of your debt isn't your primary concern, & therein lies your problem. You will continue to amass debt until you can't get any more. Who will you blame then?

If I come across as harsh, then maybe that's a good thing. Sometimes the things that are the hardest to hear are the ones we need to hear the most.

Robflh

Hi meme
This is not the first time I have been in this position, so I do know exactly how it goes and how easy it is for that debt to spiral out of control.

Not long after I lost that job, I lost my debit card, my chequebook and had my account passed to the banks special office. As they say, been their done that and got the tee shirt.

I have said this several times before, making the payments on the cards is not a problem, in the short term, which means for months to come. It also means I do not have to sell anything at the moment. Please believe me when I say this, I am no where near that point.

Robflh

Hi melodytoon
Sorry but most of the points you have raised, I have already answered so many times before that I just cannot be bothered to go it all over again. Sorry if that sounds harsh.

Steel_2

Hi Robflh

My answers/some other ideas are below in red

1) Take on a lodger - perhaps a Polish or Czek builder who charges less than most English builders yet whose work is good and has a good reputation - and offer them some form of free rent and bills in exchange for him buying the materials and doing the house. If you have a Polish or Czek community in your area you could put a wanted ad up in their local Polish supermarket. I already have two and do not have room for a third. Has anyone got a caravan they could lend you so you could live in the caravan for a few months and let out your room in the house? This depends on you having room outside of course and nice neighbours. Alternatively, advertise on freecycle (see below) for a sprung sofabed and move yourself into your living room (if you have one) and let out your bedroom? It would only be for a few months and could a) bring in valuable extra income and b) give you the room to find that superb builder.

2) Trade your services or something of value for that of a good builder to come in and finish the job. They buy the materials etc you work off the money. (For example, I'm a writer and I got my bathroom tiled in exchange for writing some marketing materials for contractor and helping get their brochures designed and printed) Not sure that I have anything I could trade. In a way I have already done this, I looked at what I could do to earn some pocket money and to gradually increase that work until I was working for myself on a full time bases. What did you used to do for a living by the way?

3) Hold a barn-raising with friends - invite everyone you know round to your house, cook them a meal and then tell them the problem. Explain you need as many ideas as they can muster and possible contacts to helping you either get the money or get the job done. Don't necessarily ask them for the money, just their time and creative input. (I had a friend-of-friend-of-a-friend who was a mortgage broker arrange a whopping 'huge' mortgage with 'no forms to be filled' for a flat 'fee' of £400 when I really needed it and my back was up against the wall. Now I didn't go down that route in the end thanks to a fortuitous turn of events, but it's worth thinking about. All he wanted to know (and he told me this) was "yes" in answer to his question "can you afford it?") Already done it but not the meal. I did not want to kill them.

4) Ask a very, very good friend or family member that has absolute trust in you to take out a loan for the £3,000 and then make sure you pay them back first when the house sells plus a generous bit more for helping you out of a spot (what about paying for cheap summer sun holiday for them next year?!). Again, make sure it's all in writing as a proposal - design a package of some kind and sell it to them. Insist on up holding the principle of mutuality - they must get something out of the deal. And you must pay the money back by a specified time come hell or high water. I have already asked the two people that could possible do that. What did they say in reply? Are they thinking about it?

5) Ask some of your friends/family for the money and offer them a whopping 10% interest each a month so they get something back on deal when you sell. Make sure you offer them everything in writing and make it a detailed proposal, not just a air waving offer. I told them I would give them back £1,200 with in a year if they lent me £1,000. That would be a 20% return on their investment. Sounds like a good deal to me! Did they go for it?


6) Go to your nearest big housing development in progress and see if any of the workers there would be willing to "help you out with materials" such as carpet and perhaps a bathroom suite etc. You might have to sell something to get a small bit of cash together or ask a friend for loan. Are you telling me to ask someone to steal a suite for me and pay them something for their trouble. I do not think I would be happy about doing that. I did say some of my ideas walked a thin line! Perhaps there might be some surplus left at the end of a building project that the building company would be willing to sell on to you cheaply? I doubt they would take it with them to the next project. I recently bought four brand new and wrapped internal doors for next to nothing off a builder because he over-ordered on a massive building project to be sure he had enough in case of damage etc. He didn't steal them...they were completely legit...he just wanted them gone because the spec for the doors on the next job was different and he wanted the space. By the way, I found them on a Tesco noticeboard. Other sources of local ads might also prove useful to you, like the free publication Friday Ads if you have it in your area?

7) Start putting up ads on freecycle for materials and see what comes back. What and where is freecycle, that one is new to me. Freecycle is an online environmental organisation that originally started off as a way to keep things that still has some life from going to the tip. Put in a search on the computer for freecyle and the area you live in and your local group should pop up. You just have to register.

The quality of the stuff that is beginning to appear now is quite astounding and was a complete surprise when I went on there. I've just picked up 10 bamboo blinds from someone who had moved into a new house and didn't like them in the conservatory. Frequently people are asking for things like sheds or greenhouses or building materials or landscaping materials and getting them - everyone has offcuts or surplus from projects left over and don't want to clog up their houses and garages with them. As long as you are extremely polite and appreciative you'll probably find something there. The community also appreciates it if you put something on there that you don't want first to enter into the spirit of the thing.

nicola1982_2

Steel you give fantastic advice!

What needs doing on the house? Perhaps there are cheaper ways it can be done....

With regards to your illness are you ensuring that you are getting the best treatment possible so that eventually you may return to work?