Dispute over "Interest Free" period

vdUYAnBi

Hi,

I am currently in a dispute with a personal finance company and would like to know if I have a leg to stand on. I will try to keep it brief, but here are the details:

I bought a new boiler from British Gas. A salesman came to my home, and gave me a quote of £3800. I wanted to pay in cash but three times he told me I'd be better off taking a loan, sticking the money in an ISA and earning interest for a year before paying it off. The first two times I insisted I would rather pay cash, but he wore me down (I know, I'm an idiot). I signed the contract then (mid June) and was under the impression that I would get a year of interest free credit, as that was what I had been told, and what was written in big writing all over the contract. The boiler itself was not fitted until August.

Fast forward one year, I was out of the country for 5 weeks (I can document this if necessary) and missed my reminder letter and first repayment date. I had forgotten all about it to be honest but I was also under the impression the date was in August. When I got back to the UK and saw a payment on my account I checked my balance using their online tool, which said I owed them ~£800 interest. Apparently I didn't actually get one year free interest, there was a bonus of that amount if I paid 100% in under a year, but since I didn't, the bonus didn't apply. I immediately paid the principal and asked them to cut me some slack on the interest as I was still less than two weeks late at this point, but they wouldn't budge. I told them in no uncertain terms I wasn't giving them £800 and the conversation went nowhere after that.

I hadn't heard from them since, but last month they sent me a letter saying I'd missed a payment, and they were charging me £25 for that, and that my balance is £2500.

Technically, the interest-free-but-not-interest-free-year stuff is written in the contract, but I missed it when signing. Given the other mitigating factors (being out of the country, asking twice to not pay with finance, the phone conversation ending unresolved), do you think I have a case to get out of this? I'd rather not pay them £2500 if I can avoid it.

Thanks in advance to anyone that can provide help/advice.

TonyMMM

What's in the contract is what matters - if you didn't read it properly that is no-ones fault but your own.

Sounds like you are in a very weak position and relying on some element of goodwill from the finance complany - but these interest free deals make their money by the knowledge that a small % of borrowers will forget to pay it off on time and incur their (usually very steep) interest charges.

foxy-stoat

All you can do is take it to the highest manager you can and see if they will do anything for you, you can complain about the pressure hard selling. You could go to Watchdog, but if you miss payments your credit file may be affected while its all being sorting out and once missed payments go on, its very hard to remove them.

Unfortunatley you read and signed the contract and missed the deadline as you were out of the country, not their fault.

Herzlos

It's pretty common that these 0% interest in first year deals backdate it after the free period expires, unfortunately.

takman

If you really wanted to pay cash that bad you could have taken out the loan and then repaid it with cash the next day. There was no requirement for you to wait 12 months to pay it back. So being out of the country is not a resonable excuse.