SimplyBe (Catalogue) credit charges

ibbledibble

My mother has a simply be account, which she set up for buying me clothes for birthdays, christmas etc. It is a credit account with a credit limit of £900

my birthday was recently and i ordered items totalling nearly the full £900 with the intention of returning the majority of the items (duplicate items in different sizes, multiple styles of a certain clothing type to find the type that looked best etc)

I chose the items i wished to keep, and returned the rest and they were marked as being returned on 08/08/2016 the items i retained came to a approx £240. My mum had said she would cover the cost of £300 worth of clothing, but i had also ordered some items from another online company and was still deciding what to keep and what to send back for that.
The statement requesting payment had arrived from simply be, and was at that point not showing the returns. as we were not entirely sure on the exact cost of the retained items she paid £200 (far above the requested minimum payment charge) with the intention of paying the remainder once it became clearer what was owed and how much i would need to pay for (the items from the other site eventually came to £54.40, so essentially, it was all covered by the £300).

I have just checked the simply be website and it is currently showing Current Balance - £87.29
and the 2 most recent transactions are

29/08/2016 - - STMNT NO. 10 AMOUNT DUE 5.00 Credit Charge £39.34

14/08/2016 - - PAYMENT - THANK YOU Payment £200.00

Based on this, it would appear that the outstanding balance for the clothes i purchased was £47.95. I am extremely concerned by the extremely high credit charge on such a small outstanding balance, and was wondering if there was anything i could do to argue this amount.

(i know the account is in my mums name and she will have to be the one to deal with them, but obviously i don't want to leave it all up to her, when it is only for my benefit. also, i suffer from extreme anxiety and am now all panicked over this)

Many Thanks

Alice_Walker

If you don't pay the full balance then you are charged interest on the whole amount. It is explained in the terms and conditions. They may waive some of the interest as a goodwill gesture, otherwise this sounds like an expensive lesson

ibbledibble

Ouch, definitely an expensive lesson! (i will have to try and find the extra money somewhere)
as she usually just pays off the balance in full we weren't aware of this.

so this is interest on the £247.95? does it sound like the correct amount of interest on this? representative APR 58.7% variable according to the website.

Thanks very much for the quick response.

marcarm

Why would you be able to argue this amount?

Surely this is outlined in the terms and conditions that you read before making any orders (they were read weren't they?)

I don't agree with catalogues and their business model, but in this instance I'm sure they have done nothing wrong. Their charges may be high but I bet they were not hidden anywhere.

dealer_wins

Just think of the charge as covering their costs of people who order with the full intention of returning the majority of their order.

ibbledibble

dealer_wins wrote: »

Just think of the charge as covering their costs of people who order with the full intention of returning the majority of their order.

this comment seems a little uncalled for. do you think that people should be forced to keep clothes that don't fit them or that look awful on them? they have "multiple items ordered for style and or fit" listed as one of the reasons for returns along with "too big" "too small" etc the cost of returns is factored into the cost of the clothing (this is the way it works with a purely online clothing company) i kept the clothes that looked good and returned the rest, this seems to me to be a reasonable behaviour. If we had paid the amount in full (if we had known it) there would have been no interest, even though i did send lots back.

I have already accepted that i made a foolish mistake regarding payment, but i don't think there was anything wrong with my sending things back that weren't suitable.

AnotherJoe

ibbledibble wrote: »

this comment seems a little uncalled for. do you think that people should be forced to keep clothes that don't fit them or that look awful on them? they have "multiple items ordered for style and or fit" listed as one of the reasons for returns along with "too big" "too small" etc the cost of returns is factored into the cost of the clothing (this is the way it works with a purely online clothing company) i kept the clothes that looked good and returned the rest, this seems to me to be a reasonable behaviour. If we had paid the amount in full (if we had known it) there would have been no interest, even though i did send lots back.

I have already accepted that i made a foolish mistake regarding payment, but i don't think there was anything wrong with my sending things back that weren't suitable.

No one is criticising you for that. You've missed the point.Its not free for them to send out the clothes, get them back (do they pay for the sending back as well?), clean them, check they are OK, repack them, plus there is a cost of the money for all those clothes, those hundreds of pounds of clothes going back and forth in the post is ultimately another cost to them in the form of money they can't use.

So overall there is a significant cost to that, which comes from somewhere, in this case, everyone who uses them, unless they don't send any clothes back at all.

20aday

I'd imagine it's interest on the whole balance (before you returned the items you didn't require) if the payment due is in full.

Edit: managed to find the information on their site http://www.simplybe.co.uk/shop/page/spread-the-cost/show.action