Littlewooods buy now pay later problem.

Seraldo_Babalu

About a year ago I bought a tablet from Littlewooods on buy now pay later. The tablet cost £169.99, and interest of roughly £230 was added to my account with the understanding that it would be taken off when the outstanding balance of the tablet was cleared. So far so good. The buy now pay later period ends on Friday 3/11/17. So about six weeks ago I started paying it off whatever I could spare. I paid £40 to get the ball rolling, then a week or two later I paid £80. So this past Saturday I'm planning on clearing it. I log in to Littlewooods not even really thinking about what exactly is left to be paid on it as I know I'm clearing it whatever it is. I go to the make a payment section, and then the buy now pay later section, and instead of putting the amount in manually like I did the two previous times, I click the clear remaining balance option £47.41.

Sorted. One less thing I have to worry about. Check my balance to see the long awaited disappearance of the interest. It's still on there. It'll probably take it a day or two to register on their system I think. Sure I'll ring them on Monday makes sure it's sorted.

So Monday morning I get a text message from them telling me this is a courtesy message you must pay £19.92 off off your buy now pay later by Friday. I'm thinking I've ballsed something up so I log onto my account to make the payment ASAP, but the item in question has disappeared from my buy now pay later payment options. !!!!!!? Would normally assume the message was sent in error and my last payment hasn't processed yet, but the numbers don't add up my last payment was near fifty quid. So I log onto my bank account and check my payments and add them all up and it's like £2.50 short of what the outstanding balance was. None of these numbers are making a lick of sense.

So I get on the phone to them. Advisor is a non native English speaker (I generally couldn't care less about this but when your issue is an unusual one it's just another layer of difficulty to getting it resolved), explain the situation to her. She says she sees a payment I made that wasn't targeted at my buy now pay later balance, this doesn't make any sense as I always went in through the bnpl section, and my balance on it was constantly coming down accordingly. But whatever, she asks me if she wants me to direct the payment to bnpl I say yes. While she's doing this I explain about the numbers not adding up she more or less ignores this tells me she has sorted the problem and that I can ignore the text message. I ask her like six times if she's sure about this and offer to make whatever payment I have to. She keeps saying that it's sorted.

Check my account today, the interest is still on there, I click into my bnpl section, my tablet still not in there, no mention of it, no option to pay anything off it.

If there was an option to pay something into it I would pay the remaining £3 or whatever it was but there isn't. They have told me I don't have to worry about it. But I have this nagging feeling Friday is gonna roll around and they're gonna be like here is your payment plan for that £230 interest you owe us.

Is them telling me not to worry about legally binding? Will they have made a note of all this in my account? Or is this a calculated effort to try to trick people into not clearing their bnpl balance on time so they can stick them with the interest? What are my options?

Sorry for the wall of text, and using the word so as often as I did. Writing this on my phone, which is suboptimal.

Thanks.

Fosterdog

Take a screen shot of your account showing the balance cleared so if they try to charge you more at a later date you have proof that the error was their end not yours.

Seraldo_Babalu

Thanks.

I've decided I need some written evidence of the situation. Gonna try to get them to email me confirming that the balance is paid.

Seraldo_Babalu

I had overpaid by £2.58 a few months ago and they applied it to my bnpl balance. So they aren't scheming.

Unfortunately I was unable to solve any of the other mysteries of that whole debacle. Wasn't even able to find out how soon the interest will be removed from my balance. And after like six phone calls about an hour total on hold, and being repeatedly cut off/ hung up on once I've got through to am advisor. I've had enough customer servicing for the day.

I've downloaded all my statements. Think I'm good.