Creation Finance

trungtrung11

First post here but hoping for some advice! We purchased a sofa last year through Sofology and at the time as we were ongoing with a bit of a ‘project’ house we decided to take advantage of the 0% finance option through Creation to take the pressure off a little at the time. The initial order was amended so we had to go back into store to amend the amount and complete and sign again our finance agreement. Upon completion of this we verbally confirmed with the store assistant the final payment date upon which we needed to pay the amount in full so as not to incur interest, this was 24/9/19 so I made a note of this in my diary so as not to forget!

I was also emailed a copy of the contract and checked the date of payment was correct which it stated the same date we had been told in store. With the payment date approaching, last week I logged on to my account to complete the full payment for our purchase and to clear the finance, I was shocked to see that it had jumped up by £1300! Thinking there must be a mistake as both myself and my husband had read the contract and the store had clarified our payment date I rang Creation. Shockingly it seems that our ‘special offer rate’ ran out on 31/8/19 so they had therefore applied 6 months interest to our bill! I advised I was more than willing to pay the original finance amount off in full but was told that they couldn’t remove the additional interest and that if I’d spoken to them in the first two weeks then it could have been removed at their discretion but now being into three weeks after that time, it wasn’t an option?!

I asked why no reminders had been sent out advising that this ‘special rate’ date (which I wasn’t even aware of) was about to expire, apparently the Creation Sofology accounts are the only ones they don’t do text/email reminders for yet for all their other accounts they do! They said they had sent a letter out in the post advising us of this cut off date yet we never received a letter!! I’m lost as to what to do, I’ve put in a complaint stating how appalling and misleading their contract has been and that their lack of correspondence has resulted in an unfair and unreasonable amount of interest. I actually cannot believe this has happened to two normally intelligent people and how such critical information could have been missed by three adults who all looked at the account! This is the second time I have done 0% finance for a sofa yet the first time was most definitely not this confusing!!

I am scared now that the complaint procedure is going to only delay and add even more interest to something we simply want to clear, we have saved all year to pay this off but simply can not afford the additional extortionate interest! I’m wondering if anyone else has been in this situation and what the outcome was?

[Deleted User]

You should pay it whilst still progressing your complaint.  Your chances of success are low as you signed agreeing to the terms.

However, if you 'simply cannot afford it', you'll just have to pay what you can and save up to pay the remaining balance. 

But why has all this taken 8 months so far?