Additional payments taken....

pdoherty78

To anyone that can help...
A few years ago I was in a desperate situation with several loans / credit cards coupled with a divorce, so yes I was desperate. I went to my bank to consolidate all the debt into a single loan. The total was £20,500 and I was offered a deal of 12% APR over 97 months. With no other option I took this loan and have been maintaining the payments.

I was going through my paperwork and can see I only have about 6 months left until the loan has been fully repaid. While checking the old statements I see that my repayment goes out on the same day each month, but about 3 years ago the bank took out an additional payment, so in one month I paid back twice the monthly amount. I never agreed to this and received nothing from my bank about this.

I can see in the statement that the extra payment was taken off the loan as the total decreased by that extra amount. So with that I am assuming the loan will be repaid after 96 months instead of the agreed 97.

However, am curious as should this additional payment have affected the amount of interest I am repaying?  Also should the bank have been allowed to take this additional repayment?

Any and all information is gratefully received.

Nebulous2

Do you get statements for the loan? These should show you how much you have paid and what difference it has made to the total.  It is possible for two loan payments to come out in the same month. If they are usually at the end of the month and there is a weekend, possibly with a public holiday, then it could be carried over to the beginning of the following month - meaning you would have had a payment at the beginning of the month, and another at the end. 

It isn't going to help a great deal us speculating however - you need to get your information together and ask your lender. If it was me I'd put together a timeline with the date of each payment I had made and compare that with the outstanding balance.

97 months is an odd length for a loan. They usually deal in round numbers and 96 would be 8 years. 

Birdie100

Have you checked if it’s to do with the payment for February? Sometimes if you’re set to pay by direct debit on the last (working) day of the month, because February is a ‘short’ month, the payment doesn’t actually take until the March. Eg if you pay on 27th of each month, that payment won’t have been sent until March 1st this year. But that does then result in ‘2x’ payments in March (the delayed feb and late March example)

pdoherty78

Hi Guys,

Thanks for all your previous advice and sorry for taking so long to get back on you with details. Also I’m on mobile so forgive formatting and spelling errors.

I do get annual statements and have dig them out, not sure if I’ve got all of them though, but do for the relevant issue.

The duration is definitely 97 months. 

Interest rate is 12.9% - I was desperate and they knew it

The monthly repayment is £335.39

So when the extra payment happened the sequence was as follows:

29th December 2017
11th January 2018
25th January 2018
26th February 2018
26th March 2018

The amount taken was the normal amount and the corresponding balance reduced by the correct amount 

Before and after that the payment date is always around the 25th/26th

So with this information is there something I should do? 

The loan will finally be paid back in a few months so would like to know before it ends

thanks in advance 

[Deleted User]

What do you want to happen?

Yes making an extra payment will reduce the capital and reduce the interest paid slightly. Perhaps it was a mistake. If you didn't lose out as a result e.g. getting a charge from not having the cash available then you should just move on with your life. If you did lose out you could complain to the bank and they might give you a refund of the charge or a token go away sum like £25-£100

pdoherty78

What I’d like to happen is they apologise, fully repay me all my repayments then revise the whole banking industry so that those at the bottom are not screwed over and made to survive in perpetual debt. However I doubt that will happen. 

I was just curious as I know that if I missed a repayment I would not have simply got off with no consequences.

I will contact the bank and let you know the outcome 

Edi81

pdoherty78 said:

What I’d like to happen is they apologise, fully repay me all my repayments then revise the whole banking industry so that those at the bottom are not screwed over and made to survive in perpetual debt. However I doubt that will happen. 

I was just curious as I know that if I missed a repayment I would not have simply got off with no consequences.

I will contact the bank and let you know the outcome 

Well thats never going to happen.

banks don’t just randomly take additional
payments...me thinks there is more to this that you are letting on...

Caz3121

have you been able to check the statements against your bank records?
11th Jan could be the date set to collect dd's that failed in December, worth checking that the December payment was not showing as failed/returned (although that would mean the statements are wrong)

[Deleted User]

pdoherty78 said:

What I’d like to happen is they apologise, fully repay me all my repayments then revise the whole banking industry so that those at the bottom are not screwed over and made to survive in perpetual debt. However I doubt that will happen. 

I was just curious as I know that if I missed a repayment I would not have simply got off with no consequences.

I will contact the bank and let you know the outcome 

I wasn't suggesting something like that, what I meant was what do you realistically want them to do? A complaint might illicit compensation, particularly if you can quantify and prove a loss as a result of their actions.