M&S default - help

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  • I paid the full balance (£2k)
    That's not what you said originally :

    I paid off the full balance of the card in a single payment but left off what I thought were the incorrectly applied charges
    If I'm reading this correctly, you paid off what you "thought" you should pay, but there were charges on the account that you refused to pay, and that's what's led to the default.
    The correct procedure would have been to pay off the full balance, then argue the toss with them over the charges if you felt they were unfair.  You cannot just unilaterally decide not to pay what are, potentially, perfectly legal charges/fees.


    That's pretty much it.  I forgot to mention I had paid off the whole balance but these niggling charges were left behind.  I don't see the difference between talking to them / writing to them about the charges I didn't agree with having not paid them v.s. having paid them.  There is some time between not paying the charges and the default being applied so at what point was talking to them going to resolve it?  It didn't seem to be working. 
  • Ebe_Scrooge
    Ebe_Scrooge Posts: 7,320
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    I paid the full balance (£2k)
    That's not what you said originally :

    I paid off the full balance of the card in a single payment but left off what I thought were the incorrectly applied charges
    If I'm reading this correctly, you paid off what you "thought" you should pay, but there were charges on the account that you refused to pay, and that's what's led to the default.
    The correct procedure would have been to pay off the full balance, then argue the toss with them over the charges if you felt they were unfair.  You cannot just unilaterally decide not to pay what are, potentially, perfectly legal charges/fees.


    That's pretty much it.  I forgot to mention I had paid off the whole balance but these niggling charges were left behind.  I don't see the difference between talking to them / writing to them about the charges I didn't agree with having not paid them v.s. having paid them.  There is some time between not paying the charges and the default being applied so at what point was talking to them going to resolve it?  It didn't seem to be working. 
    The problem is that, when push comes to shove, you didn't make your contractual payments, ergo you were in default.
    In terms of the charges, they are legitimate charges, and are liable to be paid - unless and until it is agreed that they were issued in error.
    By not paying them you were merely compounding your initial problem - I'm sure you'd have been charged interest on the outstanding amount, and if you refused to pay at least the minimum payment each month, this would lead to further defaults being recorded.



  • I paid the full balance (£2k)
    That's not what you said originally :

    I paid off the full balance of the card in a single payment but left off what I thought were the incorrectly applied charges
    If I'm reading this correctly, you paid off what you "thought" you should pay, but there were charges on the account that you refused to pay, and that's what's led to the default.
    The correct procedure would have been to pay off the full balance, then argue the toss with them over the charges if you felt they were unfair.  You cannot just unilaterally decide not to pay what are, potentially, perfectly legal charges/fees.


    That's pretty much it.  I forgot to mention I had paid off the whole balance but these niggling charges were left behind.  I don't see the difference between talking to them / writing to them about the charges I didn't agree with having not paid them v.s. having paid them.  There is some time between not paying the charges and the default being applied so at what point was talking to them going to resolve it?  It didn't seem to be working. 
    The problem is that, when push comes to shove, you didn't make your contractual payments, ergo you were in default.
    In terms of the charges, they are legitimate charges, and are liable to be paid - unless and until it is agreed that they were issued in error.
    By not paying them you were merely compounding your initial problem - I'm sure you'd have been charged interest on the outstanding amount, and if you refused to pay at least the minimum payment each month, this would lead to further defaults being recorded.

    That's the question really.  Any reasonable human being would sympathise with me on this... some have in previous comments on this thread.  The result of a default which blocks me from obtaining credit for the next 6 years is an extremely harsh outcome for one individual to have to deal with.  It should be the case surely that if they took a good account, implemented 2FA, it went wrong, customer didn't pay... that they don't then issue a default notice and treat the customer like scum leading to the customer closing their account.  It should be assumed from the outset that when beginning a big IT project like adding 2FA to their systems that some customers might experience difficulties.  To then go from that understanding to an attitude of "oh well, good for us... if it causes any problems we'll just charge the customer penalties and interest like normal" is absurd. 
  • The issue will be that you are one customer in what could be a database of tens if not hundreds of thousands. Whilst there may be some element of human empathy involved in individual circumstances, such as the one you’ve described, that empathy is likely to only extend to a simple one-off mistake. 

    A default is often only recorded once multiple payments have been missed, that means several months would have to pass in order for it to happen. One does wonder what you were thinking was going to happen when you simply made a few phone calls and sent a letter but the root cause of no contractual payment was never dealt with in such a long timescale. As others have suggested, if you knew the balance on the CC and had been paying regularly, it isn’t unreasonable to suggest that you’d have known roughly what your ‘minimum’ payment would have been from the last statement, or you could have paid the maximum amount off the card that you could afford at that time. 

    Once that hurdle had been passed, it would then be a case of speaking directly to them to ascertain how you go about settling the next statement if their technical error was still apparent.

    As much as I’d like you to come up trumps in a complaint against them as I feel your pain, you really will not win this one if what you’ve said thus far is anything to go by.
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  • Ebe_Scrooge
    Ebe_Scrooge Posts: 7,320
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    I paid the full balance (£2k)
    That's not what you said originally :

    I paid off the full balance of the card in a single payment but left off what I thought were the incorrectly applied charges
    If I'm reading this correctly, you paid off what you "thought" you should pay, but there were charges on the account that you refused to pay, and that's what's led to the default.
    The correct procedure would have been to pay off the full balance, then argue the toss with them over the charges if you felt they were unfair.  You cannot just unilaterally decide not to pay what are, potentially, perfectly legal charges/fees.


    That's pretty much it.  I forgot to mention I had paid off the whole balance but these niggling charges were left behind.  I don't see the difference between talking to them / writing to them about the charges I didn't agree with having not paid them v.s. having paid them.  There is some time between not paying the charges and the default being applied so at what point was talking to them going to resolve it?  It didn't seem to be working. 
    The problem is that, when push comes to shove, you didn't make your contractual payments, ergo you were in default.
    In terms of the charges, they are legitimate charges, and are liable to be paid - unless and until it is agreed that they were issued in error.
    By not paying them you were merely compounding your initial problem - I'm sure you'd have been charged interest on the outstanding amount, and if you refused to pay at least the minimum payment each month, this would lead to further defaults being recorded.

    The result of a default which blocks me from obtaining credit for the next 6 years is an extremely harsh outcome for one individual to have to deal with.
    A default will stay on your record for 6 years, that's true.  But a single default in an otherwise unblemished history will have a negligible effect on your ability to obtain further credit.  It will, in itself, certainly not "block you from obtaining credit for the next 6 years".  If you had a track record of regularly defaulting, that would be a different matter.  But a single "slip-up" will have a tiny, if any, effect.

  • born_again
    born_again Posts: 14,007
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    >>I strongly suspect that since M&S Bank is a front for HSBC that those managing the M&S branded products don't have full control over what HSBC does with things like interest and penalties. <<

    M&S use HSBC systems operated by their own (M&S) staff & have their own banking licence.

    Amendments can be made on the system.

    The point is... I would have thought if they could have addressed my complaint about the fees applied while I thought my account was inaccessible they would rather have done that than lost me as a customer.  Up to that point there had been no issue.  So if I was a good customer with a small complaint wouldn't they have resolved it if they could have?  Is their model of business different to that whereby they do what they can to make life needlessly difficult and expensive for people... to what end? 
    While you "Thought" did you tell them at that point you wanted the charges looked at. As staff will only look at the actual complaint & not anything else.
    As I said before the £25 would have been due to the 2FA issue, which they resolved & closed the complaint.

    Missing payments is a totally different complaint matter given you were told "Other payment methods are available" Sadly you then compounded it by only paying what you felt was due, rather than the full amount & complaining about the charges.

    From a complaint perspective you would be very lucky to get the default removed. As it is a factual event. On more than 1 occasion.

    Add to that a default does not bar you from credit going forward for 6 years. Might make lender look a bit deeper at your credit history or not the the headline rate/length of interest free.
    Life in the slow lane
  • >>I strongly suspect that since M&S Bank is a front for HSBC that those managing the M&S branded products don't have full control over what HSBC does with things like interest and penalties. <<

    M&S use HSBC systems operated by their own (M&S) staff & have their own banking licence.

    Amendments can be made on the system.

    The point is... I would have thought if they could have addressed my complaint about the fees applied while I thought my account was inaccessible they would rather have done that than lost me as a customer.  Up to that point there had been no issue.  So if I was a good customer with a small complaint wouldn't they have resolved it if they could have?  Is their model of business different to that whereby they do what they can to make life needlessly difficult and expensive for people... to what end? 
    While you "Thought" did you tell them at that point you wanted the charges looked at. As staff will only look at the actual complaint & not anything else.
    As I said before the £25 would have been due to the 2FA issue, which they resolved & closed the complaint.

    Missing payments is a totally different complaint matter given you were told "Other payment methods are available" Sadly you then compounded it by only paying what you felt was due, rather than the full amount & complaining about the charges.

    From a complaint perspective you would be very lucky to get the default removed. As it is a factual event. On more than 1 occasion.

    Add to that a default does not bar you from credit going forward for 6 years. Might make lender look a bit deeper at your credit history or not the the headline rate/length of interest free.
    Yes I did tell them the missing payments issue was connected to the technical logging on problem.  I even wrote to them about this.  I was unaware that there were a plethora of options for payment available and the only time they mentioned alternatives was well after the damage had been done.  It's a case of expecting ordinary folks like me to be an expert on all their facilities, terms and conditions when I actually have kids, a house, a job and a life to look after alongside spending hours and hours dealing with a mistake from a credit card company.  I just don't have the resources to devote myself to learning the relevant things they could have told me at the right time.  

    After they refused to listen to me, I tried really hard to get them to listen and to reason with them but they wouldn't so that's when I started to ignore them.  What else can you do?  I was never going to pay for them to mistakenly cut off my access to my account and I didn't think they would do what they did as it just seems excessive. 

    Thank you to all who've pointed out that a default is not the end of the world.  I was turned down for credit on that basis recently and it is the main thing on my file which is dragging everything down but I can do some further research and look to see if I can compensate by making improvements elsewhere. 
  • That's a bit harsh.

    I didn't take any steps to get around the system and I didn't pay my bill?  Are you reading the same thread? 

    I paid the full balance (£2k) and I wrote them a letter after phoning and contacting them to try and get it resolved.  I phoned them a few times and eventually as I wasn't getting anywhere I wrote to them.  

    In your original post you stated that you missed payments:
    I had a lot of things going on at the time (as did many of us) and ended up missing payments because I couldn't get online to put them through.
    ............
    I'm of the view that having made it difficult for me to pay it is their fault I was unable to make payments on time.
    You stated further, you got charges for missing payments
    However, as I was missing payments M&S started applying penalties to the account and interested related to those penalties.
    Regardless of whether you paid your debt off later, those missed payments are the reason for the default

    I don't really understand what you mean by "get around the system"? This sounds like you believe making payments online was the only way you could pay and that other means are unusual? Normally you pay the balance off by direct debit, or at the least, have a DD in place to cover the minimum and then pay manually. Similarly, paying statements by BACS is normal - indeed, back in the days of paper statements you would take the slip to the bank and pay it off that way or make the payment online from your bank using the credit card number as the payment reference. Those processes are completely normal, not outside the system and are why M&S defaulted you because you had alternative means to pay.

    None of this is "harsh", you may not like the decision by the card issuer but I am not commenting on whether something is right or wrong, I am simply stating the facts of the situation and why it happened.



  • johnweir123 

    I didn't think they would do what they did as it just seems excessive. 

    Nothing excessive about defaulting someone who fails to live up to the very simple principle of paying your monthly bill.
    Pretty much standard in financial services.

    Plenty of people have a job, kids, a house and a life and manage to not let a small technical issue with their preferred method of payment prevent them from making a short call to keep their bills up to date if they don’t have a direct debit in place.
  • Ebe_Scrooge
    Ebe_Scrooge Posts: 7,320
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    It's a case of expecting ordinary folks like me to be an expert on all their facilities, terms and conditions

    I just don't have the resources to devote myself to learning the relevant things they could have told me at the right time.
    You're not expected to be an "expert".  You are, however, expected to understand the terms and conditions of any contract you sign, whether financial or otherwise.




    Thank you to all who've pointed out that a default is not the end of the world.  I was turned down for credit on that basis recently and it is the main thing on my file which is dragging everything down but I can do some further research and look to see if I can compensate by making improvements elsewhere. 

    I genuinely would be surprised if a single default has, in itself, prevented you from getting credit.  How do you know it was the default that resulted in you being turned down?  It's far more likely to be a combination of other factors.  Have you checked your credit files to see if there are any other negative markers on them?


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