Jacamo perpetual debt

Altior

It's logical really, interest rates are proportional to risk. The higher the rate, the higher the risk of default as the lender sees it. In practice of course, the higher the rate for the borrower, the higher the risk of never being able to clear the balance.

It's not that pertinent now, but hard times don't really correlate with buying brand new branded clothes on credit. Discretional spending should be put on ice until the situation improves.

Renfrewman

Jacamo do not have responsibility for the OP's personal finances or have insight into them. The OP has been lax. OP knew they were struggling yet didn't contact Jacamo for help. There's a large chunk of having to take personal responsibility here.

Brie

There are lots of reasons that individuals who are struggling financially don't contact their creditors. Shame, lack of knowledge, depression, and like most of us, very busy lives. Of course the OP should have been more vigilant but that's in the past so the issue is what to do now.

My thought is to submit a subject access request (SAR) to find out when and how they informed of the rate increase. I lodged a complaint against a credit card because they said my current rates were listed on my monthly statements. But as I wasn't using the card at that point and it had a zero balance there were no statements being produced and therefore they weren't keeping me informed. Likewise if the only way to check a statement is online then if an individual no longer has access to the online account the creditor needs to have a different way to inform them of any changes to any T&Cs.

I understood that all banks and card companies needed to send a printed annual statement/summary. I don't know that that is the case with catalog accounts - I do have one of those but I'm emailed monthly to advise my statement is available online. The fact that I frequently cannot access it as their system is garbage is an ongoing irritation and at no point have they actually posted anything to me.

Altior

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82076900#Comment_82076900

I feel like there are two perspectives here. This discovery from the OP might well have been very distressing. I can't imagine how I would feel if I was making regular significant payments to a debt, only to discover the balance had hardly shifted. I can totally empathise with the likely frustration.

The issue here is that the blame is being apportioned in the wrong direction. Once the OP is able to think about it rationally, in my view they need to accept their mistakes and mitigate any damage.

And yes, if there was a change in interest rate being charged then they should ensure that it was correctly communicated. If not, there are grounds for a legitimate complaint. Quite often though, messages of this nature are missed, skipped or forgotten. Or contact details are not kept up to date. Possibly, email(s) went to spam, which wouldn't be under Jacamo's control.