Help with Egg credit card nightmare

Buns_Mum

Long story but in a nutshell I paid off and closed an Egg credit card account 4 years ago. Egg don't write to you to confirm the account is closed so I took it that because my access gone that the account had closed (it's online access only). A year ago I discovered that they had kept the account open on their system and that a regular payment had continued to go out of the account, thus incurring payment protection & interest charges. This had accrued over the previous 3 years since I 'closed' the account and I had no way of knowing about it or worse still even paying it off. Egg are refusing the play ball. They never contacted me to say the account hadn't closed properly on their system & they have left me completely open to fraud. :mad: Any ideas?

Thanks

jonnyb

I always insist on confirmation in writing, and I will do the same with Egg if I close my card account with them.
I'm afraid they are going to keep saying that it is your responsibility to cancel any regular payments or subscriptions; I bet it's in their small print somewhere.
However, I would be pushing them to explain why they were not contacting you after a few missed payments, instead of 3 years. On that point you might have an argument to take to the financial ombudsman.
Good luck.

YorkshireBoy

Egg send an e-mail each month telling you your statement is available to view online. Maybe OP has ignored them (thinking the account was closed), or changed e-mail address since 'closing' the account?

Maybe they've moved address in the interim? That said, Egg should have other means at their disposal to locate account holders...CRA's or fraud prevention agencies etc?

These days, all providers (in my experience) remind you to cancel any CPA's during the closure calls, and also in closure confirmation letters. Many of them also include the advice/instruction in their T&C's/credit agreement. They may not have been as thorough 4 years ago though?

bored_of_debt

I had a similar thing recently.

Account closed Jan 07, called to pay off balance, they would not send a letter but insisted it was closed.

Received a letter Jan 08 asking me to call a number. The number was the collection/default dept.

The letter was due to a miscalculation at the time of closing. 50p was left on my account as the Egg employee had not calculated the interest owed correctly. This snowballed to £6 which is when I found out about it by letter.

They had not contacted me during the 12 months between but insisted they had, but conceded the issue and removed the £6 charge and closed the account.

I obtained my credit reports recently and on all three this issue is down as late payment.

I called them twice, the first time they refused to do anything. The second they said they would update my file and send info to the credit companies to reflect. I think this is because I kept pestering them to exercise a little discretion and kept reminding them that they had conceded the £6 which is in my eyes an admission of guilt.



Hopefully it's sorted now! :mad:

Torby

"that a regular payment had continued to go out of the account,"

....so Egg paid one of your bills for the last 3 years?...either that payment was due...in which case you've had the benefit...or you have 3 years of surplus payments to claim back ... surely that would clear the debt at Egg? Out of curiosity...how come you didn't get any arrears letters for the 3 years of payments Egg made on your behalf, there must be loads of "non payment" charges...you could possible claim them back as well....

finally, just out of curiosity, what exactly was Egg paying for on this recurring payment?...all seems a bit strange to me....sorry

Buns_Mum

Egg were paying for an magazine subscription which I actually never received. At no point did Egg ever contact me to say I owed them anything; they just kept the information to themselves.
My husband recently closed an account with them and they still refused to send out a confirmation letter to say that the account is closed. Appears you just have to take their word for it until the worse happens.
Will have to see what the ombudsman says about the matter. If an account is online only access and that access is removed its a bit rich to expect people to be able to pay any debts!

Badger_Lady

Fight it out, Buns Mum! They've obviously made an administrative error and have only just picked up on it. They're chancing it by passing the debt on to you, hoping that you'll sort it all out for them.

The fact is that you did close your account, but they failed to complete the request properly. They have to be liable for this debt. I had a similar problem closing a Lloyds Current Account - turned out to be nothing on it, but it was still "open" several months after I closed it and was open for fraud. I hadn't received any statements either.

Out of curiosity, how much is the balance?

YorkshireBoy

Very strange that they didn't (attempt to) contact you.

Presumably you have also incurred late payment fees of £16 to £30 (pre-2006) each month as well?...and also a string of bad marks on your credit file?...culminating in a default?...and ultimately a CCJ has been/will be applied for.

You can check if a credit card facility is closed/settled by viewing your credit report. However, even if it is 'settled', they will re-open it if a previously agreed and authorised (by you) CPA is presented.

Are we hearing the entire story?

DifferentFromTheNorm

I'm not 100% sure that it was the same four years ago as it is now. But if I briefly explain what happens in most cases now it may help understand what could have happened.

When a person calls to close the card 1 of 2 things happens:

1. If the balance is zero and there's no further interest to go on then the account is closed straight away.

2. If there's a balance or interest to go onto the next statement, or both, then the account doesn't close straight away but is placed into a queue on their system. The system automatically checks the account each day for a set period (usually around 1 or 2 months). Once the balance reaches zero and there's no more interest the account is automatically closed.

However, if a balance remains on the card then it won't close.

It was possibly different though four years ago so don't take what I've said as a guarantee.

Also, when an account is closed then the online access isn't removed. When an account is closed you're still able to log into the website and usually see the old card details.

In fact, this often confuses people as when they see the old account show online they phone up to complain that it wasn't closed when it actually has been.

There's maybe situations that could possibly have caused Egg's systems not to send out an email advising of a balance. However, a number of things would have had to have happened for this to be the case meaning that although possible it's unlikely, and too complicated for me to go into detail on here.

What I would advise though is to get a copy of the statements for the card. If you've spoken to them over the phone about this then depending upon which department you were speaking to the chances are you will have had to have given them 2 characters of your password.

If you know your password you will be able to log back into the website. Because this isn't just a straight forward closure of an account etc then the details may not be on the website after you log in.

If the details are there then you'll just need to note down the card number for the statements.

For details of how to get the statements, see their FAQs here:

http://new.egg.com/visitor/0,2388,3_11084--View_1765-bID_ECGetAccInfoFAQ-dva_1,00.html

**Edit** I only mention getting the statements as I'm not sure if you already have. On their systems they can only see the previous 12 statements (or in some cases only the last 3) - any older than this are archived and only retrievable by order through a separate department.

You could also request what they call a DSIR (data subject information request), it has a few different acronyms including SAR (subject access request). That way you'll be able to see any notes they made on their systems around the time you asked for the card to be closed.

flutterbyuk25

This won't really help your case but Egg sent me a confirmation email that my account was closed back in 2006.

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