Thread: Advice please with T&C on Credit Card

I have a credit card with Cahoot and have recently started the process of reclaiming the PPI & charges. However having received all the statements I have just become aware that they have significantly altered my T&C on the card.

Although I don't have a copy of the contract yet (have sent CCA request) It is clear that I originally signed up to a card that had a monthly fee of £15.60 rather than monthly interest.

It is clear from my statement that in July 2004 they altered this to monthly interest without a fee. I do not know the rate they changed it to but it had the immediate effect of increasing my interest charges by over £8 per month.

I have now found on my online account messages informing me of the following changes :-

07/02/07 change from 10.8% to 11.9% APR
20/11/07 change from 11.9% to 16.9% APR

(there were clearly other changes but it doesn't say online what they were just that they have been emailed to me although the email address they had was one I no longer have access to and havent since April 2004).

I would have thought to alter the terms of my account so drastically (from monthly fee based to variable interest) would require a whole new contract to be completed.

My question therefore is can I claim back the difference between the monthly fee figure and the interest as I am now paying more than double the original charge!

It would seem to me to be unfair but I have no idea what the legal stance is on these but effectively over 4 years they have doubled my charge (can a 100% increase be considered to be fair?).

I'm not worried about upsetting them as ultimately I just want to pay off this debt but at the moment it stands at around £3000 so I have no way to clear it in one go!

Sorry thats a long explanation but wanted to get all the details in.

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I know its a complicated question but does anyone have any advice?

I have written to them querying this but would be very helpful if someone knew if there were any legal arguments in relation to altering my contract from a set charge to a variable interest added without even writing to me (I have now found a message on the internet banking informing me of the change but only saw this last week as didn't even realise I had messages on my internet banking page)

If only that were an option! I'm trying though and have sent the following (borrowed some of the info off a post in the legal forum which actually related to bank accounts but hoping its applicable here too and thought its worth a try! so thanks to the person i borrowed some of the info from - sorry i cant remember who you are!

I wrote to you on 16/04/08 in relation to the alteration of my agreement from a fixed monthly fee of £15.60 to variable interest which has been increased rapidly since you altered my account. As previously highlighted I was unaware of this change until I received copies of my past statements recently.

Although I have made a legal request for a copy of my credit agreement this has still not been forwarded to me. However it is clear that I originally signed up for a credit card with the terms that a monthly fee of £15.60 would be levied against the account and no interest would be added. At the time of opening the account there was a clear choice between either a monthly fee or a variable rate of interest and I opted for the monthly fee.

This remained the case until July 2004 when you have significantly altered my account without my written agreement by switching it to an account without a monthly fee but with a variable interest rate to be added monthly. I have no evidence of any written notification of this event being forwarded to me (and none was forwarded by you to complete my data protection, Subject access request) and it is only upon receiving my past data that I have picked up on this change by you. I require you to forward me proof that you had the right to alter my account terms as I find it hard to believe that as I was given the choice of either monthly fee or variable rate that whatever I chose would not matter as you would just alter it to suit you.

I have never received from you to complete a revised contract based on these new terms and conditions and this change was not agreed by myself. I believe this major change to my account to be unfair and unreasonable and as such I am informing you that I require my account to be returned to the terms originally agreed of £15.60 per month fee with no monthly interest added and a refund of all extra interest charged to be placed back onto the above account.

I will remind you that it is contrary to the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations 1999 for any supplier to try imposing a change of contract upon a consumer, and subsequently impose such a change without their acceptance and explicit consent thereto. I refer to Schedule 2 of Regulation 5(5):

INDICATIVE AND NON-EXHAUSTIVE LIST OF TERMS WHICH MAY BE REGARDED AS UNFAIR
1. Terms which have the object or effect of –
…
(k) enabling the seller or supplier to alter unilaterally without a valid reason any characteristics of the product or service to be provided;
…

The above regulations allow for a contract to continue even though some parts might be unworkable or not accepted by either party. I refer again to the UTCC Regulations:

Effect of unfair term
8. - (1) An unfair term in a contract concluded with a consumer by a seller or supplier shall not be binding on the consumer.
(2) The contract shall continue to bind the parties if it is capable of continuing in existence without the unfair term.

As such, I maintain that Cahoot / Abbey National is acting in an unlawful manner in imposing major changes to my original contract that would be unlawful under several clauses of the UTCC Regulations.

Therefore, you are hereby formally notified that you are forbidden to make any changes to my original contract and the contract will (as per the UTCC Regulations) continue in the mode that it has done since opening. You will therefore be required to refund to me the difference between the interest you have charged and the original agreed rate of £15.60 which totals £290.00 plus the interest you charged @ 1.31% per month of £60.00 plus statutory interest @ 8% (the amount a court would award) of £50.00 totalling £400.00.

You must also reduce the monthly charge on my account back to the originally agreed fee of £15.60 immediately.

Please also note that the bank is prohibited to charge any monthly interest charge over and above the originally agreed fee of £15.60, per month, unless I give you written permission to do so.

In the meantime, I shall continue with my Credit Card for the agreed monthly fee of £15.60 and I look forward to receiving your refund of £400.00 within 14 days. Continued delays by yourself will result in a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service and possible legal action.

Thanks Citizen B. Its coming to the 8 week deadline now anyway so I plan to wait til 11th June then forward it all straight to the fos. It appears they are just ignoring this complaint as I have heard nothing in relation to this matter!

If I ever get a response I will report back here.

This is all going so slow. I complained to the fos in June and only now are they actually doing anything. They had promised they would get a response from Abbey / Cahoot by Friday but on Friday they rang me to apologise as Abbey had not got their response in on time but had apparently emailed the FOS to apologise and have promised to do so on Monday instead.

Fingers crossed then - I'm still not very hopeful I'll get anywhere but I just think its outragous that they can make you pick whether you want a fixed charge or variable interest rate and then change it when they see it will be more profitable for them to do so. And then to make matters worse ram up the interest rate at every opportunity!

And to add insult to injuries they never responded to me about this complaint at all - they completely ignored my letters and in relation to the credit card charges they just kept sending me info on the bank test case which has nothing to do with credit card charges!

Hopefully I will have something to add soon.

Can't believe It has taken so long to get an update on this. The fos finally got round to my case about 4 months ago.

Abbey initially apologised for not dealing with my complaint properly and offered £150 compensation but denied any liability.

I wasn't happy with this so asked FOS to further investigate. They wrote to me last week to say they didn't agree with everything I said - that Abbey had said the T&C's were over 6 years old so statute barred but as a goodwill gesture would offer £400 compensation but CC would stay as a variable interest rate.

I accepted this as I didn't feel I was going to get a better result from FOS if I left them to investigate further as their letter was pretty negative. So didn't get exactly what I wanted and took forever but wasn't a complete waste of time!