Thread: Traveller vs Barclaycard

I've read quite a few of the threads, so much so that what passes for my brain has turned to mush under the barrage of details.

I've a debt with BC on a Platinum card which was cancelled about three years ago. It's been out to Mercers (who I thought were a separate company) then Calders (ditto). All serious stuff and quite scary, even to this 6-foot, too-many-pounds bloke.

I was doing the decent thing and paying it off slowly. Until I lost my job last autumn. I couldn't pay for 6 months, which is when Mercers/Calders appeared on the monthly statements. No contact at all from them though, no calls, no letters.

When it 'escalated' from Mercers to Calders I'd just got a job and thought it was time to start doing the decent thing again. So I rang Calders and set up an arrangement to pay them somethng each month.

So far, no big deal.

Then I got a letter a few days later stating that they would be adding interest to the balance monthly. I'd been interest free since the card was cancelled. You may imagine that I was dis-chuffed about this, it means that one-third of my resumed monthly payment is going in interest. So I rang Calders to enquire why I hadn't been informed about the interest when I spoke to them only a few days previously and ask them to reverse this. If they'd told me on the phone when I called them I'd have told them where to stick it and paid nothing.

They replied that the day after I'd contacted them (what a coincidence) and set up the payments (which run for an initial 6 months off my Debit card) Barclaycard had instructed them to charge interest on all accounts. There was nothing that they could do about it. It was all down to Barclaycard, etc. The LAw now requires them to charge everyone interest.

I tried them again a short while later, trying to explore how this might be reversed. Who should I contact? All to no effect, they had their instructions from Barclaycard. Bunch of Jobsworths, I thought. Oh well, better contact BC directly. Since they had given this instruction to Calders plainly only they could reverse it.

So I did just that. Rang their Customer helpline and got through to one of their own people. Made certain that it was BC I was talking to and not Mercers or Calders. "Yes, Sir, this is BC" Explained who I was, what it was about. She looked through my file on her PC and said something to the effect that "I see that you've already spoken to 2 of my colleagues".

That's when the light went on. No, no. I said. I've spoken to Calders earlier and you're BC, not Calders. I asked you explicitly and you told me that you were BC, NOT Calders or Mercers. A silence on the other end of the line. Barclaycard, under the name of Mercers/Calders had tried to shunt the blame for the interest charge onto BC, leading me to believe that they had nothing to do with it. The sheer deceit involved in this tangled web of companies, all of whom are really BC, putting the frighteners on people, using psychological scare tactics to indice payment.

I am so angry that I want to do something. That's how I found this forum and the wealth of information here. I've read about CCA's and SAR's, N-numbers and CPR until my head is buzzing.

It seems that I need to do 2 things;
1) Send off a request for a copy of my Consumer Credit agreement with a postal order for £something. Printed letter, no signature, etc. They will produce a worthless copy of their terms and conditions. This may well lead on into the realms of courts and arm-twisting to produce the original signed CCA at some future date.

2) Send off another requesting every scrap of data they hold about me enclosing another postal order for £something-different. Again, printed letter, no signature. The result will be 6 years back history, showing all the PPI and late payment charges which were applied to the account during that time.

I understand that I ought to be able to get the charges and PPI (which was worthless, I was a company director back then, a case for mis-selling?) paid back?

My card was first taken out in about 1995. So I can almost guarantee that they don't have the original signed agreement of the CCA. Assuming that I'm right is there a possibility that I could have the debt overturned entirely if they can't prove that it was properly executed?

I was willing to pay it out, but the multiple deceits they've perpetrated have really angered me. Adding interest on an interest-free debt 24 hours after I resume paying, then discovering that they use a different name, or names, to frighten people like me into paying. 'Incandescent with rage' doesn't begin to describe how I feel.

Could someone come up with a simple list of steps to take for idiots like me to try and find our way through? Give links from each step to threads that deal with the topic(s). Then Sticky it to the top of the forum. Such a thing would be a useful place for a novice to start.

I'm not going to go into Lombard, who granted me a loan on the basis that I had to take out the PPI, or it was no deal. An even more wanton case of misselling than BC.

Sorry to moan at such length. I feel sooooo bitter about this. Finally think I've found somewhere where people know what it's like, are sympathetic and may well offer help and advice.

Thanks in advance.

The CCA and SAR letters both went in the post on Monday 5th October, three weeks ago. No reply so far. Not even a lousy set of current T&C's.

I know that the SAR has up to 40 days for a reply, but is this long enough in the case of the CCA to place the debt in dispute and stop paying them? That's what foolishgirl suggested on Sept. 22nd.