Hi CAG,

After too many years of letting this rumble on, I have finally resolved to sort out my account with Paragon.

I took out a loan initially in 1993 for £5k, and a further £4k in 1996, which was made into one loan with a balance of £8500 in 1996. I had some trouble with repayments off and on between 1997 and 1999, and in 1999 entered into a Debt managemnt agreement (I can't recall the name of the company I used however), and maintained the agreed payments until 2003. On receiving a letter from Paragon in 2003, I was shocked to see that in spite of being 80% of the way through the repayment plan, the balance owed to Paragon was still £9k. In 2004 I had a home visit from them, and in that visit a repayment plan was arranged that would "cover the interest", and I have been maintaining those payments (£160pm) since.

Not having the original documents, I submitted a SAR to Paragon, and this returned a copy of the 1996 loan agreement, and a full statement of my account since 1993. There was no mention of the home visit, or a copy of the form I remember signing then, nor was there any mention of the agreement with the debt management company; in their response to the SAR, Paragon state that anything that is held on "paper file or microfiche that is not a relevant filing system for the purposes of the (Data protection) Act" will not be included.

The statement showed a current balance of £10800, so I need to know where to go from here.

By my calculations the sum owed on a loan of 8500 at their APR (23%) over 5 years (the original terms) is about £14500; according to the statement I have paid them around £31k, with a balance of £10800. I appreciate I had a couple of problematic periods, and I am not trying to wriggle out of paying my dues, but the sums paid so far and the amount claimed to be outstanding are outrageous.

While I have no written record of the home visit agreement, I distinctly remember the agent saying the payment of £160 would cover the interest and a small bit of the captial. However, the first interest charge form 2004 immediately following the visit was £190, so this agreement was, in their full knowledge, never going to do anything but accumulate the debt, which it did, leading to a balance of £14700 in 2010, when Paragon froze the interest on their own initiative, and in the 2 years since the balance has of course fallen to its current level - but only from the position that their lack of transparency allowed it to reach in the first place.

There has also been PPI payed on the loan, all the way from 1993 to 2003.

So:

What do (can) I do about the balance outstanding?

Is there any recompense for the amount I have overpaid to them?

Is their withholding of information in response to the SAR justified?

Do I have a chance of reclaiming the PPI?

Many thanks!

D