Hello, We were in exactly the same boat as you with Paragon Finance. We asked for a CCA but didn't hear anything and after 14 days we stopped paying them. We neved did hear from Paragon and they didn't even send us any letters saying that we had stopped paying them. So we complained to our local Trading Standards officer (you can look them up online) - after a month or so we received a letter from Paragon saying that seeing as they couldn't locate the agreement and we kept up our payments (albeit reduced payments) etc. etc they were willing to close the account. This was great news considering we still owed them £11,000 but we were still not that happy so we wrote a letter complaining about the £5000 interest added back to our account and they wrote back offering us £1000 as a gesture of goodwill. We got the cheque and felt that we probably would not get any further with them so have closed the case. I would suggest you contact your locl trading standards officer. Good luck!

Hi there, I have started a couple of other new threads relating to our experience with Paragon Finance. What happened is that we neved did hear from Paragon and they didn't even send us any letters saying that we had stopped paying them. So we complained to our local Trading Standards officer (you can look them up online) - after a month or so we received a letter from Paragon saying that seeing as they couldn't locate the agreement and we kept up our payments etc. etc they were willing to close the account. This was great news considering we still owed them £11,000 but we were still not that happy so we wrote a letter complaining about the £5000 interest added back to our account and they wrote back offering us £1000 as a gesture of goodwill. We got the cheque and felt that we probably would not get any further with them so have closed the case. Have you asked for the CCA? If they have it then it's more difficult to get anything from them. Good luck!

The offer was made over the phone but my husband has asked that we have it in writing and also that we require confirmation that any default notices or adverse comments Paragon has recorded on our credit reference file will be removed. The chap at Paragon did say that if we could prove that Universal Credit agreed to suspend interest forever then they would consider giving us more back but we never did get it in writing - it was 8 years ago that this happened and we don't have any record of anything. Paragon are really horrible people to deal with and don't usually budge so I think we should consider ourselves lucky to have managed to close the account and get £1000 compensation even though we have paid them an extortionate amount of money. I really don't know whether to pursue this further or not.

Hi there, Following on with this post. We actually complained to Paragon about their dealings with our account (where £5000+ suspended interest was added back onto our account). Now they are offering us £1000 as a gesture of goodwill (they also closed the account a few months back). I guess this is the best we're going to get out of them - do you think we should accept or try and get more? Thanks

Hi Wilkinss208, We asked for a CCA agreement from Paragon and never heard back from them either. So we e-mailed our local Trading Standards office and they got in touch with Paragon and Paragon wrote back saying they hadn't got our CCA agreement and they closed our account. So it might be a good idea for you to go that down that route. Hi Clear Blue, Universal Credit were taken over from Paragon Finance and this is their address: Paragon Personal Finance Ltd. St Catherine's Court Herbert Road Solihull West Midlands B91 3QE

Hi again, We actually complained to Trading Standards about Paragon and I think it's because the TS person in Solihull (where Paragon are based) contacted Paragon with our complaint and this made Paragon realise they were in the wrong and so decided it best to close the account. We are going to put all our complaints down in writing to TS and maybe they can help us decide if we have a case or not. We do have a statement from February this year but we've made more payments into the account since then so I will send them a S.A.R - (Subject Access Request) too. Thanks

HI, Thanks both for your replies. Don't get us wrong we were really happy that our loan has been closed down. The original loan was for £10,000 which we took out with Universal Credit we paid PPI on this as well. Due to redundancy & later maternity leave UC kindly suspended the interest on the account and credited the account with £5650. Universal credit were then bought by Paragon Finance in 1998 they automatically added this "suspended interest" back to the account in 1999 without informing us or anything. For this £10,000 loan we have paid a total of £27,000 (due to their ridiculous interest rates on our reduced payments) and before we challenged them they were asking for another £10,000. So now you can see why we are still bitter and want to do something about it! I think for the amount we have paid them we deserve some of that back, even if it's only the Suspended interest and further charges. This is what Head of Customer Relations said when they decided to close the account. "Unfortunately, we have been unable to locate the loan agreement for your account. It would appear that your loan agreement was not transferred to Paragon when we purchased your loan from Universal Credit in 1998. In the circumstances, and having regard for your payment record, I have decided to close your loan down. " Any advice? If we stop here with just the loan closure they are the winners really considering the amount we have paid them. Thanks.

Hi, I wonder if anybody can give some advice on this matter: We've just discovered that our loan company never had a copy of the original agreement. We've successfully got the loan shut down but we'd like to take it further. Does anybody know what we can claim for? e.g. can we claim back any interest or penalty charges or anything at all? Thanks.

Hello, Just received some brilliant news from the lovely lady at our local trading standards office. Paragon has sent this letter to us. Please accept my apologies for the delay in my response. I have attempted to contact you by telephone to discuss your account, but have not left a message as I cannot be certain I have your up-to-date contact number. Unfortunately, we have been unable to locate the loan agreement for your account. It would appear that your loan agreement was not transferred to Paragon when we purchased your loan from Universal Credit in 1998. In the circumstances, and having regard for your payment record, I have decided to close your loan down. This matter has been communicated to Consumer Credit Counselling Services but we have established that they no longer act on your behalf. Again, please accept my apologies for the delay in communicating our decision to you. If you would like to discuss any matters further, please call me on 0121 712 2188. Yours sincerely Dave Newcombe Head of Customer Relations Although this is wonderful news we are still going to try and claim back the charges made by them for various things and also the PPI we claimed for which was later debited back to our account (a little sum of £5500). So my advice to anybody in a similar position (who do not have a CCJ) is to contact your Local TS office (all we did was e-mail them and attached a copy of our letter we sent to Paragon (i.e. the failure to produce agreement letter) and they did all the rest. We are so happy!

I have got my own thread which you helped me out on but haven't received any other replies since my last query. Here's the link. http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/general-debt/107552-paragon-finance.html?highlight=paragon I'll stop butting in on other people's threads but as we were all in similar positions I thought I would add our experiences to it and ask for help at the same time. Sorry!

Hi there, Yes of course I should have known that everything should be frozen on that account now. This is the last letter we sent them (See below). We sent this on the 28th August and haven't heard a thing. We also sent a copy to Trading Standards who are looking into whether there is any further information from the Home Authority Trading Standards for Paragon Finance but we haven't heard anything about that. So should we just hang on and wait? I do want to claim £5649.92 back from them, we had a PPI which we claimed on and they credited our account with this sum. On the statement it states "Suspended Interest Adj - Credit £5649.92" but then one year later they debited that amount from our account again! Could this be claimed back? DEFAULT UNDER THE CONSUMER CREDIT ACT 1974 FAILURE TO PRODUCE AGREEMENT Dear Sir/Madam ACCOUNT NUMBER: XXXXXXXXXX We wrote to you by Recorded Delivery ( Ref: XX XXXX XXXX XXX) on 3rd July 2007 asking for a copy of the above agreement together with the relevant information under Section 77-79 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, enclosing the statutory payment of £1.00. This letter was delivered and signed for on 5th July 2007. The Consumer Credit Act allows 12 working days for this request to be carried out before your company enters into a default situation. This time limit expired on 23rd July 2007. If the request is not satisfied after a further calendar month, your company commits an offence. This time limit expired on 24th August 2007. We have still neither received a copy of the agreement, as required by S78 Consumer Credit Act 1974, nor any other information relating to same. As such, this account has become unenforceable by law. As you are no doubt aware subsection (6) states: If the creditor under an agreement fails to comply with subsection (1) — (a) He is not entitled, while the default continues, to enforce the agreement; and (b) If the default continues for one month he commits an offence. Whilst it is unenforceable, no interest is to be added to the account. No action can be taken against us. No adverse credit references or defaults can be listed against us with Credit Reference Agencies. The account cannot be passed to a Debt Collection Agency. And lastly, we are not obliged to make any further payments to the account. Any default notices or adverse comments your company has recorded on our credit reference file should be immediately removed. Should you fail to respond favourably to this letter within seven (7) days of receipt we reserve the right to commence litigation against your company without further notice. In that event we will be asking for full disclosure from yourselves including production of the original signed agreement. Data Protection Act (Data Protection Act 1998) Furthermore, under the Data Protection Act (S. 10), you are also denied the authority to pass on any of our personal data. To do so in the circumstances is, we understand, a breach of the Data Protection Act 1998, and also the OFT guidelines, and should you ignore our request it would result in you being further reported to the relevant authorities. We also require that you remove all our data from your files within the next 7 days and look forward to receiving a letter from you within 10 days confirming that you have complied with this request. Yours faithfully,

Hi, I'm in eactly the same situation. Sent CCA request beginning of July heard nothing. Wrote follow-up letter end of August and still haven't heard anything. I stopped my payment two months ago (which was through CCCS) and most loan sharks would write to you immediately saying "Where's my payment" but not a sausage! What I want to know is have they frozen our account or are they still charging us huge interest each month? We've complained about them to Trading Standards who are on the case (although I haven't heard from them for a couple of weeks now). We're not sure what our next course of action should be, maybe complain to the Financial Ombudsman? This company is ripping off so many people they need to be taught a lesson or two! Regards Wolfhead

Hi there, Just to keep you up-to-date and to help anybody else dealing with Paragon Finance. We still haven't heard anything from Paragon. Not even a letter saying that we have not paid the August payment. No CCA agreement either which we asked for over two months ago now. We wrote to Paragon again using a letter I found on this site entitled "DEFAULT UNDER THE CONSUMER CREDIT ACT 1974 FAILURE TO PRODUCE AGREEMENT". We still haven't heard from them and we are still not paying them the £318 we were paying each month. We contacted Trading Standards and somebody is dealing with it there. Hopefully we'll come out lucky. After paying over £28,000 for a £10,000 loan I think we deserve to win this one! Wolfhead

Hi Ruth, It's probably best to start your own thread and you might get more replies. I'm in the same boat as you where we took a loan out for £10,000 in 1992 and have been similarly stung by interest (and other) charges. What you could do for now is ask them to send you a copy of the Consumer Credit Agreement (you can find lots of information on how to do this on this site and there's a template letter you can find on this site). Basically if they fail to supply it after 12 working days then they are in default and if they have not sent it after a calendar month (or another 30 days on top of the 12) then they have commited an offence and the debt becomes unenforceable, you can then stop paying them (which I did after the 12 days default) and we're still waiting to hear from them. Their next step has to be taken via legal action where they would then have to supply the agreement and explain to the satisfaction of the court why they have failed to send it up until this point. It's also a good idea to complain to the Financial Services Ombudsman about them. I hope this helps. Regards Wolfhead

Hi, I was waiting until the end of the 30 day period after requesting the CCA agreement before posting another reply. That has now happened and we still haven't heard a word from Paragon Finance. Any advice on how to proceed would be most appreciated. Thanks