Shop direct debts

[john40]

Hi

my wife and i owe a total of £8000 to very,marshal ward,litttlewoods,great universal,kays,Empire stores,Additions,and choice.

 

We both work but recently she has had to take a cut in hours ,im self employed and have lost a lot of work over the last 6 months.

 

We were both paying the catalogs but struggling to meet the full amounts due so they added £12 to the statements for each one we was late on paying.

 

We have worked out what we can afford and have decided to offer them £30 each per month to settle these debts.

 

my questions are do we have to write to each one or can we write to a main office as they are all owned by the same cooperation?

 

Does anyone know the address i need to write to?

 

How is the best way to word the letter?

 

also do we pay by standing order if they accept our offers?

 

i know we should have been more careful but we have 3 kids and when times have been tough its easier to order and pay later for clothes

and things and its easy to get carried away when your ordering online it don't feel like your spending money for some reason until the statement arrives

 

Any help or advice would be much appropriated

[dx100uk]

have a read of seq excellent blog in my sig...

 

you can reclaim ALL of those unlawful charges +++ int at THEIR rate.

 

i'll move this thread to the catalogue forum

where you can read a few threads from others in the sameboat.

 

dx

[john40]

Thanks for your reply how can i claim back the charges ? i realy need the address to write to them does anyone know if i have to write to them separately for each account? or can i just send a letter to there main office??? thanks

Edited April 27, 2011 by john40
i made a mistake

[dx100uk]

i'd just write to the main office and inc details on all A/C

but i'd also make a spreadsheet for EACH a/c charges [separtate claim sheets]

you charge them int at THEIR int rate on EACH charges from the day they levied it , to the date of your claim

use:

[john40]

I wrote to them offering £30 a month each,i got this reply

Thank you for your e mail regarding a possible payment arrangement.

Unfortunately we are unable to accept your offer as it does not meet our minimum payment criteria.

Please contact us on 0844 822 4090 within the next 7 days to discuss the options available to you. If we do not hear from you, we will assume you no longer require our assistance in this matter and we would expect normal payments to resume.

Please note that failure to bring your account up to date will lead to administration charges being applied to your account and could affect your ability to obtain future credit. Your account may ultimately be passed to external debt collection agencies.

We can only afford £30 each a month,my wife wont phone them she is not good on the phone ,and they wont talk to me on the phone as the accounts are in my wifes name.I need to email them back but im not very good at wording things like this and id like to know what my rights are before i reply to them.I would be very grateful for any any help and suggestions .thanks

[dx100uk]

as in post 2

 

these are not priority debts

 

TELL THEM

 

they are getting £1 PCM or bugger off

 

AND GET RECLAIMING>!!

 

stop using the phone as well

 

it YOUR MONEY take control!

 

dx

[john40]

I dont have all the statements so not sure how to claim back the charges,i do know that we've had these for about 3 years now and have been charged a lot of £12 charges in that time.Should i email them back asking for a list of charges we've had over the years?

[silverfox1961]

Hi,

Don't worry about the charges for now. Get the agreement in place. Once you have that done, then get the charges back

 

They will stuff your credit file for you so irrespective of what they say, pay what you have offered. They have a duty to treat debtors with a little sympathy.

 

What I would be doing is paying even less but putting some aside for when these debts get sold to DCA's. You would then be in a position to offer a Full and Final settlement. DCA's buy debts for substantially less than the original figure.

[john40]

Thanks for your reply's,we felt that anything below £30 a month was going to be too low but now you say this maybe ill be paying them a tenner each a month lol.

[john40]

my wife emailed them again ..They are refusing to come to a any kind of repayment arrangement or stop any charges or interest being added to our accounts unless my wife rings them up.we don't really want to talk to them on the phone only to be hassled into paying more then we can afford. .

[silverfox1961]

Time to stop emailing as well and do this by snail mail. You could adapt the letters in section 4 HERE to let them know that you have no wish to correspond by phone and that you wish for all communication to be in writing thus ensuring no ambiguity either way.

 

If you were to ring them, they would badger you into paying more than you can afford. What you could do is get your wife to authorise you to deal with this on her behalf. You need to do that in writing. (I do the same for my daughter-vodafone though)

If you have a record function on your mobile phone, you could then ring them and catch them out as you don't have to tell them you are recording

[john40]

do i need to get my wife to send a letter saying please allow my husband to negotiate on my behalf? i tried to talk to them at the start but they wouldn't discuss it with me at all.thanks for the advice

[minmoo]

Hi john40,

 

i am in the same position with shop direct and they refused my offer of 25 a month. So i am being defaulted later on in May. The cca they sent me was from the wrong date (by miles) and not in my handwriting with current t&c.

 

They wont be helpful so dont get stressed by it. Chin up

Edited May 11, 2011 by minmoo

[silverfox1961]

do i need to get my wife to send a letter saying please allow my husband to negotiate on my behalf? i tried to talk to them at the start but they wouldn't discuss it with me at all.thanks for the advice

 

Yes you would have to do that. The problem is that they would need your wifes signature and in some case we don't advocate giving creditors a signature so I would write over this;

 

 

Just copy/paste it to your letter

[john40]

Thank you silverfox1961 i will add that to my letter and print it out to send .minmoo i hope all goes well for you

[john40]

My wife sent them another email saying what we can afford just to see if they would reconsider .We got back a reply saying

Thank you for your e mail regarding a possible payment arrangement.

Unfortunately we are unable to accept your offer as it does not meet our minimum payment criteria.

Please contact us on 0844 822 4090 within the next 7 days to discuss the options available to you. If we do not hear from you, we will assume you no longer require our assistance in this matter and we would expect normal payments to resume.

Please note that failure to bring your account up to date will lead to administration charges being applied to your account and could affect your ability to obtain future credit. Your account may ultimately be passed to external debt collection agencies.

just no getting through to these people that we cant afford to pay them the amounts they want each month anymore.I sent them a letter originally to there head office,it wasn't until i emailed them i got a reply.Does anyone know a better department i could contact? or should i just ignore them now and let them send us to the DCA ?

[themadcap]

Hi,

 

I am posting this on a few of the Shop Direct posts as I have been working on 3 claims on behalf of a relative and want everybody who has been charged by them to reclaim their charges and all applicable interest as these are possibly the most arrogant of all the companies I have dealt with and will firstly refuse your requests and then as it goes on breach the court procedures and ignore the judges requests until they ultimately settle as of they have no defence and no desire to go in front of a judge.

The final outcome on the claims is posted below as the e-mail sent to me for my relative.

Shop Direct have still not paid the sums stated in the e-mails in full and have part paid so still looking to court.

Please click the star if this is informative and feel free to contact or reply to this post for any assistance.

 

I have just advised the defendant to make the following account credits, which I believe satisfy your *******'s claims:

 

Claim No 1QT08206 re account ref ******** (Littlewoods)

 

Credit to the account of £175.79

Claim No 1QT09646 re account ref ******** (Very)

Credit to the account of £251.72

Claim No 1QT24916 re account ref ******** (Choice)

 

Credit to the account of £137.12 - to include the charge of 30/4/11.

 

I understand that the adjustments will take place on Monday.

 

Regards

[john40]

Heres an update ,i wrote them a letter no reply.My wife phoned them on friday 13th may a lady set up a plan of £20 on each account starting the end of this month.After not hearing nothing again i emaild them.Apparently they have no record of a payment plan ever being set up? are they taking the p...???? lol

[john40]

We got a letter today saying that the least they can accept a month is £360 and we really cant afford that much.My wife phoned them and they told her she should go bankrupt.She told them to take us to court or sell the debts but they are more interested in adding charges and interest.Weve asked for all our CCA's and we have told them we will stop paying them a penny unless they set up a payment plan and accept the £20 a month on each account (8 in total).Were really at a loss now???We really dont want to go bankrupt over this.can they force us to go bankrupt? sorry for keep posting we just really need any help and any advice we can get right now. thanks

[silverfox1961]

Absolute tosh.

I would make a formal complaint that they are treating you unfairly. You have explained your situation and as such they should treat you with a little sympathy.

 

They have already said that 'ultimately, they will sell your debt to a debt collection angency' so if they want to play silly bu**ers, you could stop contact with them completely, save the money you would have happily sent them and then offer a Full and Final settlement to the DCA (who are more open to that than original creditors)

 

I'm sure others will offer differing advice

[minmoo]

I agree with Silverfox and it is exactly what i have done. My offer of 25 a month was refused and i have let them default me this month. This is in the hope that dca are greedy so and so's and will thus will be open to offers!

[john40]

Thanks

we are going to ignore them now,waite for the DCA'S to contact us then send them a £1 postal order asking them to send us the original CCA'S and take it from there.Now its war mr grimsdale lol.thankyou everyone for your help.Ive learned a lot from this great forum

[john40]

Minmoo how long does it take for them to default you? they are sending me statements now as normal with 2 months back payments due as if ive never contacted them lol

[minmoo]

Hi John,

 

They have taken 6 months to default me (which was this month apparently, not bothered to check). They refused my reduced offer a couple of times, continued to add monthly charges and send me statements. Oh and they totally ignored my complaint. Worth mentioning that they sent me a copy of my cca which was dated incorrectly by several years and not in my handwriting. Bunch of amateurs!

At the moment am waiting for whichever dca crawls out of the woodwork. Seems stupid that you, like me wanted to try to pay but it 'didnt fit their criteria' lol. Somehow they have decided it makes more sense to increase your indebtedness than reduce it. Muppets.

 

It will be a fine day in court when i prove that it isnt my signature and that isnt the date i opened the account!

 

I do have a thread but that is basically it in a nutshell

[john40]

6 months?? is there someone at the top we could write to? we've emaild em wrote to em and phoned em and all we get is you cant pay that amount computer says no lol. i was going to pay them token payments but i see you dont.Sod em im going to go live my life and ignore them the way they have me and you .