KandCo assistance required with ongoing dispute and charge reclaim

[Aldous]

Afternoon all

 

having been a long time lurker on this forum I thought I'd post and ask for some of you experts on here to give some advice on a situation with K & Co (Shop Direct).

 

The background to the situation is as follows.

 

My mother in law opened an account with Great Universal some 20 years ago. They have now changed to K & Co and are part of the Shop Direct Group as you are all aware. The problem arose when a customer of my MIL (in fact my Sister in law) ordered a number of items on BNPL one of which was a note book computer type thing. My SIL states that the notebook was fully paid for within the interest free period, but despite this K&Co applied the full interest amount to the account balance (which i note from the statements I have they seem to do as a matter of course one month before they state the interest will be applied).

 

This caused a dispute and my SIL refused to pay the interest amount therefore the minimum payments made were lower than K&CO requested on their statements. This started in April Last year.

 

My SIL bless her has endeavoured to sort it out through telephone calls (eek!) to K&Co "Customer Excellence" and has as you can imagine been fobbed off at every pass. She has written to K&Co numerous times about this dispute and eventually escalated the compliant to the FO who were next to useless but in fairness having seen the letters I do not think enough info was provided by my SIL or enough evidence to back up her claim.

 

As the minimum payments have been lower than requested my MIL has accrued a number of charges on her account. My MIL's position is that as my SIL was her "customer" and K&Co were fully aware of that fact then they should be pursuing my SIL for the notebook not my MIL. K&Co however deny all knowledge of my SIL as a customer of my MIL and therefore state that my MIL is liable for the entire debt.

 

No-one is denying that money is owed, they simply dispute the amount and the validity of charges imposed when K&Co were fully aware that the balance amount was disputed.

 

The matter has now been referred to NDR and my MIL has panicked and asked me to look into it. I have told her that NDR are just a trading company of Shop Direct and I have written to NDR (cc K&Co) explaining that my MIL will not be speaking to them on the telephone as the account is in dispute and that no payment arrangement other than the one currently in place (£84.00 pm) will be entered into until the dispute is resolved.

 

Therefore my questions are:

 

1. K&Co final decision letter was written on 30 June last year. Can we still CCA and SAR them?

2. Is it worth sending a CCA as there obviously is an agreement in place (goods ordered/received etc) or is it best to go straight to SAR?

3. Does the fact that the FO was involved mean that no further action can be taken? FO involvement ended abruptly in Nov/Dec last year when MIL and SIL fell out over this.

 

Any suggestions very much appreciated!