argos

A question about : argos

I am so annoyed with argos at the moment - see previous thread, and wonder whether anyone has had problems with them regarding dmp and how they have dealt with it.

Best answers:

• With any creditor who does not agree to freeze interest all you can do is stick to paying the DMP amount, its annoying but you cannot force them to freeze interest.
  Maybe at some point they'll sell the debt on, or maybe at some point they will consider freezing interest but until then at least your payment is slightly larger than the interest charged and so the balance is not increasing. If your other creditors have frozen interest then they'll obviously be paid off earlier, and at that point you'll be able to increase the payment to argos and start to make decent inroads in to the balance.
  That said I would probably keep writing to them every 6months or so to ask them to reconsider freezing interest, stating that your other creditors have agreed to etc.
• I would increase that frequency myself. I would write every month at least pointing out the immoraility of continuing to charge interest when the debtor has entered into a formal arrangement in this way. It's little better than profiteering and I would keep on at them about it.
• decided had enough of argos and have made a complaint against them even thought thats not going to help with interest. All the other debts will only take six years to pay but argos 27 years!!! Ah well I'll keep on at them and hope for the best but they are not going to get anymore than i'm already paying!
• Wont help. Its completely up to them if they will freeze interest - there is no mandate where they have to.
  Actually, quite a few places done. Barcleycard and Natwest both refused to freeze mine. Natwest did after 6 months, and with Barclaycard it took 2 years - but both did eventually freeze the interest.
  I think its a measure to:
  a. Get as much from you as they can.
  b. Make sure your genuinely in long term trouble before giving you a break.
  Ultimately theres nothing you can do. In fact making a complaint may make it worse - they may take longer to freeze the interest. Best approach is keep writing to them evey month with the details, and asking them to freeze. You DMP managers will do this every 6 months anyway - but you can add to the frequency. Thats more likely to have an effect. Being polite but persistant will make them fed up of having to deal with yor requests and may make them act faster.
• Argos haven't frozen my interest either. I suppose I'm dealing with it because its only a small balance. They're getting Ј6 a month from me from my DMP but they're charging about Ј1 in interest. I know it's sucky, but because my debt to them is small it'll still be halved by the end of next year. Im hoping to up my DMP payments at the beginning of next year, so hopefully things will improve much quicker, but its REALLY sucky that they don't freeze easily. On a plus side though they are better than Vanquis, who are charging me around Ј8 a month for the privelige of repaying slowly....and they're only getting Ј5 a month off me! That's one that IS going up
• its not just the interest! I have a letter saying they will review my case in January 2013 but now sent me a statement reverting back to original payments and put the interest back up. Also they show I made a payment before the due date but then charged me a late payment fee!!!! do they really know what they are doing other than getting my back up. Even Barclaycard lowered the interest significantly to make a difference each month.
• It also makes a difference how long he debts will take to pay off if any payment plan is accepted. Generally, if your going to clear the debt in 6 years or less - they are less likely to stop interest completely, though they may reduce it.
  The thought being, if you can clear the debt in 6 years with drastically reduced payments - then its manageable, so yur looking for a "cheap" way out.
  While they may understand you cant afford the full payments given your income, they also see reduced payents with no interest yet the debt being cleared in a (relatively) short period as unacceptable. They would rather reduce your payments so you can manage - and reduce your interest so the ballance is being reduced - but they still make money from you (which is why they lent you the money in the first place).
  In my case, the timeframe given the proposed payments to my creditors was 22 years. Once Id got past 6 months, and the outlook hadnt changed they all started to freeze interest - except Barclaycard and Nat West. They did reduce the interest to 2% (meaning my ballance was pretty much static) until the 2 year point. When my situation got worse and the proposed payments actually went down, they finally realised I had genuine long term issues and removed the interest. That was 13 years ago, and Im stil on a DMP and have never had any further interest, despite the debts changing hands several times.
• Decided not to complain but write to them asking why they have charged the late payment fee, why the amount has gone back up and why they did not wait until January like they said in their reply to my 1st complaint. However, all I can afford is Ј20 per month and thats all they are getting - There's always one!!!!