26 Feb 2015

A question about : Fashionworld Catalogue

Hi

Paid my account smoothly up to date. Pay at the end of every month usually around Ј80. I emailed them regards to March payment stating that I could only afford Ј30 and would continue, due to financial hardship, pay them Ј30 a month for 3 months from when I will then review.

I received the following back from jdwilliams.co.uk !! and not fashionworld

Dear Mrs ??, Thank you for your recent e-mail.
We can set up a Long Term Payment plan where payments of Ј30.00 will be payable every 28 days, providing you;

1. Send your payments on time allowing seven days before the due date shown on your statement.

2. Do not place any further orders on your account.

Contact us immediately if you have any problems making payments to your
account. In return we will;

1. Stop all future charges.
2. Send a statement every 28 days with 2 payment slips attached once your first payment has been received.

Take your payment over the telephone on 0870 160 1951 by
SWITCH/DELTA/MASTERCARD or VISA. Help if you have a problem maintaining payments to your account. In accordance with our trading terms and conditions an arrangement fee of Ј99.99 will be added to your account and you will be unable to place further orders. If payments are late or missed charges will be added. Please contact us to let us know if you wish to proceed.
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Well firstly I do not agree and do not wish to further add to my debt by paying Ј99.99 !!! lol

so I replied as follows:
I do not agree to the arrangement fee at all and do NOT authorise you to charge me. I will be paying Ј30 per month to fashion world on the fashionworld.com website at the end of every month. My husband gets paid on the 28th of every month
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they replied as follows:
Thank you for your recent email.
Unfortunately we will not be able to set up the payment plan without the
arrangement fee being added.

The Ј30 you propose to pay will not cover your payment rate and you will
incur charges.
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i replied and then they replied again as follows (won't bore you too much!!)

The arrangement fee added is calculated at 10% of the outstanding balance to a maximum of Ј99.99 and is charged once only.
When a payment plan is set up, provided payments are received by the due date shown on your statement, no further charges will be added and interest is stopped.
You are currently paying approx Ј?? every 28 days in interest which will stop and the full Ј30.00 payment you make will reduce your balance.
As explained below, if you do not arrange a payment plan and your payments do not meet the minimum payments shown on your statement then you will incur further charges.
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so my final reply was as follows:
Hiya. Thanks for explaining but if that is your attitude then I will take it to the consumer credit counselling service. I think it is ridiculous. We are already suffering and trying to sort out our payments so why would I want to pay you an extra Ј99.99 to manage it when I can do it myself. All we are asking for is about 3 months at Ј30 a month till we sort ourselves out. I know for sure that after 3 months we can make bigger payments. It is ridiculous that me been honest and at least paying some money per month you cannot find a solution that doesnt involve me paying more money. I know you say that it is added to the balance but again why should I have to pay more as I have come clean and honest with you.

I will be taking this further if you are not willing to accept Ј30 a month, waiver the charges for the 3 months and see where we go from them and that is without my paying an extra Ј99.99.

I have copied this to Fashionworld so they know where we stand. I look forward to your reply.

ps. Fashionworld - I know you have been trying to telephone me and leaving messages on my voicemail but I work during the day and cannot accept calls and to be honest I do not accept calls from withheld numbers! You can ring me on an evening after 6pm but you would have to let me know which day you are calling so that I can expect the call. If you could give me a 'normal' number then I would gladly ring you but I am not rining an 0845 / 0870 from my mobile (we do not have a landline) as those numbers are not included in my call package.

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To be honest I do not really know where I stand I just get so frustrated when people take advantage like this. I have had no problems with them. Even the couple of problems I did have with Fashionworld, we sorted out together and they refunded amounts in charges so it seems stupid why they are going straight down this route straight away.

Fashionworld refuse to communicate with me although every day I get a phone call from them but it is a message that asks me to contact them!!!!

CAN ANYONE please let me know where I stand with this and if there is anything I can do to get to be able to pay the Ј30 and get the charges waivered without having to pay the Ј99.99

As it is the end of the month again I have just paid another Ј30 as per MY agreement.

Thanks again

Best answers:

  • I may have misread your post but if they intend charging you Ј99.99 arrangement fee, it implies you owe at leat Ј1,000. If this is so at Ј80 pm it would take about 13 months to pay off, at Ј30 pm it would take nearly 3 years to pay off (over 3 years inc arr fee).
    I'm no expert in this field, but if you haven't already done so look at the original agreement you signed with this company, what does it say about fees, interest, failure to make full payments?