Argos Card Services

[stillhoping]

Good afternoon everyone.

I am new to the group so please bare with me.

 

I was laid off from work a couple years ago and decided last year to take the plunge and become self-employed. However, work has not been coming in and I am now in serious arrears with several creditors. Argos is to the tune of £1150.38 which I was paying off at £10 per month. I had been advised by the CCCS (now Step Change) to send them a nominal fee of £1 per month but felt that was too small.

 

Anyway, last month I received a statement from them saying I had failed to make a minimum payment. I did pay but was three days late, my fault entirely but they now want 5 times what I was paying per month starting August 13th and have added a £12 late payment fee.

 

I have since received two threatening letters and an email from a company called FRS - Financial Recovery Services Ltd re my Argos account balance. The first letter is headed Pre-Litigation Warning in bold capitals and states my account has been referred to them to arrange payment of the full outstanding balance required immediately.

 

I ignored it then the 2nd letter arrived headed Notice of intended court action, again in bold capitals. This says that unless the full balance is paid or an acceptable proposal of payment is received within 5 working days the following steps may be taken as a consequence and they go on to list the steps such as a recovery specialist visiting my home to recover the outstanding debt. They have also added a £12 admin charge for them sending me the letter.

 

Could you advise on what steps I need to take? I was going to continue paying the £10 to Argos as before but am worried about continuing to ignore these FRS people, particularly if I do need to be making payments to them now.

 

Apologies for such a long post

 

Many thanks in advance,

 

Stillhoping

[Mike_hawk]

Welcome to CAG

 

Seems a tad unreasonable of it not to take note of your current financial predicament.

 

I assume you used CCCS/Stepchange DMP templates when you initially contacted your creditors? Did it [Argos] agree the reduced payment plan?

 

FRS Ltd...... wouldn't believe anything it states, nothing more than a dormant shell within Argos/Homeretail group family. None of its agents are employed by FRS, all staff of Homeretail group ltd........ appears a little deceptive for it to suggest FRS 'escalates' the collection process, when in reality it operates from the same office space [check the return address on the back of the envelope].

 

I suppose short term you could send it a formal complaint, at least that way you should receive some meaningful correspondence in return.

 

terry.duddy@homeretailgroup.com

john.walden@argos.co.uk

 

Is there any PPI or CPP on the account?

[stillhoping]

Good morning Mike and thank you for the welcome and for your response.

 

I did use the 'letter to creditors' template given by CCCS initially and Argos did agree to the £10 per month payment that was offered. I checked the address at the back of the envelope and yes, the return address does seem to be the same as the Argos one.

 

Sorry Mike, should I ignore FRS and continue to pay Argos directly? I will send a formal complaint to the contact you have provided for Argos (thank you).

 

Funnily enough, when the PPI scandal broke, I did contact them to ask if there was ever any PPI or CPP on the account in the past; had this card for over 10 years or more but cannot remember if I had taken any protection or insurance on it before I lost my job. Argos of course say there never was any PPI or CPP on the card.

[Mike_hawk]

Hi sh

 

I think I'd want to remind it that a little forbearance would be appreciated in the circumstances, if the current offer of £10.00 per month is going to be an issue going forward it would seem sensible to reduce to a more manageable figure. Fees/Charges..... all recoverable, although it's probably senisble for you to focus on getting things back on track in the short term to give yourself some breathing space.

 

FRS...... I wouldn't say ignore, rather direct your response/s to Homeretail, FRS can't offer you a remedy.... it's use is purely designed to deceive, even it's correspondence is created on Homeretails operating system [GEMS I think]. Include within your complaint that any/all correspondence must be in writing only, it tends to act fairly quickly to remove telephone numbers if requested. Probably more a reflection of recent appeal court cases than it's need to please.

 

Assume these are the templates you've started receipting?

 

[ATTACH]45653[/ATTACH][ATTACH]45652[/ATTACH]

 

It would be useful to CCA it and get a SAR in the post to check the accuracy of it's demands and find out whether PPI or CPP were ever applied. Argos were fairly active in prefilling check boxes for both on telephone applications, it seems to have changed its ways a little now and moved to 'Telephone xxxxxxx to activate your card', going for the sale at 'activation' instead.

[stillhoping]

Hi Mike, apologies for taking so long to reply.

 

The £10 is just manageable going forward so will continue to pay that. Good to know the fees/charges can be reclaimed and I will direct my payments/correspondence to the Home Retail Group (HRG) as you advise. Yes, the templates you mention are the ones I received; the first was from Argos themselves and the 2nd one from FRS, hmm.

 

Would it be okay to just send a CCA to the HRG to start with?

 

Thanks again for your invaluable advice

 

SH

[Mike_hawk]

Afternoon SH

 

So long as you feel comfortable with the £10.00 and it is genuinely affordable I can't see any reason [yet] not to continue. My only concern was that you may overstretch yourself and end up with it revoking the agreement [as it appears to have done at the mo]. Perhaps renegotiate to a slightly lesser sum allowing you to hold a few quid back in reserve just in case you end up with a late one again restarting the cycle of begging letters.

 

I'd certainly get the CCA in the post to it, although depending on the age of the account you should prepare yourself for a bit of a ruck when you have sight of what it considers to be a true copy

 

Oh and, if you check the properties of the attached it'll provide another email addy for Home retail

Edited August 8, 2013 by Mike_hawk

[stillhoping]

Morning Mike

 

Thank you for your concern and yes I would feel more confident paying less to ensure I could keep up with future payments but felt that because the payments were already low I would just keep going until my financial situation improved.

 

I suppose until such time, I could try to renegotiate and the idea of keeping some back just in case does make sense.

 

Will do the CCA by recorded delivery today and no doubt will be asking for help with whatever paperwork I receive, if any.

 

I'll check that as well, thank you.

 

 

 

 

[Mike_hawk]

Bear in mind Argos has a policy of demanding £5.00 minimum per month...... in the real world it's demands mean very little but if it's affordable it may be a better starting point for you whilst you gather more information for the account.

 

Do you have any other creditors?

[stillhoping]

Right ok, I'll see if they will accept that for now.

 

Oh gosh, unfortunately I have several. Long story short...way before I was laid off from work, I stupidly took out some loans on behalf of a now ex partner which amounts to a serious sum of money combined. This was back in 2006/7 and EQL & McKenzie Hall are now the DC's.

 

I am not at home at the mo so do not have all the details to hand but they were both contacting me everyday on my mobile during May (don't know how they got my number). Anyway, since July nothing at all from either.

 

No doubt it'll start again soon...

[Mike_hawk]

I think it would be useful to gather all the info you have for each debt and start the process of establishing the accuracy of each balance demanded.

 

Assume you approached each with templates from CCCS/Stepchange and have a payment arrangement in place on all accounts?

[stillhoping]

I agree, ostrich and sand springs to mind yet again.

 

It is so much more complicated Mike. The original credits refused nominal payments and began demanding payment in full or else. The next thing I know, different DC's started contacting demanding payment so I started asking for CCA's/SAR's as amounts quoted were beyond ridiculous. I received dodgy copies sent without my signature from one and paperwork that was completely illegible from the other.

 

CCCS/StepChange were unfortunately never involved as I was too embarrassed to contact them due to the circumstances.

 

Will dig up all the original paperwork over the weekend.

[Mike_hawk]

You may want to check your CRA files too, Noddle offer a freebie [not sure how accurate it is though] and equifax offer a free 30 day trial if you've not used it in the past. Not entirely sure that EQL [Equidebt?] or Muck Hall would necessarily have been assigned the accounts so it's important to determine who the creditors are.

[stillhoping]

Morning Mike

 

I will try the Noddle CRA as I have already taken advantage of the main 2's 30 day free trials in the past.

 

Are they called Muck Hall because they use dirty tactics? That's brought a smile to my face.

 

I will try and dig up all the old paperwork I have to establish who the original creditors were. I do remember Equidebt, now EQL I guess? Anyway, I will post back when I have organised the paperwork properly and make some sense of who's who and where things stand.

 

Have a lovely weekend.

[Mike_hawk]

I appreciate this is an aged thread [not a clue where sh got to] but perhaps it could be stickied in some way that anyone searching FRS will find the information s/he requires

 

To qualify post #4 and the origin of FRS correspondence see below..

 

-----Original Message-----

From: Michelle Cain

To:

Sent: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 12:17

Subject: RE: Acronym on account.

 

Dear Mr xxxxxxx,

 

PN – Is a system action for a change or message of a description of an event (CPP).

 

I have enclosed copies of the letters you have requested. Please note that several of them are for the same BACOTY letter but from different sections of the Business, hence the different system codes used.

 

I am awaiting an e-mail re xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx and as soon as received will immediately forward you the response.

 

Thank you for your continued patience regarding this matter.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Michelle Cain

Complaint Handler

Customer Care Team

Home Retail Group Financial Services

 

Tel: 0845 602 8366

E-mail: michelle.cain@homeretailgroup.com