'Collection' Fees, American Express

[lolly]

Can anyone give us some guidance on this one, cant find the answer on any other threads.

 

We had an Amex Platinum card (a charge card rather than a credit card). According to the T & C's if your direct debit bounces on two or more occasions they cancel your card.

 

We had our direct debit bounce on two different instances. After the second occasion Amex did indeed cancel the card and (very promptly, within days!) also passed our outstanding balance onto a debt collecion agency.

 

The debt collection agency then proceeded to charge us another £226 on top of our £1482 balance and unpaid direct debit charges as a 'collection' fee.

 

Do you think this supposed 'collection' fee is also eligible for inclusion in our claim? Arent sure since it was charged by the debt collection fee, not Amex. Although Im sure Amex got a chunk of it!

 

Thanks in advance

[alanfromderby]

It depends on whether the Debt Collection Agency are acting for Amex - or whether they have bought the debt. The fee certainly would seem to be unlawful - but it is important to know exactly who imposed it.

[lolly]

Thanks very much for the tip, Alan

 

The honest answer is I'm not sure. The letter from the debt collection doesnt give many clues away, it says:-

 

"We have been advised by our client that the above account has been cancelled. We are instructed to recover the outstanding balance, including a collection fee of £226.15 which has been added to your debt as part of section blah blah of your Cardmember agreement".

 

It is on the letterhead of "Credit Solutions" and the giro slip accompanying it has their name and bank account number on it. So I guess they took it over?

 

Talk about kicking you while youre down.

 

The ironic thing is that we had transferred the money for the direct debit into our Natwest bank account, but Natwest refused to honour the direct debit as according to them we hadnt done so in enough time. Natwest (and Amex) were both completely unhelpful, basically it was tough luck. We clocked up more charges from Natwest too over this. An expensive mistake.

 

Rant over!

[alanfromderby]

It looks like they are acting for Amex then.

 

If your Amex card has had late/overlimt charges during the time you had it, then I would advise hitting them with a DPA request - unless, of course, you have the statements.

 

I would then follow the process to get all the charges, including the £226, refunded to the account, and inform them that until this is done you consider the matter to be in dispute.

 

When they have finally resolved the matter you can then negotiate repayment. Presumably you are reclaiming fees from NatWest as well.

[lolly]

Thanks again, Alan.

 

Okay, we will get the preliminary letter including the collection fee off tomorrow. (Already have all the statements we need).

 

We paid the total amount outstanding already and our card was cancelled by them so nothing to lose!

 

Have noticed a few encouraging posts about Amex on here so hopefully ours will be the same, fingers crossed

[BankFodder]

If the sum they are trying to change includes charges then it seems to me to be without a doubt that you can recover the collection charges as they were incurred to recover and unlawful debt. If the debt did not include charges then the situation might be a little bit more difficult. I think you would have to show that AMEX acted unnecessarily in instructing debt collection agents. You would need to be able to show that they had instructed the agents immediately without attempting to contact you will take any action to recover the debt. A Subject Access Request will show what correspondence they sent to in order to remedy the situation. Make sure that your Subject Access Request asks for all personal data and not just for statements.

[lolly]

The balance only included £15 of late payment fees.

 

Okay, timescales:

We have a statement dated 12/11/04 saying we needed to pay the total owing (£1256) by the 25th November. £466 of that was from the previous months statement (the dd bounced) but the remainder was all current debt from that statements transactions. We failed to pay by the 25th November and the letter from the debt recovery people is dated 28th November 2004. So only 3 days leeway on the current debt before they sent in the debt recovery people and added £226.15 onto our debt, which we were obviously already stuggling to pay. Do you think we could have a claim??

[Seminole]

Very few companies try to add this sort of charge. Do you have the terms and conditions for the card. If so what do they say about this?

[mcuth]

Very few companies try to add this sort of charge. Do you have the terms and conditions for the card. If so what do they say about this?

 

IIRC when my Amex Credit Card was transferred to collections, I got hit with a 3% collections fee - and it was in the Ts&Cs too (buried away). That said, I don't think I saw it on the copy statements that Amex have sent in response to my DPA request.....

 

Cheers

 

Michael

[lolly]

Sent letter to Amex re collection fees and late payment fees for our Platinum card on the 9th.

 

On the 11th received a letter saying they were looking into it. On the 12th received two more letters confirming they were going to refund the full amount of fees on both our amex cards. 3 days total!

 

They were so ultra efficient that they have offered to refund the fees on our blue card, and we hadnt even got round to sending them the prelim letter for that yet (wanted to claim for the two cards separately as we thought they might be more likely to say 'yes' to smaller amounts). Amazing!!

 

 

Thanks for all your help you guys, will make a donation towards your books.

[rockdj99uk]

I got a letter from Newman & Company last week about my AMEX account. I have had a £712.38 Collection Fee added. I shall be putting that in with my claim. Got all my statements and a sheet listing all today from them and this wasn't mentioned anywhere.

[Seminole]

I got a letter from Newman & Company last week about my AMEX account. I have had a £712.38 Collection Fee added. I shall be putting that in with my claim. Got all my statements and a sheet listing all today from them and this wasn't mentioned anywhere.

 

Please could you start your own thread to discuss this rather than posting in someone elses.

 

Thanks.

[rockdj99uk]

Sorry

[lolly]

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