Intelligent Finance - Utterly, utterly useless!

[chris_d]

Well long story short.

 

I have, or used to have an IF Credit Card.

2 years ago they went chip & pin but, failed to inform me and a few thousand others they were doing so .

Result - out of the blue, my card is rejected one day for no apparant reason. At the time i also had credit on it, or so i thought.

I go home and try to log in online but i can't. So I call IF to ask why and they explain the Chip & Pin fiasco - turns out a letter was sent out for me to sign across to a new card, me and a couple thousand others never got the letter.

Subsequently, without my knowledge my card had been cancelled the previous month after their deadline that i didnt know about, oh and thats why i can't log in also. Credit Limit reduced to Zero.

 

Great! - Credit card account with no card and £0.00 limit. What did i do wrong ??

 

Well, so i think never mind, lets pay it off anyway, treat it as my card is cut up or something. That is until now when IF fail to even send me statements, just bloody letters with charges on them. It turns out i'm one month in arrears because of this. How am i supposed to make payments if i don't know my balance, minimum payment amount or latest payment date. Last statement i have was Novemeber.

 

So, today i call IF. Well, what a waste of 20 mins. Called to enquire about closing account and moving onto a payment scheme. Nope, nadda! Totally unhelpful, didnt want to know. All they could offer was a 3rd party debt management intervention. To top it all they didn't even tell me my balance or what my payment was!! All they kept saying was charges, charges, charges!

 

Well, my fellow CAG IF claimants - Its time for me to get even. S.A.R - (Subject Access Request) will be in the post tomorrow morning along with a seperate letter of complaint for their unhelpful customer service.

 

un-Intelligent Finance here i come.

[KHMcBey]

Good luck! They should really be taken to court under the Trades Description Act. Intelligent? My arse. See my thread for the fiasco I've undergone with IF... They are a waste of space and time. You should DEFINITELY demand they remove any default notices if they're defaulted you, after all it's their fault!

[chris_d]

Bit of an update.

 

Well as of today (15 Mar) i have still not received any correspondence from my SAR dated 30 Jan which,according to track and trace, was received by IF on 01 Feb (S.A.R. template taken from here). To my calculations, they've had my SAR for 43 days now.

 

Given that i am currently based overseas with the forces i gave them a few days grace for the slower mail service we experience here before following up.

 

So, today i called them and asked where my info was. After being put on hold for about 10 mins (bare in mind i'm dialling the international number here ) the guy asked if i wanted 6 years worth of statements. I said yes, if necessary but i only require a list of charges really and i'm not paying the £5 fee for each statement. I also mentioned that i had sent the £10 maximum fee that they could charge which, to date had still not been banked, (he agreed to the max £10 yet earlier in the call he also concured that statements were £5 each :? ). Anyway, he stated that IF would now bank my cheque for £10 and send me upto 6 years of statements.

 

So, putting 2+2 together i then proceed to ask whether the statements were either; a. already in the post, b. going to be posted today or c. going to be posted in the next couple of weeks or so. He then stated that they would be getting posted today and would take upto 5 days to arrive, to which i reminded him that they were already in breach of the data protection act 1998 with regards to the 40 day limit , again he agreed :?

 

Anyway, in the hope of receiving my data I'll give em a further 7 days, ie until next friday which is ample time given my current situation with the post. If i still havent received anything by that date then i will be following up with a letter of non-compliance etc. If i get my info by then i'm still going to report them to whoever it is that deals with this, just need to search some more to find out who exactly.

 

On another note, i did receive a letter in reply to my letter of complaint which was sent the same day as the SAR. However, it basically went along the lines of saying sorry you feel you've been fobbed off, sorry about no statements then stated my current balance and next payment date, told me my account was closed but stated my original credit limit, said they couldnt help with a re-payment plan as its not company policy and then fobbed me off, in writting

 

So, in summary. IF are a complete bunch of useless muppets. Once my debt with these people is cleared i can safely say that I will never ever use these incompetant rip off merchants again.

 

so, on we go........

[chris_d]

Well some correspondence at last, not that its any good mind. Read on.....

 

Recived today a letter from IF entitled DATA PROTECTION ACT - DATA SUBJECT ACCESS REQUEST dated 09 Mar 07.

 

It went on to say that it is my right to get the info etc etc etc and then i read down, this is what it says:

 

Credit Card xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx

 

No Charges Applied.

 

 

 

 

 

WHAT !!!!!!!!!

 

So what have the last 3 months of charges been about then ??

 

So, just called them and spoke to some bloke and he did say that a new breakdown of charges was in the post as per my telephone conversion on the 15th Mar which, were posted that same day. I asked if he could see how many charges i actually had in total, he looked at my account and agreed with the last 3 months and said the total number of charges applied to my account since i've had it is 7. Then i asked, why did the SAR letter i got dated the 9th Mar state i had none then? His answer, "I don't know, just throw that letter in the bin and wait for the next one".

 

Yeh, of course.................as if.

 

Who do i complain to people?

[Chilli Con Carnage]

I'm pretty sure Intelligent Finance have out sourced their credit cards to a white label service.

 

I was in exactly the same position as you, they never sent me a letter saying what was happening with the card account so I waited for my next bill to arrive. It didn't arrive until like 4 months later with a warning that my account was in arrears and a load of charges slapped on there for good measure.

 

When I log into card servicing on the IF website it opens up a new window at http://www.partnerandaffinitycards.co.uk. I think its operated by the bank of scotland now so your subject access request to IF would have only showed charges up until the point where they outsourced it.

 

Thats exactly why i'm at this forum, I'm trying to find out the address of where to send a SAR for my IF credit card. Any ideas anyone?

[MARTIN3030]

IF is a division of Halifax Plc so you should send your requests under the Data protection act to their Trinity Road office.(full address in the Halifax bank forum contacts list)