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Chewing the fat, shooting the breeze, having a natter - call it what you like, talking to people is darn important and everyone should do it as often as they can (except in libraries). We talk to our members as much as possible, through our blog and discussion board and by getting people to email contactus@zopa.com if anything's on their mind.

Dec 22 2005

Spread the Zopa love

Posted by Dave at 6:16 pm

Just when you hoped it was the season of peace, love and goodwill to all men, along comes a credit card company to dispel the festive feeling.

A member - linday - has written in with this story, which we think is pretty scandalous, but we also think is pretty representative of how the financial services industry works…

I have a £10k balance on my Virgin Credit card. It started off as a 0% balance transfer which is why I moved balances from other cards to it. Of course I wasn’t stupid enough to expect it would always stay at zero and the normal rate kicked in after the promotion ended at approx 16.9% (normal) and then over the course of the next few months increased rapidly until about 3 months ago it reached about 21%. I phoned to ask what was going on as interest rates haven’t increased. They said that for a fee they would get their underwriters to review the rate and give me a personal rate. I agreed, paid the £200 fee and they reduced the rate back to its original rate - sorted, the fee would be repaid by interest I wouldn’t have to pay. This week they’ve sent me a letter to say that after 1st Jan the rate will rise to 24.9%!!!

I therefore applied to Zopa for a loan and as long as it’s approved I will be paying £100 per month less and saving over £3,000 in interest!!!

Say no more….

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 22nd, 2005 at 6:16 pm and is filed under Borrowers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 comments

GraceCourt

Posted on December 29th, 2005 at 3:30 pm

Update

Given that I am not publishing any personal details (which of course, I don’t even know), I am sure that “linday” won’t mind if I post an update to her story.

I’m one of her lenders, and from this you will deduce that - yes! - in December, in good time to pay off the loan to avoid the ridiculous interest hike, “linday” did indeed get her loan.

Her comment for lenders is: “I want to be able to put two fingers up to Virgin credit card who want to raise my interest rate to 24.9%!!!”

I raise my glass of festive cheer, and my own two fingers, in a seasonal toast to Virgin Money…

PoohBah

Posted on January 5th, 2006 at 9:26 pm

Surely there must be a regulatory body who would look into this?

It’s just the sort of case the newspaper financial writers love to hear about.

Dave

Posted on January 19th, 2006 at 12:59 pm

I agree PoohBah - it’s pretty disgraceful behaviour…unfortunately the small print in the credit agreements you sign when you take out a new credit card almost certainly says that they are allowed to do this sort of thing.

Now - naming and shaming in the national press on the other hand….

hamilton

Posted on January 28th, 2006 at 12:21 am

without wishing to sound too much like the January blues… it just goes to show how important it is to read the small print. Credit card agreements are voluntary, people sign up to them…. no-one _forces_ you to borrow money, after all. Dunno why Linday didn’t just sign up to a new ‘0% balance transfer’ card - even the ones charging fees to move would be cheaper.
each to their own, I suppose.

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