Do Not Use Their Rip Off Lines…use these instead.
I recommend NEVER CALLING THEM. This is largely because in the good old days they would be abusive and lying was second nature. And how would you know Capstone were lying? You could hear them speaking, that’s how.
Even as recently as spring I was kindly sent an anonymous recording made by one of their many customers and it was full of contradictory BS.
So that’s my take on dialogue with the scum ALWAYS PUT IT IN WRITING.
For those that need to call them though, you don’t need at the same time to be adding to their profit stream by using their rip off lines. You don’t need to be charged an exorbitant rate to listen to their music. Use these numbers instead.
Customer Services Direct Phone & Fax: 0207 532 9527
Switchboard: 0207 532 9000
24 Comments for “Do Not Use Their Rip Off Lines…use these instead.”
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I was taken to court 4 times in early 2010, Capstone refused to budge. It was only thanks to the last judge who over rulled the previous order that I managed to keep my home. I am paying off arrears at £500 per month plus the £750 mortgage. They were completely unhelpful, infact on one occasion they said we are having your house. The solicitors letters all said its not too late to make an offer, but the only offer they would accept out of court was full settlement???
Now they are charging me £120 for a missed partial payment of £200.
How long will it be before the FSA steps in?
Regards
ab that is a colossal amount to pay back on arrears.
I STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU STAY IN TOUCH.
we could help get the judgement varied used the Norgan Ruling.Courts must follow this precedent,the ruling was that the arrears can be paid back over the WHOLE term of the loan which could reduce your repayments dramatically,there are also other things that can be done but this point is the most important.
YOUR ARREARS ARE PROBABLY MADE UP OF LOADS OF UNFAIR CHARGES YOU COULD GET BACK ALSO REDUCING THE ARREARS FIGURES BY MAKING A COMPLAINT TO THE OMBUDSMAN.SO STAY WITH US.
I am so pleased I have found this group…I thought I was on my own.
I suffer from crohns disease and unfortunately had major surgery which left me unable to do anything for 6 weeks so I went to stay with my parents.
When I returned home 8 weeks later, I had a stack of letters from acenden, apparently one of my payments had not gone through (i had paid it dd and had an authorisation code) and I had charges of over £800. I got in touch and explained that I had been extremely unwell and was not at home other-wise I would have been in touch immediately. The charges got higher and higher whilst i was waiting for my bank to look into this (unfortunatley it took the bank 3 months) and in the meantime i was taken to court for repossion, I represented myself and acenden backed off, however a month later the threats and charges continued very quickly to over £2000. At this stage i got in touch with the citizens advice who helped me write a letter to them explaining that I had been ill and not at home etc etc. The citizens advice told me that as their charges are in the contract there was nothing I could do but from a moral perspective it was wrong. Acenden rplied and all I received was a very short letter advising me to read my contract. The letter said that if i was not happy then i should get in touch with acenden again, which i did only to receive another copy of their contract.
I am now putting a letter together for the ombudsman. I am a single working mother with a chronic illness and the constant threat hanging over my head that i may become homeless has only exacerbated my symptoms. I dread the sound of the postman and I find myself waiting for my phone to go onto answer-machine before picking up incase it is acenden. I feel tormented and bullied by them.
Hi Helen
You are most certainly not alone. However your case is appalling and I want to flag this up on the front page. Since your comment is there in any case all I will do is let your own words speak for themselves and then any further comments on this atrocious company will be my own. Hope that is ok with you and we will try to help.
Kind regards, the team.
Yes it is fine…I am just reading through your site now and it is appalling, I thought it was just happening to me and have often felt inadequate that i have got into this mess. These people are like the mafia! I am just relieved I may get some help as it has gone on now for over 2 years and is really starting to get me down.
Best regards
Helen
can you help?
Hi AB here again. I want to change my payment dates from the 1st and 12 th which were the dates set by the court to the 22 nd of the month. This is because my new employer pays me on the 22 nd. How should i go about this? I also have current arrears of 11000 of which 7000 are fees and charges any suggestions?
Many thanks for yoir help
Thanks AB and welcome to the site
I have removed your surname to protect your anonymity. YOUR STORY is just yet another example of the disgraceful practices which neatly summarise capstone’s policies. EVIL. PURE EVIL.
The FSA will step in when it’s too late to matter, unless somehow some action can be forced now to protect whoever is still left standing.
I’m up in court over charges in January.I have some letters however from the Complaints department that ‘they only charge their incurred costs’ but I have a telephone conversation with someone in litigation that said they were a penalty. The solicitor dealing on their behalf then alledges that the charges are enhanced and has tried to hide behind the supreme court judgement on bank charges.
Hi Matt and welcome the Capstone Action Group
I’m not sure what they mean by enhanced – new one on me BUT i do know when they are trying it on. And insofar as citing the Supreme Court bank charges they are WRONG.
Solicitor ought to know better than to try it on and misdirect the court. This is what the judgment says:
..
LORD WALKER
The limited nature of the issue
1. The members of the Court are well aware of the limited nature of the issue which we have to decide in this appeal. But many of the general public (who are understandably taking a close interest in the matter) are not so well aware of its limited scope. It is therefore appropriate to spell out at the outset that the Court does not have the task of deciding whether the system of charging personal current account customers adopted by United Kingdom banks is fair.
i have just lost my home to these they would not budge on any repayment scheme and all of arrears where basically made up of charges i need help in trying to sort this mess out any takers in what i can do and how i can make a claim to someone over these people
help
Hi Tracy, Sorry to hear the news, have you had a warrent issued and the its has been acted on. Let
us know as the first point is to get your complaint
into the FOS, also an appeal to a higher court is possible under certain rules.
There is a lot of help on this site, if you want it
not to be on a open site ask site admin for my e-mail address.
hello derek that would be great if i could do that and would be gratfull for your email address thankyou
I need to get into the office before I can deal with this request. Please bear with me. In the meantime I’d be grateful if someone could email or phone Stephen Weiss of total investor and see what his approach is. Be wary and cautious but not unduly so. We are definitely garnering some interest now.
TRACY,YOU HAVE TO ACT QUICKLY HERE IF YOU HAVE NOT BEEN EVICTED YET OR YOU HAVE AND THIS IS RECENT THERE IS A REAL CHANCE TO SAVE YOU HERE SO PLEASE EMAIL SITE EMAIL ADDRESS borrowerstust@gmail.com where confidential help can be offered ,we have an excellent record here so all is not lost.
we originally took out a secured personal loan with London Personal Loans. Never at any time were we told it was a mortgage. We got £4000 in arrears and they were due to take us to court tomorrow to repossess but we actually completed on our house on Friday. BE VERY VERY CAREFUL if you manage to sell before they repossess. I sent the form back to them giving permission for them to release the redemption amount to my solicitor over 3 months ago. As of 4th jan they had refused to release it to him, saying that i hadn’t given permission. Then I spoke to them and they agreed that i had sent the details. They then sent the redemption to Lightfoots who then added their costs on. The amount that we now have to pay is way over what we thought was owed, but because they left it until the 4th to send through the redempiton, it’s too late for us to argue the toss. But, it gets even worse- on Friday ( completion day) it turns out that there is a slight discrepency about who the money should go to. Does it go to London Personal Loans, SPLM, LMC, Capstone or Acenden? None of the above. Lightfoots put in their letter to my solicitor that it need to be paid into;
Lightfoots No 1 Client Call Account
Lloyds TSB, Cornmarket-Thane
Acc no 00412089 S/C 309856
but on the redemption it says
Barclays Bank plc PO Box 554, 54 Lombard Street, London
Account name Eurosail 07-3BL
Acc no 30393231 S/C 201990
We had to hand over the keys to our house before completion and because Acenden or whoever they called now
delayed everything so much no money will be paid to them, BoS or myself until tomorrow.
FYI we borrowed £45000 4.5 years ago – by the time they get their money tomorrow we’ll have paid them just over £70000 back. Like my husband said, it would be more honest if they sent a bloke round to break your legs!!!
Hi, Reading this site with interest as we have had a mortgage with Preferred/Capstone and now Acenden for 5 years. We have never missed a payment but did have a problem with them three years ago. They wrote out of the blue asking for a copy of our insurance schedule. They stated that they had sent two previous letters and unless they received the schedule immediately they would arrange their own house insurance and apply a
I was taken to court in 2007 but managed to save my house and got the arrears cleared thankfully.. i still have dealings with them where as i get no letters until i login to the website i find my account in arrears one month which ended up being their mistake which they finally admitted to.. My concern was had i not logged in to the Acenden website to check my account i would never have known of this mistake of arrears as i had no letter from them, could this have been slowly getting higher if i had not picked up on it? truly bad behaviour!! also last month i paid my mortgage twice by mistake ( in a bank and then forgot to cancel my standing order so i emailed them to say could i carry the over payment on to November’s account..I got a reply based on a debt letter template saying yes i could carry this over, only for the next sentence to say you must pay November’s payment by 27th November and then the tariff of arrears..i was a month in credit!! They couldn’t even be bothered to send me a reply which was not on an arrears template..disgusting!!
Hi Again Helen
I will make sure that this ANOTHER tale OF CAPSTONE ACENDEN ABUSE GETS FULL BILLING ON THE FRONT PAGE.
YOU AND WE ARE NOT ALONE.
Difficult though it has been can we get some solidarity here peeps?
We the small team, us merry band of brothers and sisters, have had our moments in the darkness. Let us vow to shine a light on the appalling abuse and let the sheer noise we make create merry hell for this evil band of outlaws.
POST POST POST. LET THE FSA, OFT, FOS, TREASURY AND THE REST KNOW AND KNOW AGAIN WE ARE NOT TAKING IT ANYMORE.
Since all the past trouble i have had with capstone, i was in court 5 years ago and thankfully have paid back my arrears, i am now meticulous on everything and so paranoid that i check and login to the Acenden website account to see all is well, i know this is petty in comparison to other cases, but believe me i have been through the courts with them before and one point i wanted to make, i have paid on time and usually a couple of pounds over each month for the past year and i found a five pound charge added last month, now five pounds is not much but firstly how on earth was i given this and secondly had i not logged in to my account, at some point this charge may accumulate to more without me even knowing as i have had no letter regarding this.. this is what worries me..it is five pounds now for no reason or explanation as i always pay on time..i urge all of you to make sure you logon to your Acenden account regularly because five pounds added here and there is not a large amount i know but over thousands of customers this is alot and don’t forget as the communication is terrible this may make your next payment in arrears..i am still waiting for an explanation as i will not spend my money phoning them i would rather email as they have to reply eventually..
This is just yet another example of their money grubbing ingenuity designed in the main to put customers in a state of arrears. The £5 charge becomes payable if you pay them via a non designated method. So in return for letting the filth have your bank details (who in their right minds would want to do THAT?) in the form of a direct debit mandate then you won’t incur the charge. Pay by a different method and you will. As you correctly note £5 is no big shake down. But it’s not about the £5 is it? It’s about hoping you forget to add this on so they can do it for you and then oops! GUESS WHAT? Now we really can shake you down and screw you for all our charges, place you in a state of default and ultimately repossess you. As I’ve said before these vipers give sewer rats a bad press.
absolutely, my other question is i was wondering if it was due to the fact that i pay cash straight into their bank account therefore using a card of any type should not incurr a charge? as the cash goes straight in but they must have charged for method, but confusingly this charge has only appeared the once and i have been paying this way for a whole year? very strange..
The £5 is for doing a manual check that the address to which the card is registered is the same address as the account. They deliberately do not keep a record of this so they check it every month you pay by this method. this is why they say it needs 5 days for a debit card payment to “clear” though of course the payment is instant. It is a good idea to check regularly because even if you have an authorisation code they reserve the right to reverse the payment if they want to using some fabricated excuse like the card is not registered to the address, (even when it is) or they have to do checks for money laundering etc. I had one of their advisors quote money launderings legislation to me last year when I complained about the £5 payment. (oh and the £95 late payment because of their need to check for money laundering – a delay of 8 days totally of their own making)
The £5 charge is more than just for performing a manual check. It’s a fast track to their super duper charging regimes. It’s not worth five quid to them. It’s worth millions….
…
If you pay for example by Bank Giro Credit in cash they will still charge the £5 fee. Note that the bank at which you pay does not ask for this fee -why would they (?) – it is purely a charge designed by the filth to plunge yet more people into arrears. There is no ID check needed in this scenario provided the punter paying the money has the EXACT paying in references. Note also that though the teller will inform you (QUITE CORRECTLY) that the money is cleared immediately and that systems are in place to notify the recipient immediately, the FILTH OF THE UNIVERSE WILL STILL DENY RECEIPT.
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Say you pay them £705 per month religiously and this is your due amount and you always pay on time. You withdraw the money in cash and you go to the counter. You enter the EXACT payment details required on the counterfoil. Hooray! One more month where I don’t need to worry.
..
E.rrr, not quite. YOU DO NEED TO WORRY.
..
This is because the devious filth will put you into arrears by £5 a month for every month you pay like this. But they won’t even let you know because of course the trick is to let things escalate to build up into something a bit more substantial – let’s say about 7 months worth. Easy after they switched from quarterly to ANNUAL statements.
..
This has become easy pickings for them for two reasons: a) for those NOT in Arrears that charge creates a technical arrears and then all the unfair charges can be applied b) secondly for those with SPOs it’s Goodnight Gracie – a ‘broken’ arrangement.
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This is why we use the word FILTH at every opportunity. Because they really ARE FILTH and will use any ruse to grab your keys. Someone in authority really ought to consign the filth to the seventh circle of hell, without the due process they would no doubt bleat over being denied.
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THAT WOULD OF COURSE BE WITHOUT THE SAME DUE PROCESS THE THOUSANDS OF SLAUGHTERED FAMILIES HAVE HAD TO ENDURE BEFORE OUR CRIMINALLY INCOMPETENT & FATALLY COMPROMISED DISTRICT JUDGES.
After all, when the order is issued they are effectively sanctioning a fraud. And Fraud is a criminal offence.