Statements

These statements show just how much interest Paragon added to my debt. Sorry about the quality of the scans.

The first statement shows the balance in early 1999 stood at £4212.47, until that point I had paid every payment on time and the opening balance of £6000 had been reduced. At this point I could no longer afford to pay my debts and went to CAB who looked at my income and expenditure. They negotiated a reduced payment of £1 a month, interest free. This was all I could afford as my circumstances had changed. Paragon agreed to the payment after seeing an income and expenditure form prepared by CAB.

You'll see my payment of £1 towards the bottom of the statement, notice they added £90.81 in interest.

(click to enlarge)

Statement - 2002

The second statement is from 2002. I had increased my payments slightly to £15, then £20. At this time Paragon never questioned how much I paid and carried on accepting the token payments arranged by CAB. They made no mention of adding interest back on and I presumed it was frozen as they had agreed.

You'll see that by the end of that statement they had started charging £240 interest a month, on my payment of £20. The balance now stood at over £12,000, yet I was never told this.

Statement 2004

By 2004 I had sorted out my financial problems and started to pay the original amount each month. I still had no idea interest had been added to my account as Paragon never told me. Since they had agreed to freeze the interest I had no reason to doubt this. Notice the balance was over £13,000 by now. I was being charged up to £240 a month in interest which meant my payments of £145 were swallowed up and didn't reduce the debt. I carried on paying £145 a month for a number of years, thinking I was paying off the debt. In fact the balance never reduced.

Letter from Paragon Finance (Universal Credit)

These are scans of the letter I received from Paragon Personal finance regarding a complaint I made about the way my account had been handled. (click to view them bigger).

Interest frozen and then added back later?

As you'll see from Paragon's letter above, they claim Universal Credit had a policy of suspending interest only to add it back later! I have never heard of this before and fail to see how that is of any help to anyone. CAB negotiated the interest free terms on the debt when I run into difficulty, they also arranged the same terms for a debt with Barclays. Barclays never added the interest back later, and I managed to clear the Barclays debt within a few years.

Paragon also seem to be forgetting that they purchased Universal Credit in March 1998 (it even says so in their letter above), I didn't run into difficulty until the end of January 1999 and it was Paragon who CAB negotiated with, not Universal Credit. It was Paragon who in fact charged interest from the start on the reduced payments.

Paragon go on to say they reapplied the suspended interest in November 1999, at which time I was still in great difficulty meeting the payments due on my various debts. I was paying Paragon £5 a month and they charged me £96.24 in interest without telling me. They happily accepted my £5 token payment and never once mentioned the interest had been reapplied.

Paragon Finance, finally it's over

I haven't posted for a while, I have a major update as Paragon Personal Finance have closed my account and written off the balance they claim was owed from the Universal Credit loan they took over.

I'll add some more details very shortly.

Paragon personal finance, Honest? Open? They say so!

http://www.paragon-group.co.uk/

About us / Our values.

"Integrity, To be ruthlessly honest and open in everything we do".

So Paragon, How do you explain hiding how much interest you charge

people who, through no fault of their own, fell behind with payments?