Appointment with CAB today

The Paragon debt has really been getting me down this week, I have a 12 year old son who is as old as this debt, I'll still be paying the debt when he is 18.

I have made an appointment with the Citizens Advice Beareau for later on today. On the telephone they advised I was probably better off not paying any more and let Paragon take me to court.

I'll post again later with the outcome of the meeting.

Paragon - had enough

Last month I had a phone call from Paragon asking to increase my payments again. After a long discussion with them I said I was really unhappy with how they are handling my account and asked what they could do about all the interest they have added. As usual they did not seem interested in discussing my account, I was told I had 2 options, increase my payments to what they wanted or send in an income and expenditure form and they would decide how much I could afford each month!.

I explained I was already paying more than I could really afford (£215 a month) and more than the original monthly payments. I asked how a £4200 debt had turned into a £13k debt (plus the £15k I have already paid) and they said they couldn't comment on the account.

After about 30 minutes I told them I wasn't going to increase my payments and hung up. I wasn't getting anywhere, they wouldn't say how much I still owed or even how much interest they are charging. They did say something about capped payments, but that has been mentioned every time they call since 2003 and nothing has ever come of it.

This month I sat and thought about it, I have already paid back the debt four times over and still owe something like £13,000. I made the decision to stop paying, what's the worst that could happen? They could take me to court and I'd get a chance to explain all of this to the court.

Today I got the dreaded call from Paragon. "we notice you haven't paid this month". Once again I had to run through my entire story, how much I have paid, how CAB agreed for the interest to be frozen. Once again I got nowhere with them.

Sound familiar?

This is from a thread on the Consumer Forums (http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/general-debt-issues/148293-paragon-finance-enough-enough.html)

" In Dec 1997 my ex-wife and I took out a loan with Paragon for appx £7,500,
the APR was 28.9% payable over 10 years. A year later we seperated. I changed
profession at this time and advised Paragon that the account would fall into
arrears and that my ex-wife would assist with the monthly payments of £162.34 by
paying half. This happened for a few months and then She stopped paying and the
account ran into arrears (I continued to pay £81.32). I anticipated the
situation occuring and told Paragon that I would bring the account up to balance
as soon as I could. Remembering back it seems they did nothing, and 6 or so
months later payed up the arrears and I was back to paying the £162.34 a month
(incidently the loan is a joint and several liability loan and I have been
paying this amount on my own since the
seperation). This has since continued
uninterupted.Two years ago I looked into
paying off the final amount
expecting to only have a few hundred pounds left to
pay I was a MORTIFIED to
find I had a resettlement figure of £9,500 left to pay.
On contacting
Paragon they informed me that the interest would be frozen, I had
asked them
to do this as a mark of good faith (the word sucker springs to
mind!!!). It
seems that I now have £9,700 to pay. I`m not a maths genius but it
looks to
me that I'm increasing the debt by a few pounds each month, so this
loan
will never be paid off "

And it's not the only post about Paragon.

"we took out a loan with paragon 10 yes ago for £15000 unfortunately we found
ourselves is financial difficulty and had to turn to a debt mamagement co called
payplan..(which i have to say have been fantastic in my experiance).......we
were paying off the debt with paragon on a reduced and agreed rate for about 6
yrs..............last yr we got together the money to settle all our
creditors.............and when we asked paragon for a settlement
figure.........we were shocked to find that by our calculations it was about
£3500 and they are saying it is £13500 i obviously queried this and was told
that it was interest on the account as we had not stood by the
agreement"

And even more....

"In 1997 I took out a personal loan with Universal Credit for £10,000. I maintained the payments without any problems for a couple of years, but then got into financial difficulties as a result of my business collapsing and the breakdown of my marriage.In this period, the debt was purchased by Paragon Finance, who I was led to believe bought the entire loan book of Universal Credit.I agreed with Paragon to make reduced payments at a level that I could afford after a meeting with an external representative that Paragon out-sourced, who I visited at their house. He agreed that, due to my financial circumstances, interest would be frozen. This surprised me as I believed that my original agreement had been a fixed personal loan and not a monthly charge account.Last November, having first found this site, I sent a Data Protection Act letter to Paragon asking for a breakdown of my account. I was disturbed to find that interest had continued to be charged on my account at the full rate. Despite having paid back in excess of £13k to Paragon/Universal, my balance now stood in excess of £14k."

And yet more...

"hi i am also peed off with paragon borrowed 9000 quid 6 years ago. lost my job so they directed me to the c.c.c.s. we have paid aprox 6ooo back to them. but received a letter stating debt passed on to arrow receivables, the amount was for over 14,000. "

"About 14 or 15 years ago I got a loan for £3500, due to certain circumstances I had to go on to reduced payments for a while. While I was on reduced payments the company I got my loan from was taken over by Paragon Finance, I was never advised of this either in writing or by telephone. A couple of years ago I wrote to Paragon Finance asking them how much I would have to pay to clear this debt and was gobsmacked - to say the least - when they told me they wanted over £14,000 back because of interest accrued. I immediately asked them for an itemised accounting of this which they sent. When I looked at it they had been charging me over £400 per month in interest - my original monthly payment had only been £127! I have now had to go into an IVA to try and clear this debt."

" took out a £5,000 loan with Universal Credit in 1996, which unfortunately due to circumstances defaulted on after paying the bulk off. I heard nothing until approx two years later when I started receiving letters from Paragon Finance (they had apparantly bought the debt - but I didn't get to the bottom off this until recently). Having had no previous dealings with Paragon I asked them to supply details of the debt so I knew what I was being asked to pay. I heard nothing for a further year, when a bailiff turned up. Once again I contacted Paragon asking for details, and again heard nothing. Things continued in a similar vein until March this year when out of the blue I received a letter from them informing me that it was for the loan I had with Universal (although they provided no copy of the agreement) and that they had already taken the case to court and obtained a charging order on my property.I requested a statement and balance (as until this point various figures had been bandied about - going up and down like yo-yo's) and started making payments of £30 a month as a goodwill gesture, however I heard nothing from them until today.Had a letter from them this morning - written in some form of financial jargoneeze:"I can confirm that the balance outstanding under the Judgement Order is £4617.24 and the balance outstanding under the contract is £22107.21 to date."