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."