Family fears debt collectors over £3,000 tutorials
VIRGINIJA and Masood Ahmed say they lost out financially after their child’s school sent out the Student Support Centre’s slips.
They were subjected to a ‘hard sell’ when they returned the slip to their daughter’s school, Redbridge Primary in North-East London, which is rated ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted.
‘We felt it was endorsed by the school so we returned it,’ says Virginija, 49, whose first language is Lithuanian. She says the school is usually careful about putting out advertising, so the letter on headed paper carried weight.
An SSC salesman asked their daughter Savera, now 11, to do a test, then recommended the DVDs. ‘He took £125 that evening and the SSC has taken just over £70 a month since then,’ Virginija says. She and Masood, 53, a lettings agent whose first language is Urdu, say they tried to cancel within the statutory 14-day cooling off period, but that the company continued to take the money.
The company says it has no record of the Notice of the Right to Cancel that the Ahmeds say they posted within the period. The Ahmeds retain the original double-sided document, dated November 2, 2013, and say they sent a photocopy by post.
The SSC said in a statement: ‘During the purchase, our course adviser made clear to Mr Ahmed our terms and conditions and the fact he was entering into a finance agreement. Mr Ahmed decided to proceed with the purchase, and signed and initialled a number of order forms. We delivered the programme to Mr Ahmed when he again confirmed his understanding of matters.
‘Since then we have had no direct contact from Mr Ahmed – written or by phone. In late October 2014 we were contacted by an individual, who said they were calling on Mr Ahmed’s behalf regarding cancellation, but obviously the 14-day period had passed.’
Virginija says Savera has not used the DVDs, for which the family will have paid nearly £3,000 by the end of the agreement. She described them as particularly hard for a family without English as a first language, adding: ‘They have been useless to us.’
Virginija cancelled the Direct Debit, but is receiving threatening letters about the debt. Customers are unable to cancel the service once they have signed up, because the financing is provided by a third party, called Zebra Financing, based in Derby. The financing is effectively an interest-free loan that then pays for the product upfront.
Zebra Financing said in a statement that the average sum paid for an SSC loan was £2,561 and that most ran over 36 months interest free. It added: ‘We have an in-house collections department which acts in line with regulatory debt collection guidelines.
‘Last resort options may include debt collectors and legal action – but these are not used in situations where we are aware of any existing and genuine hardship.
‘We are not aware of any aspects of SSC services that might cause us concern. Our relationship with SSC is purely as an external provider of reputable financial services.’