To think this is taking advantage of potentially vulnerable people?

[PickettBowtruckles]

I have an account with an online shopping catalogue. I don’t use it often and have a balance of under £50 on it, but every so often they come up with good deals that it’s worth buying from.

I received an email a couple of weeks ago stating that the company had made ‘the difficult decision’ of increasing my interest rate as they have decided I’m higher risk through external credit check agencies. I’m not really sure where this has come from, but oddly enough my Mum who also has an account had a similar email.

I wasn’t too bothered as I don’t use it often anyway. However today I’ve received a letter in the post where they’ve stating they’re increasing my credit limit (by almost double) and state in the letter they thought it’d be helpful to start Christmas shopping?!

Now I’m in a reasonable position of I don’t use it often for things like Christmas shopping, but the principle here has really made me cross. They’ve decided a customer is higher risk therefore warrants a higher interest rate, but without the customer asking have decided to increase spend limit and encouraged them to do Christmas shopping?! Is this not potentially quite immoral to people who may be relying on their services? Surely this must break some rules somewhere?

I’m going to write an emailing complaining but just wondered if they’ve actually broken any law here or if it’s standard practice?

That's so unethical. You'd think businesses would have learnt their lesson a few years ago about encouraging people to take credit when they suspect they can't afford to pay it back.

I agree. I feel it’s really unethical as if someone is genuinely in a bad financial situation to warrant the increase in interest surely by then giving a higher limit to spend (and encouraging them to do so) is just pushing them into even further financial difficulty?