Argos customers who signed up for store cards could receive a refund of up to £100 each after the company revealed it had wrongly charged many for late fees.
The store card allows customers to “buy now, pay later on everything”, but those who failed to pay on time have been charged by what the retailer now describes as “excess fees”.
Home Retail Group, the company behind Argos, said it is has put aside up to £30 million to correct the mistake. Affected customers will receive a letter from the retailer in the next few weeks.
Shoppers who have been charged more than £12 for making a late payment on their Argos card are among those affected, according to the website MoneySavingExpert.com.
John Walden, the chief executive of Home Retail, said up to 10 per cent of Argos card customers could have been overcharged.
More than one million people have Argos store cards, according to the Argos website. This means that as many 150,000 could be due a refund.
Home Retail Group has not yet given any details on how customers can claim cash back.
The Independent has contacted Argos for comment.
“In the ordinary course of us checking our procedures we discovered that there was a calculation error in the penalty charges for customers who were making late payments, so we were slightly overcharging,“ Walden said.
“We're going to correct that for those customers that were affected,” he added.
The news came in a first quarter trading statement showing that Home Retail Group, which is in the process of being taken over by Sainsbury’s, delivered its strongest sales growth in eight quarters.
Total sales were up 2.6 per cent to £868 million in the 13 weeks to May 28 boosted by store openings.
