The Story of My Situation

dancingfairy · 19 August 2015 at 5:49PM

LJB290 wrote: »

The claims management company are taking on a large number of cases affected by Highbridge on a no-win-no fee basis. We do have an upfront fee to pay but it is minimal and we think, worth the risk at this point.

Firstly there aren't any magic wands, secondly, anything they can do by writing a few letters you can do yourself with help and guidance from people on here. I would really advise against throwing good money after bad.
You can sort this out but you need to be taking advice from the 'right' places (such as National Debtline or Stepchange).

df

LJB290 · 20 August 2015 at 11:01AM

I have written countless letters and have taken advice from various debt help-lines and a couple of fee solicitors.
They don't really seem to grasp the whole story to be honest.

The claims management co and solicitors that they have on board will have more "clout" and know who to target etc. The fees for this are minimal and won't have an impact on our finances.
We think it is a worth a shot as I have exhausted my research and letter writing - I would prefer to hand it over to people who (hopefully) know what they are doing.

patman99 · 20 August 2015 at 8:42PM

What about engaging the services of one of the debt charities such as Payplan or Stepchange ?.

You could begin a DMP with all the debts (except the mortgage) added to it.
Doing this has the advantage that you will have to produce an SoA but you can tell them you smoke & drink (even if you don't) in order to allow you to reduce the amount you will have to pay each month.

This will extend your pay-back period, but will allow you to live a normal life.

Once you have paid-off your mortgage, you can use this extra money to increase your DMP payments.

LJB290 · 21 August 2015 at 10:38AM

I will certainly keep this in mind moving forward...... it does seem to be a sensible idea but......

How do DMP's affect you in daily life? Applying for a mortgage or loans etc? I don't think we will need either of these (but you never know).....

2 of our credit card debts are being managed without ever being defaulted so I wouldn't want to upset the lenders by using a DMP. I assume we would lose access to these cards if we entered a DMP?????

The other 2 cards are the defaulted ones that were sold to Highbridge. One DCA has not contacted us for several years and the other one is being paid £1 per month at the moment for up to 18 months (summer 2016). We are hoping to then be in a position to offer F&F settlement.

Should I really upset the apple cart at this time with DMP's - especially when we are reducing the balance of the two "good" cards each month and the others are quiet?

cmac · 22 January 2017 at 10:38PM

What about using section 75 as you paid on credit card? I don't know if this would work, I'm no expert, maybe someone else knows. Good luck with it all

sourcrates · 22 January 2017 at 10:43PM

cmac wrote: »

What about using section 75 as you paid on credit card? I don't know if this would work, I'm no expert, maybe someone else knows. Good luck with it all

Unfortunately this thread is 18 months old, and the OP never came back to update us further.

cmac · 22 January 2017 at 11:09PM

I didn't look at the date, thanks for letting me know

LJB290 · 2 October 2017 at 4:15PM

More than 2 years later......

We are still waiting on the claims management company, although our case (along with many others in the same boat with the Highbridge scheme) is currently sitting with the Financial Ombudsman Service for a decision and has been for many many months.
There is a whole raft of evidence about the unsavory characters who ran this scheme so we are hoping for some positive outcome .... one day!

Credit Card 1 (referenced above) - is still sleeping and we have heard nothing since around Dec 2012. We defaulted payment (when transferred to Highbridge) in October 2012 and have not claimed the debt is ours or made any payment since then. There are no CCJ's on the credit report so we are hoping that this becomes statute barred in a few weeks from now (although we cant be sure that HIghbridge never contacted them about the debt - we doubt it).

Credit card 2 - now with Link is ongoing and we continue to pay £1 pm until such time as we are in the position to offer a F&F settlement.

As it happens, my credit rating was pretty good and I transferred all other debts to 0% cards for 4 years and we are making decent dents. The cards are not used for payments of any kind.

The mortgage is paid off in less than 12 months and we will be throwing most of this extra money at out debts for 2 years which means we will be pretty much debt free in 2019.

There is a light.......

[Deleted User] · 2 October 2017 at 5:04PM

You might want to post an SOA, so the members can suggest ways, to increase the cash available to service the Mortgage and other debts.

EssexHebridean · 3 October 2017 at 10:43AM

Brilliant to get an update on this one! Sounds like headway is being made anyway - and well done for having the end of the mortgage in sight!

** Other posters - please be aware that the start of this thread dates back to 2015! **

The Story of My Situation

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