Advice/guidance required - DMP - Barclaycard

CU_5393 · 25 September 2014 at 12:11PM

My apologies if I should have posted this in an existing thread? I'm new to this forum malarkey...

My wife and I have a DMP with Payplan; all but one of our creditors has agreed to freeze interest - Barclaycard. Between us we owe them £10,000. They are charging us 12.9% interest on both accounts.

Payplan requested that interest be frozen and they declined, thus I have made it my mission in life to try and get them to recant in this decision and freeze interest and reimburse interest incurred since commencing our DMP.

I sent them a polite letter where I highlighted: the lending code, that we are committed to paying off our debts in full, that we hadn't missed any payments and had increased payments when our circumstances changed etc etc.

Surprise, surprise, we got letters today basically saying thanks for our letters, but they will continue to charge interest at the "reduced rate" which is a concession on their part.

What should my next move be? Someone advised me to request a copy of the original credit agreements under the CCA? Should I do this and then send a further, more strongly worded letter, perhaps formally complaining to them or threatening to go to the financial ombudsman?

I understand that they are not obliged to return/freeze interest, but I have read some success stories for similar cases on this forum. I'm just trying to gather some advice and identify the best approach at dealing with them. After all, if you don't ask, you don't get.

My wife and I know where we went wrong financially, we're learning the hard way and accept responsibility for our actions, however Barclaycard and Barclays in general played a big part in our demise. They increased credit limits and gave us "consolidation" loans when we couldn't afford them. We owe about 85% of our debt to them and to receive a letter saying that they are "responsible lenders" is hypocrisy. The charges applied to our credit card accounts are only prolonging our ability to pay back what we owe.

Any advice/guidance is would be greatly received.

Thank you in advance.

mrs_w · 25 September 2014 at 2:13PM

Ditto!
I had exactly the same situation with Barclaycard although they were charging me 3% which they said was standard for 'someone in my situation'

I was flabbergasted that they were willing to freeze given the situation and Payplan tried too but to no avail.

I didnt win in the end though - I've taken them off my DMP and my other half is making my repayments for me to pay off quicker but now I'm not in a special arrangement with them my interest rate goes back up to 24.9%!

Bashes head against brick wall

DorisTrousers · 25 September 2014 at 2:58PM

Such are the obvious limitations of a DMP I'm afraid. You haven't touched on much else, but is there any particular reason that you have not gone down a more formal route, such as Bankruptcy, IVA or DRO?

Only guessing, but if you have £10k with Barclaycard, then it follows you may have significant liabilities elsewhere as well, so any further info may be useful. how much debt in total, how much you pay on your DMP each month, and for how long, any assets such as property etc.

FireWyrm · 25 September 2014 at 3:30PM

Barclays are bu66ers for doing this, they dont seem to give a damn. You *could* threaten to reduce the amount you pay them significantly and then when they pass you off to a debt collector, you could make a more reasonable arrangement.

Puzzcat · 25 September 2014 at 5:58PM

Or you could esculate your complaint to the fos via the online form on their website, costs you nothing.
Puzz

Deep_In_Debt · 25 September 2014 at 8:15PM

I spent most of my DMP term trying to get Barclaycard to freeze interest. They did freeze for 6 months and then charged interest at 6% for the rest of my DMP.

Good luck with them!

Monkeyballs · 25 September 2014 at 9:36PM

Hi,

Barclaycard are far and away my favourite creditor... NOT

The way they operate is that they charge a set %age interest based on your repayment amounts.

So, if your monthly payment is above 1% of the total balance then they will reduce it but not freeze it and there seems to be 'subtle shades' of change the lower your repayment goes... I believe that they freeze interest when your monthly payment goes below 0.5%.

Hope this is of some help, disputing and complaining seems to have little impact on them as I've done this in the past (on a balance of £1700ish at the time) and they stressed the DMP being an informal agreement.

Good luck, go get 'em!

MB

heatherks · 25 September 2014 at 11:45PM

as pp have said if your repayments are more than 1% of your balance they will continue to add interest ...without notice they raised my interest to 12-9% i complained and they eventually reduced it to 3%
with a letter saying they will review it every 6 months

Stewart_78 · 26 September 2014 at 4:08PM

You are paying them too much. You need to reduce your monthly payments big time and put any spare in a savings account. They are only interested in keeping you in debt for the rest of your natural. If you feel like it, move to token £1 a month payments. Give Paypal a sob story, they don't give a monkeys either way as long as you fill out the forms and act sincere. What are they going to do? In this case the debt will probably be soon sold on to a DCA who will be more willing to negotiate.

4 years into my DMP I have come to realise that it's all a bit of a big joke. Payplan exists to claw back as much cash as possible from hopeless cases like us. I'm not complaining, I'm still with them but don't ever think they are your friend in a sea of sharks. It does the job. BARC will refuse to settle for less than 80% as they don't want stories of low settlements to circulate the net. But they will sell your debt on to Cabot for 2p in the pound as soon as they think it's going to cost them more in recovery than they will get.

When was this Barclaycard taken out? Was the account opened pre 2007? If so it's possible that it's not legally enforceable. That might be worth checking out too. Search this board for CCA request.

Also, make sure they have properly defaulted your account and are not putting AP or AR markers on your credit file. You can check this for free with Noddle. You need to have a default date on your file or you will be screwed for many years to come, another favorite BARC strategy.

sourcrates · 26 September 2014 at 5:48PM

The only way to get Barclaycard to stop charging you interest, is to stop paying the account.
After a while the debt will be sold on to a DCA who will be a lot more accommodating.
If the account was opened prior to April 2007, then a CCA request is a way forward, see what they come back to you with.
Even if it was opened after that date, its still worth doing, they don't have to supply the original, but they still have to supply something, if they don't, the account is unenforceable until such time as they do, however long that may be.

CU_5393 · 5 October 2014 at 9:56AM

Thank you all very much for your advice!

Yes, I dare say we are paying them too much, but we really want to be debt free as soon as possible and despite the interest they are charging us, the debt is slowly reducing. As I mentioned previously, out of all our creditors, Barclaycard are the only one still charging us interest.

Whilst I see the logic in reducing payments in order for the debt to be sold on to a company that may be more amenable, I'm not sure if we want to go down that road, though I haven't ruled it out. There are other issues that I haven't mentioned and don't really want to go into in detail, but lets just say how I manage my debt can have an impact on my job.

I have drafted a letter requesting copies of our initial credit agreements, I believe my account commenced prior to 2007 and my wife's shortly thereafter. Hopefully I get a response within the timescales set down in the legislation. I'm hoping it gives us some sort of leverage for negotiation, but I won't hold my breath.

Thereafter I plan to write a more strongly worded letter, making an official complaint and threatening to go to the FOS. I'll just have to take it one step at a time. I'll keep you posted and will no doubt be back for further advice.

Fingers crossed...

Advice/guidance required - DMP - Barclaycard

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