IVA guidance please

1_step_closer

Hi everyone

I have spent hours reading this part of the forum and would like to know your thoughts.Not a "try this that etc" but just a general opnion if that is ok.

A few weeks ago I got in touch with CCCS and they suggested a DMP for me which would take a very long time to pay off.
Then I contacted Payplan as another option to see what they suggested (I have always believed it is better to get more than one opnion on things that are so important and significant). Payplan suggested an IVA.

I read everything they sent plus what seems like a zillion posts here and have a couple of concerns.

The relief payplan have given me is immense and I am gradually sending back paperwork but:

Will payplan charge me? I dont think they will as their fees go in with the iva payments but I have read here that people who have been in a failed IVA have paid lots of money only for it to be charges, so am a little confused on that point.

I have also read that people have been mis-sold IVA's - were those the ones advertised on TV? or is Payplan one of them?

Should my IVA be refused what happens then? Payplan did say about a DMP............which kind of takes me back to step 1.

I am sorry if this is confusing but my head is all over the place!

Many thanks for reading,

1 step

blind-as-a-bat_2

Have you any assets to protect? house or high value car?

Payplan IVA is a profit making company, not as bad as the sharks that advertise on tv, but there are several recent threads where they could be accused of misselling an IVA

IVA,s are only suitable for 3% of those in debt so it all depends if you fit that critearia.

If an IVA fails all money is lost, depending on the figures £3000-5000 are the avarage costs, so if it fails in the first couple of years, you are back to square one as non or very little will go to your creditors

Deep_In_Debt

CCCS also do IVA's for a fraction of the cost of other providers and as they are charity they are not trying to make money out of you. If CCCS recommended a dmp then I would go with that, as they recommend IVA's to very few people. Yes, you will get charged for an IVA, and your first few months will go to paying the IVA provider and not clearing your debts.

I'm not a fan of Payplan. They recommended an IVA to me when it was not suitable. I'm now on a dmp with CCCS.

Do seek more advice before proceeding.

deedee_3

I think Rylynn was in an IVA with Payplan which failed. If you PM her I am sure she will tell you of her experiance.

1_step_closer

Morning

Thank you for your advice. Rylynn I have sent you a message, hope that is ok! I seem to alternate between feeling very sick and being upbeat right now.

1 step

jack290292

Hi,
Just read your post and thought I'd offer my experience of what we went through.
We had a DMP in place for about two years (total joint debts we around 55K)and found a DMP ok to start with and then started to get hounded by our creditors for increases in payments and then some of them rufused to continue to freeze the interest..we then realised we could not face years of this and we needed to do this another way.
We had already decided we did not want to go Bankrupt for various reasons so we spoke to Payplan and decided both to do IVA's.
In my experience Payplan wont put you forward for an IVA if they dont feel it will be accepted and their fees are included in your monthly payments.

IVA's are not an easy option though and you do have to learn to be in control of your finances as it is really important to keep up with your monthly payments. For us at times this was hard especially as I was made redundant twice in the 5 years that we were in ours.

Having said that we have now completed our IVA's...the first 3 years seemed like for ever but the final two went really quickly and the fact that we were not hounded all the time by letters and calls from creditors took so much pressure off of us.

We are now getting back on our feet financially...I have a current account with small OD and have just been accepted for two sub-prime CC which if I use will be paid of in full each month due to their high interest rates.

Good luck with whatever you decide but please feel free to ask me anything...

J

1_step_closer

Thank you so much! That is the first positive IVA post I have read which is brilliant for me emotionally.

I do not want to go BR although I respect the decisions made by many here who have. I think any decision made concerning debts is a tough one!

I am stuck though - I have to do the background part for payplan and have been putting it off as I cant think of a single thing to write! Not without sounding like a complete wimp.......................any ideas at all?

Thank you

1 step xxxxxxxxx

jack290292

Well when I did mine I asked Payplan advisor to help me. We talked through some of the reasons (unemployment, having a baby etc) as to how we had reached this stage and then they guided me on how to put that into words....I also completed it by saying I felt by doing the IVA I was at least showing willing to pay back for the mistakes I had made.
If you want to drop me a PM feel free.

J

Rylynn

Hi sorry no pm from you, not sure who you sent it to.

I can only explain my experiences, and yes they were with PayPlan.

Firstly I have no property, only asset then was a car and only asset now is the same car.

I went to the CAB in March 2005 they were too busy to see me and shoved two pamphlets in my hand. One was for PayPlan (then know as Shaws Insovency Services).

I rang them, talked things though, they sent me a pack and I read it, sadly I can say hand on heart BR was not fully explained to me at that time. I then had one of the creditors stick a CCJ on me, and I panicked as did not know what to do.

I can say that PayPlan were good on the phone, good on telling me what to tell the creditors, get my wages into a new account on their advice (Nat West Step account, you cannot have credit, cards, overdraft with an IVA same as with BR).

Had I taken other advice at that time I am told I would never have been told to go the IVA route. It would have been BR for me.

While I was working full time the payments were made, but 1 year in I did phone and say due to no wage increase and everything going up I was getting pretty tight with money for bills and food. The reply although kindly given was basically TOUGH LUCK, my payments could not be reduced.

I then became very ill and had to have a year off work, now PayPlan could have failed my IVA but they kept it open, my paying zero, I updated them every month, sent off docs certificates etc. I returned to work after almost one year but only on reduced hours as I am still not well enough for full time.

In June 2008 (so no payment since Dec 2006) they rang to say it had failed, however it took til September for them to actually fail it.

I paid in just over £5k and my creditors got just £1300 of that.

I will not fault PayPlan on the help, assistance back in 2005, or the help this past month with paperwork I wanted. I will fault them on not giving me enough advice for me to make a better decision on IVA v BR.

As I have now had to go BR and no one knows what will happen in 5 years it is a long time.

IVAs are also very stringent on what they will and wont allow you, whereas from what I have gathered on here I am going to have a better standard of living with BR. If I were to be given an IPA I can also go back should things change, with the IVA it was set in stone, and if I earnt more they took more whereas if I earnt less it would simply have failed.

Hope that helps. Please read Martins thoughts on IVAs they are only deemed suitable for just 3 per cent of people with money problems. I was not one of those 3 per cent, and many others are not either but enter into them, without enough information, or thinking it through properly.

It does seem like a quick fix in some ways as they take the weight off your mind, get letters to you creditors, 3 years on I realise I should have looked harder at what was my best route.

If you have no home think twice, and even if you do have one, take some more advice try the Nat Debt line tomorrow.

Not sure why you do not want to go BR, but I can say I had no other way out this time and do not regret last Wednesday one bit when the judge stamped my form. It was a huge relief as many people here know.

moneysavingplumber

For what it's worth, this is my experience. I was self-employed when I got into real difficulties about 6 years ago, largely as a result of business problems and eventually got in touch with CCCS in 2002. They weren't able to help much as part of my debt was tax liability. Eventually I paid off the tax arrears and headed off the distraint actions they were threatening and had a good hour on the phone to CCCS. I went onto offering token payments and submitting I & E forms with letters of explanation etc, but to echo alot of the posts on the subject, what was really depressing was the constant, daily phone calls from debt collection agencies demandng increased payments, threatening court etc etc, and while I knew they couldn't really do a lot and I often used to hang up on them, it was still a source of anxiety.

Being self-employed and wanting to stay that way at the time, bankruptcy wasn't a viable opton. I needed a degree of credit in order to continue trading. I was lucky to have a small IVA company recommended to me that was based in Northern Ireland but had reps local to me. I duly went and met with them and began my IVA on 9 November 2003. The phone calls stopped immediately. I was under no illusion that I was being sold a service and the Supervisor made it clear to me that they would eventually act more for the creditor than for me, which they did on the odd occasion when there was a discrepancy on my part of the agreement.

It wasn't the easiest five years and sometimes it was a struggle but I can honestly say it was the best thing I ever did. I received my Certificate of Due Completion last week and the final report shows that creditors received 33p in the pound of about £22000 of debt, having paid 72% of the debt to IP, and of course my IP take a generous cut, but that's what they do. Their communication wasn't always the best but they were generally very easy to deal with and helpful when I had to contact them. I too felt a moral obligation to at least attempt to pay back what I could (I'd spent the money after all), and there is no investigation into how and when you got into debt as there can be in bankruptcy. It also enabled me to continue to have certain types of credit and banking facilities, with the permission of my supervisor.

There are other options than Payplan that are not all TV rip-off merchants, there is a dedicated IVA forum on the internet that you may also find helpful, I won't post the link here in case it is against forum rules but if you google it you'll most likely find it.

Rylynn

As I said IVA is right for some people, you wanted to remain self employed should not have been an issue with BR either, are you aware of that? Just wondered if you knew you can continue trading as a sole trader, there are rules attached to it, which someone else here will explain.

There are very few companies out there to my knowledge that do not charge an up front fee. Payplan I can say to my knowledge of 2005 do not.

Yes the instant "off the hook" feeling is great, but when it goes wrong, it is not so great, you are back in the same situation with those phone calls, letters, threats etc. You have then NO credit cards as you are NOT allowed in any IVA I have looked into, no overdraft and many people then find it hard to find the BR fees.

You say you were allowed certain bank accounts, I can only say everyone I know been in an IVA has had to have a basic account, mine was Nat West Step account, same as most people in BR get the co op account, cashminder basic account.

There are always going to be pros and cons to any decision made, but I know mine was not the right one. Only thing for me is that I am now totally used to NO credit, overdraft cheque book etc, so that will not come as any shock since I went BR last week, as I have been there doing it for 3.5 years.

Have to also say that I feel I wasted 3.5 years, I went into it intending to pay the 5 years, but my illness stopped that happening and now have had to go BR anyway, which means I am totally debt free which for 3.5 years I was most certainly not there is ALWAYS the chance something will go wrong and it fails.

I am not even sure the money paid to my creditors will be taken off the original amounts either! not that they got much.

RL