Anyone organising their own DMP?

Slimming-world

Treacle1983 wrote: »

I got fed up with my DMP gregory pennington - I was paying them £40 a month and also had a managed bank account with them costing me £12.50 a month.
It cost premium rate to do anything with the bank account like move money etc... and premium rate to call my account handler.
The last straw was when i lost my job and became redundant in November - My DMP wasn't very nice at all and DEMANDED I give them some of my job seekers allowance towards my debts - and not just a couple quid, they wanted £45 a week!! Out of the £60.50 I was getting.
They also hadn't managed to stop the interest being charged on one of my debts with natwest so the payment going to them every month meant my debt with natwest was going up rather than down!!

I snapped in the end and had an argument telling them how useless they were and that i'd do it myself.

I stopped my DMP and cancelled the bank account with them.

I opened up a free account with Halifax - just a basic account with internet access.

I made contact requesting all my statements, payments, total amount owing, interest details and settlement amounts from all my creditors etc... whilst waiting for this i carried on paying what they had been getting from the DMP.

When I looked into it my natwest account had gone up by a couple hundred quid and not down - because the DMP hadn't stopped the interest or late payment charges etc.. After a couple letters these costs got removed from my account backdated to when I joined the DMP.

The DMP had also negotiated a lower payment on my loan - but on looking into it they hadn't done it very well and had actually just exteneded the loan for a few years - so I would have been paying loads more on the interest and apr etc... I have manged to do a deal to lower the rates of interest and apr to that of when I took the loan out, but will be paying the lower amounts over a longer time. With the option of paying off £100 chunks as and when I have the money.

Hope this helps guys...

HI
I hope you dont mind me contacting you. I too am with Gregory Pennington paying them almost £30 a month, I have been with them since 2002 when I rang them the other day to ask how thing where going they informed me that I only had another 10 years left to pay until I was debt free!!
My question is how are you doing managing your own DMP?
Many thanks