Contacting Martin?

miss_spooky

Hi,

Just a quick one for now but I will go into more detail once kiddies are in bed.

I have an debt issue that I would like to put forward to Martin to see what his opinion would be.

How do I go about doing this?

Candy0107

you could PM him

skylight

Is it something we could help with? We would probably answer a lot faster than Martin or know where to point you to.

miss_spooky

Right, kiddies are in bed, so I've just finished writing it out. What do you think?

I have an issue that I would be interested to here your opinion on. I am a regular on the Bankruptcy and Living with it board and will be petitioning my own br within the next few weeks. The issue I have and that you see so regulary on the BR & DFW board and what a lot of people encounter who have debt problems is how to deal with creditors. These are strong cases of CAN’T PAY not WON’T PAY and the CAN’T Pays should be treated with some sort of respect in the fact that they are trying to do the right thing.
Senario: I realise that I have serious financial problems, say, due to unfortuante change of circumstances. I get debt advise by either contacting National Debtline, CCCS or Citizens Advise Bureau. They put together a Statement of Affairs and advise me to contact my creditors and offer a token payment or I set up a DMP.
Token payments / DMP is accpeted, then the fun begins. Each month you are then hasselled to see if you can pay any more, threatened with court action, your name will be blacklisted, you won’t get credit etc. Putting more pressure on your aleady stressed out self.
What needs to be looked at is this.
1) My only income is benefits, say, I’m on Income Support, can’t work as I have small children. Maybe one has a disability. I know my situation is not going to change for the foreseable future. But after the CAB, NDL or CCCS have done their work, the creditors still expect regular updates, send letters, continue calls, even though there is no more money in the pot. Benefits only go up once a year and by pennies, so in these circumstances there should be some form of legistation for companies to send out a quick letter just asking if circumstances have changed, rather than keep asking for reviews every month, or frequency they choose. The onus is the the debtor to keep them informed if circumstances do change for the better .

The same should apply to people who are not on permanent benefits. i.e Redundancy etc. Again looking for work is stressful enough, but having creditors on your back every minute of the day is enough to make anyone ill. The CAB are to unindated to keep seeing repeat clients for updates to satisfy the creditors and with the currant climate, there are waiting times for first appointments of up to 3 months.

Once a DMP has been accepted then calls, letters and interest charges should stop. I have read of two cases recently where people have been paying into DMP’s administered by Payplan or CCCS where the interest has still been added each month. One case after 4 years on a DMP of 50K clearing nearly £30K, thought he had £20K left to find that the bal was £35 due to interest being added.
A friend of mine went BR recently - mainly because of creditor harrassament. In court she addressed the judge with what I have outlined above showing him letter from noe of her creditors. Although the creditor had accepted a £10.00pm payment, each month for 4 moths a note on her statement stated that she had agreed to increas the amount which would be collected the following month. From £10.00 the last statement prior to her BR was £60.00. The judge told her that she could have sued them for harrassement and would have got a large settlement as they company were a bank who had been recently find for this very thing...
I think I’ve got across what I wanted to say, but I am really interested to hear your views on this.
Regards
Miss Spooky.

skylight

MMmmm. See what you mean. Its not a problem as such, more a huge issue that we need someone to champion. Not sure how you would be able to keep both sides happy.

In the meantime, if you have any complaints about creditors, write to the Office of Fair Trading and outline the issues you have. Complaints to the OFT are recorded and measured, nothing will change until there are enough people complaining.

Trollfever

And complain to your MP.


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miss_spooky

That's what I was thinking - getting someone behind to promote this.