Smooth Financial?

fartoolong

Hi there,
I'm new to this board, so Hello!

Me and my husband have £25K worth of debt, which we are struggling to repay. We have been refused credit to consilidate, and our details were passed from Ocean Finance to a company called Smooth Financial. It's a debt consolidation management company.

They are sending me some info, but i'm a bit pesimistic. We're currently paying out nearly £400 a month on our debt, and they say that they can get that down to £200 a month, take on the companies for us, so we don't have to deal with them, and they are going to get the credit cards to stop the interest so that we can actually start paying off the debt.
It all sounds a bit too good to be true.

I haven't given them my bank details yet.

Has anyone heard anything dodgy about Smooth Financial?
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misspoppy

Don't do it, you should contact one of the charities that wont charge you for their services the details can be found at the top of this page.

you could also post up a statement of affairs for the people on this board to help you.

fermi

They are just offering to set up a debt management plan (DMP) for you.

Unfortunately, they will charge you or take a % of the payments. :mad:

Instead talk to the "not for profit" organisations like CCCS or PayPlan who will do exactly the same, but not charge you a penny.

Please read: Non-profit Debt Counsellors' List

They will help you work out the best solution for you, rather than thinking about how much money they can make from you.

fartoolong

Thank you so much!
They are sending me the details, but I didn't realise that this was the same sort of thing that CCCS or CAB do!

I'm so glad that I posted on here now. I feel like a complete novice when it comes to managing money, so I would have been taken for a fool.

Thank you again.
Louise

misspoppy

thats ok, its a good job that you thought to post on here.

Numpty_Monkey

:hello: hello and welome along
misspoppy and fermi have said it:T
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Post your SOA, a list of income and outgoings on here
The clever and good people will help spot things
use this link
http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html
Format it for MSE:D

A quick guess, if you are looking at Ocean finance you are in deep doodoo
Don't worry most of us have been there


:A:A

gfplux

Helo far too long,
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For additional advise and help why not look here http://www.cccs.co.uk/ and here www.nationaldebtline.co.uk/ They both offer help for FREE.
Also here www.payplan.com/index.php

dancingfairy

fartoolong wrote: »

We're currently paying out nearly £400 a month on our debt, and they say that they can get that down to £200 a month [TEXT DELETED BY FORUM TEAM]

take on the companies for us, so we don't have to deal with them, and they are going to get the credit cards to stop the interest so that we can actually start paying off the debt. all the free ones should help you do this - unfortunately noone can MAKE the companies stop interest for you - you can but ask - some companies are more obliging than others but they can't have what you haven't got and eventually they should all twig this basic fact.
QUOTE]


You might have to wait a while to get access to the charity organisations but better than paying a company to do it for you - CCCS has an online thingy where you put all your details in and it gives you a recommendation of what it thinks may be best for you given your circumstances - obviously it is not set in stone and you can chat through things with an adviser or even go to one of the other free organisations but might give you a starting point
Good luck
df

TheGirlie

Hi,

My husband and I started up with smooth financial just over 6 months ago when we had £21k worth of debt. [TEXT DELETED BY FORUM TEAM] it can take up to 6 months to get your creditors to agree to any plan therefore, can charge HUGE amounts of interest and [TEXT DELETED BY FORUM TEAM] charges. After paying off £300 a month to smooth, plus a £300 set-up fee, we are in more debt then when we first started. Our debt now currently stands at £24k worth of debt; it is only now slowly starting to decrease instead of increase. What should have been a plan to pay off all our debts within 6 years, has now increased to nearly 9 years.

My husband and I are so scared to leave smooth and start up with a charity organisation in case the same thing happens again, and we get hammered with more charges..

If I knew then what I know now, we won't have touched smooth!