IVA approved but.......

mrs.e_5

Hi

My husband applied for an IVA (as most of the debts are in his name) which was approved around 5 weeks ago.

One debt was our £750 overdraft with HSBC, a joint account. This was added to the IVA but HSBC contacted me 2 weeks ago demanding the full payment of now £813.98 within x amount of days. I tried contacting the number on the bottom of the letter only to be told they couldn't help me as it had been passed to their "debt collections agency" (can't remember name they give me) upon phoning them, they told me to ring back in 7 days time as they didn't have my details. The person was very rude and abrupt so I called HSBC again and told them I refused to speak to whoever it was and I wanted this sorting.
They told me to fill out and send in a Statement of Means with a repayment figure that I could afford and they would take it from there.
I filled out the form offering to pay £40 per month. I had to phone them on Thursday (26/11) to follow up this case as I hadn't heard anything... only to be told that £40 was unacceptable as it needed to be paid off in 12 months with the balance being under £1k.
After about 45 minutes and speaking to about 5 different people, all saying they couldn't help me I was in despair! I ended up ringing the number that was supposedly for my branch.
I spoke to a lady, who was rather nice, to say the least, explained what I had just gone through and she said she would make a note on the system that I had contacted them and could only afford £40 per month. I made a payment then of £40 and was told to make another one the same time next month and that it would be reviewed in February. I was told that the payment would only clear today (Tuesday). After feeling slightly more relieved and happy I hung up.
I rang HSBC today to check that the balance of the overdraft had gone down, only to find that it hasn't!! The £40 came out of the account on Friday.
I spoke to a "customer representative" today to be told that there was nothing waiting authorisation on the account and there is no record of my payment. He then told me he couldn't help me any further as the account is frozen being under an IVA.

I am at my wits end and don't know what to do, it seems no-body knows what they are doing at their call centre and that there is no-one to help... I even called at my branch yesterday and explained and they couldn't help!!!

Can anybody offer any kind of help and advice as I don't know how much more I can take (4.5 months of waiting for the IVA to be completed and all that stress and hassle and me thinking it's over when it was approved)

Please help

Charco_2

Unfortunately, the fact that the account is joint means that if they cannot pursue the debt from one named person, they'll pursue it from the other... in full!

However that doesn't mean you have to put up with their crap... keep your records that you have been proactive in dealing with this and of the payments you make. Stay proactive and stick to your agreement of £40 a month (they cant take blood from a stone)... but obviously you want to be reducing the debt and not merely maintaining it. If £40 isn't working then look into another option like would they agree to freeze interest and charges or accept an offer in full and final payment or go to the Old Style money saving board on here and see if you can squeeze a bit more out of your budgets to clear this sooner.

You've made a reasonable offer so long as you maintain it there is very little HSBC can do... they'll threaten alright but they are unlikely to take you to court and even if they do, so long as you've been reasonable no judge is going to find anything in their favour.

msflowerfairy

I would suggest that you speak to your IVA advisor, they should be able to tell you what to do.
If the debt has been included in the IVA which has been granted, you should no longer be making ANY offers of payment, as this is covered in the payments from the IVA.
If they suggest a token payment, send them £1 each with a letter, a template was sent to us by our IVA company.
We often had letters from companies that we owed money with demands to pay immediately, which as you can imagine is scary.
This carried on until Payplan had contacted them with the detail of the IVA which can take up to 6 weeks.
Until then we were just told to forward all corraspondance to them, and NOT to contact any of the companies chasing us for money, in fact we were told not to even answer the phone.
It was a good feeling to finally have someone on our side.