IVA Moneyexpert.com?

Desperate71

Hi everyone

This year has seen us in the situation that we can no longer afford to keep up minimum payments on our debts. I am looking at all avenues of advice initially have written to credit card companies to advise situation and offer reduced payment plan not accepted by any of them yet and have started getting letters and calls due to reduced payment being made.
Yesterday whilst trawling the net for options on loans came across moneyexpert.com who contacted me by telephone and spent time going through everything with me due to the amount we need we could only borrow on secured loan and there is insuffucient equity in property to do that. They came up with IVA and made it sound very simple definately affordable and seemingly the way forward - don't know why just seems too easy, anyone have any dealings with them in the past, are they valid IP? I asked about costs and they said 1st two months money goes to them and creditors pay rest

Charco_2

Well first thing i'd notice from what you've said (and from a 4 second glance at their website) is that
1. They are not an insolvency company
2. Have no IP and
3. They would be interested in receiving two payments from you before they do anything for you (which I presume would be refer you to another company who DO do IVAs)

Nice business if you can get it, because after taking two payments off you they'll pick up a referral fee from which ever IVA company buys your case... the company that buys your case would then help you into an IVA which you would make 60 payments towards (unless it was one of those companies that ALSO liked to pick up two payments before setting up the IVA in which case you'd make 62 payments).

Long and the short of it is that an IVA is unlikely to be as simple as MonkeyExpert explained to you and you should NOT being too keen to hand your money over to them. Do yourself a favour and speak directly to an IVA company who can go through your situation with you - they should explain an IVA, Bankruptcy probably even DMP and maybe discuss other options like cutting your costs and targetting specific debts etc.

An IVA might certainly be the solution for you and it is well worth looking into but you should not have to pay anyone a penny for a bit of chat or advice NOR should you pre-pay for their services because they'll get paid well enough if they put a solution in place for you

Rant over!

(If you're interested in finding out a bit more, why not have a look on IVA . com where people who have already entered into IVAs have reveiwed the service they received from their IPs/IVA Companies...)

althas

100% agree with what Charco says, and indeed I could expand on that rant :-)

ANYONE who asks for a fee before they do ANYTHING, well you can pretty much guess what they are like. They will sound nice, happy, friendly etc etc, when you first talk to them, they will employ sales staff for that exact reason, BUT once they have your money, then you fall into that big black hole of paid customers who we don't care about

Agree totally about https://www.iva.com when you find someone you think may be ok, have a look on there and see what the normal people (like you and me) who have used their services, really think about them. Remember if you go for an IVA, then you will be regularly dealing with these people for 5 or 6 years, so you have to be comfortable with them

And one final thing to go on. A good IP will go through ALL the options available to you, what they all mean, how they all work, advantages and disadvantages, so you can make an informed choice. They will recommend what they think will be the best for you AFTER TALKING through everything with you. The IP I went with rang me at 19:00 and spent around 45 minutes doing this exact thing. I could not have asked for better

Good luck on what you decide to do, and always feel free to post and ask for help here

Orville

althas wrote: »

100% agree with what Charco says, and indeed I could expand on that rant :-)

ANYONE who asks for a fee before they do ANYTHING, well you can pretty much guess what they are like. They will sound nice, happy, friendly etc etc, when you first talk to them, they will employ sales staff for that exact reason, BUT once they have your money, then you fall into that big black hole of paid customers who we don't care about

Agree totally about www.iva.com when you find someone you think may be ok, have a look on there and see what the normal people (like you and me) who have used their services, really think about them. Remember if you go for an IVA, then you will be regularly dealing with these people for 5 or 6 years, so you have to be comfortable with them

And one final thing to go on. A good IP will go through ALL the options available to you, what they all mean, how they all work, advantages and disadvantages, so you can make an informed choice. They will recommend what they think will be the best for you AFTER TALKING through everything with you. The IP I went with rang me at 19:00 and spent around 45 minutes doing this exact thing. I could not have asked for better

Good luck on what you decide to do, and always feel free to post and ask for help here

Who did you go with then..?

althas

If you want to know who I went with I will happily say. I just do not like to quote things like that without being asked, as it may be taken that I am advertising for the IP somehow, and I would not want the OP's post getting locked or deleted for that reason

My IP was a lady called Melanie Giles. She has a profile in www.iva.com and a LOT of reviews from clients. I think you can see why I decided to go with her if you look at the reviews (you will se emine there also). Also she is one of the very active posters in the www.iva.co.uk forums

Max_1066

Totally agree with all of the above - you don't need to pay any money up front. I do think its appalling that companies are still trying to take money from people when they're already in debt aaaaaargh !!! (Rant Over)

Once you've had a good look at your income and expenditure I would recommend talking to a few IVA companies to see what they say. I did a one-off IVA and the settlement varied from £15k to £20k - the IP gets a % of the settlement hence the variation !!

Desperate71

Thanks guys, had another call from them today and I asked who did the IVA, he says they do the donkey work for their sister company Simple Debt Solutions and still insists that creditors pay most of the fee.

Charco_2

Well they sort of do... with all IPs - except in this instance you'd be paying a fee to get into the situation where someone would try to put you into an IVA where the creditors will pay the fee!

The way an IVA works is you pay in what you can afford and your IP negotiates his fee with your creditors to come out of this... there's no extra bill. So why would you pay an extra bill at the start?

There are enough IVA companies out there who do not charge an up front fee and will still do the "donkey work" to get your IVA proposal up and running!

George_Monk

Back in 2009 Money Expert helped me sort my debts out with an IVA. The service was good and they were very helpful. I queried who would be doing my IVA and they explained SDS were the insolvency folk. Money Expert apparently own them. The first two payments I made to them they kept, it was explained that there was always a chance that my IVA might not succeed, if this happened they would be putting me into a debt management plan.
In my view money well spent, the nightmare of being chased by the bank was over!

Charco_2

But the service you've just described is the service you should receive anyway. It's the service you would have received had you gone to a non-fee-charging company and you would have been in your solutions two months earlier! (so relieved of the stress two months earlier, and your solution would eventually finish two months earlier - effectively when compared with other companies you paid two months contributions for the privilige of being delayed two months)

I'm glad everything has worked out for you though!