How Long before Natwest freeze Interest?

anguscat

Hi, we're on a DMP with the CCCS and have been for a year now. It's all going well, with the debts slowly coming down.
All of our creditors have accepted the arrangements and frozen the interest, so that the debt will reduce, apart from Natwest.

Some have passed the debt on to recovery agencies, who again have accepted the repayment plan.

We have a credit card with them, and they haven't frozen the account and are just adding interest and various default charges. We've paid them £70 a month for the last year, but the debt has gone up by £500 or so.

The CCCS can't offer any reassurance on this except to say that there's nothing much we can do.

Can anyone with recent experience give us a clue as to how long Natwest are likely to keep doing this?
Is there anything we can do?

Many thanks for the help.

pure_dead_dopey

Hi Anguscat

We have two with RBS and I phoned them to ask that they stop interest. They appear to have a "procedure", first they sent us a notice, then they defaulted us and then sent a termination of the account letter which said that they were now accepting CCCS payment and would cease to charge interest as long as we maintained the arrangement. Whole thing has taken about 3 months. Both are due to stop interest this month. I know the general advice is not to phone but if you can be measured, organised and politely assertive, its worth a go. Worked for me. Good luck

Madison

NatWest and RBS froze my interest after the default and have continued to do so for the remainder of the DMP.

anguscat

Madison wrote: »

NatWest and RBS froze my interest after the default and have continued to do so for the remainder of the DMP.

How long before they defaulted it?

They still haven't put our account in default yet...after 12 months.


@PDD - I'll try hassling them by phone.

Madison

They defaulted mine at the outset because I was unable to keep up with the repayments and buried my head in the sand prior to finding out about DMPs. It would seem that defaulted accounts work in your favour in terms of freezing interest. Lloyds TSB used to take the payments from my bank account with them so they didn't default the card. They were the only creditor to subsequently start recharging interest after a year or so of agreeing to an arrangement to pay.

babyplum

Hello!

I have been in a DMP with CCCS since 2005 and you might not want to hear this but it took 3 years for Natwest to freeze any interest. We have 9 different creditors and Natwest is the only one that has been a nightmare. Unfortunatley its our biggest debt too (2 account overdrafts and a credit card).

During the first couple of years i would call them every so often and they would be sweet as pie and tell me that the debt was being passed to different company and interest would stop being applied very soon. After being told this numerous time i started to get cross with them and suddenly every time i called them i would just get through to an answerphone telling me to leave a message?!? So i think they possibly redirected my number every tiome i called cos they were sick of listening to me! (oops! lol)

Anyway, after 3 years of paying them through the CCCS they defaulted the accounts and AT LAST the amounts are now going down instead of up.

I wish i had come on here and asked for advice at the time as it was incredibly frustrating and i just didn't know what to do. Like you every time i spoke to CCCS about it they were nice to me but said that ultimately its up to the creditors to freeze interest and there is not a lot they can do about it.

Anyway, hope this isn't too hard to hear! I just thought it might be helpful to see that its not unusual. Hopefully someone can give you some more helpful advice than me.

DEVONLIFE_2

Hi anguscat.
Unfortunately they have no obligation to freeze interest. Can CCCS not approach them on your behalf. The other posters above have not had a good experience with them. Hope you can find a way forward with them and best of luck.DL.

anguscat

Thanks for the replies.

I'll call them and write, but it seems that a longer wait might be normal.

It's highly unethical of them, given that every time we get a letter from them, they include a leaflet advising us (amongst other things) to contact the CCCS for advice! Having done that, they then refuse to go along with the DMP, unlike all our other creditiors, thus presumably wringing more money out of us, and putting themselves in a preferential position.