Problem debts and poor companies

scoobyandy

I was going to put this in the section praising companies but as it's very relevant to debt and worked for me, i'll share it with the forum.

About 6 years ago, through a mixture of stupidity, disability and immaturity, i ended up with a lot of debt. Loan & 5 credit cards. As, i already had Rheumatoid arthritis when i started with all of these, any sickness cover was useless and as the unthinkable happened - it got real bad an i couldn't walk, never mind work, i was up poop creek without the paddle.

I ended up starting an account with Baines and Ernst and have only just settled all of the remaining balances myself and am debt free bar a £1K overdraft.

Whilst starting with Baines and ernst was great as i could just post all off the creditors "snotty letters" to, they actually do nothing except wplit your money up between all of the debts, makeeach payment out of the money you send them and take around a £20.00 management fee off you per month. In 5 years, i'd paid them £1200.00

I digress.

Whilst a lot of the debt companies were eventually happy to take what they were given, i was getting seriously peed off about the ones that were just making charge after charge after charge - itwas ludicrous. (Marbles card - HFC bank - NOW part of HSBC)
I got that peed off with the situation, i sent a letter to them asking that they can stop charges as i was after all, paying as much as i could, on disability through no fault of my own in my twenties, and had taken what i thought was a common sense stand on my debts (and at least i was paying them!!). This fell on deaf ears and i eventually went onto companies house, bought the directors names and addresses (of HFC bank) and wrote the same begging letter to all of their directors at home - asking them basically to apply a little bit of common sense.

success:

Nice letter back telling me that charges and all the OTT interest were to be stopped and reversed.

The above was in 2003.

When i came to settle all remaining balances in late 2005, i asked for the settlement figures. All were haggled down by at least 10% except halifax visa who simply wouldn't move. When i looked at the marbles balance though, it seemed that none of the charges had been removed ar similar.

Snotty letter to head office with copy of original letter dating back to 2003, and the result was, a really nice letter of the director apologising for the error, the charges were all removed, the remaining balance of £300.00+ was quashed and the account closed in full.

My moral of the story is, power of the pen and if you cannot get past the seeming "script written" brush off letters and phone conversations - get logged on to companies house, get the names and home addresses of the directors for a pound and write to them at home.
This works ESPECIALLY well when u have a complaint.

I once had cause to ring John clare and Lord blackwell over a problem with Dixons online - they were well peed at having to be involved cos their staff couldn't see past the ends of their noses, it was sorted within 24 hours (non delivery of order within their tiemscale) and i got a 30% refund (by way of vouchers). They did however appreciate that it was only the snowballing nature of the problem that had neccessitated the lengths i'd gone to to speak to them personally.