DMP Mutual Support Thread - Part 7

Wanna_B_Debt_Free_Free

Hi All, Hope everyone is well!

First annual review on Friday and hoping to increase payment by £50 this should shave 6 months off DFD which would be nice!

Also I have noticed others talk about mortgage deals ending and after a call from my lender it has got me thinking.

My 90% interest only deal ends in June and if the rate stays as it is I will be £440 better off each month!:eek: Now here lies my predicament my lender is Mortgage Express (Bradford & Bingley) who are now nationalised and are not offering any further lending but with my obvious inability to go elsewhere I am stuck with them for the foreseeable future. I am thinking I am best to throw all that excess cash back at the mortgage and overpay for as long as the rate stays low therefore getting the actual amount borrowed down ME would welcome this as they are looking to offload their debts, this would also get my % owed down therefore increasing my chances of a new deal in the future. My question is is this allowed or should I be looking to put that money towards DMP payments but once rates goes up these payments would then decrease probably upsetting creditors? To me the mortgage idea seems more sensible as is more flexible but I could understand creditors wanting more money if they knew I had it! Could all be irrelevant if the rate goes up before June anyway but any thoughts or knowledge would be appreciated!
:beer:

Wanna B

dmb_2

This is really worrying. I'm with CCCS and although a lot of my creditors have frozen interest there are some like HSBC who, although in theory, have accepted a payment, have never actually put it into practice. I don't get any phone calls or hassle from them just huge interest charges. Debt just continues to increase. I regularly write to them asking them to freeze or reduce int but nothing happens. Lloyds TSB have just started to whack full interest on again after a year of very much reduced int while Bank of Scotland's idea of reduced interest is to allow me to pay £10 off my debt each month! Better than an increase but still....Yet others, like MBNA, Tesco, etc have frozen int from start and continue to do so. I'm not many years off retirement. At this rate I'll be working until I'm 90! :mad:

the_tooth_fairy

dmb wrote: »

This is really worrying. I'm with CCCS and although a lot of my creditors have frozen interest there are some like HSBC who, although in theory, have accepted a payment, have never actually put it into practice. I don't get any phone calls or hassle from them just huge interest charges. Debt just continues to increase. I regularly write to them asking them to freeze or reduce int but nothing happens. Lloyds TSB have just started to whack full interest on again after a year of very much reduced int while Bank of Scotland's idea of reduced interest is to allow me to pay £10 off my debt each month! Better than an increase but still....Yet others, like MBNA, Tesco, etc have frozen int from start and continue to do so. I'm not many years off retirement. At this rate I'll be working until I'm 90! :mad:

RBS are complete stinkers. No wonder they can fork out huge bonuses! OH had huge interest payment on again, without any notice, and when he rang them, they just said,Our arrangement has come to an end.
Payplan were able to get me some interest refunded from my Sainsburys Visa (RBS AGAIN!) last month, but I will never give them a penny of my cash after this!:mad:

ttf

jasperconran

update, most creditors have responded well and have accepted our plan.

Nearly had a flaming heart attack this morning though as had yet a third letter from Blair, Oliver and Scott headed notice of intended court action:eek::eek: I spoke to CCCS last week who reassured me again that all info had been sent to Blair Oliver and Scott but can take up to 14-28 days to process. My husband sent a letter to BOS last Thursday giving me authority to talk on the account, but they havent received it as yet, when I spoke to them just now.

I felt sick and upset, so rang CCCS for some advice. The nice lady advised that BOS will be getting their payment on the 25th of this month anyway (first one) and she also reassured me that BOS are one of the better creditors and dont go down the court action route.

I was advised to ignore the letter and not to ring BOS again. I have to say, I now feel sick and very very shakey. CCCS said that the letter is a scare tactic, well its worked!!!!!!

I now feel really ill:(

HHH_2

Dont worry about Blair oliver scott. the letters are sent out all the time but in factthey are very easy to deal with and their telephone people usually very helpful

toots1607

Well what I few bad days ive had. First car went wrong (thanks mum for fixing) then letter from MNBA say default on account , me being silly thinks thats the end of the world so I go into depression mode and pretend im happy (not). So then to top it all off I checked my debt listing of my Cccs website and I has not gone down since I started (Gutted), so I am now writing to the 3 out of 13 people who have not froze my interest to see if they would do this it is Lloyds TSB and Barclaycard, which is funny as they have frozen my OH interest and not mine so in the mood im in I have taken this a personnal. Sorry to go on but you all seem to be the only ones who understand what im going through I have told my sister but my Mum & Dad would go mad as I am in my late thirties and should be standing on my own to feet. Cheers thanks every one.

toots1607 No. 403

DFD : 2022 long way to go !!!!!

ianmak

toots1607 wrote: »

Well what I few bad days ive had. First car went wrong (thanks mum for fixing) then letter from MNBA say default on account , me being silly thinks thats the end of the world so I go into depression mode and pretend im happy (not). So then to top it all off I checked my debt listing of my Cccs website and I has not gone down since I started (Gutted), so I am now writing to the 3 out of 13 people who have not froze my interest to see if they would do this it is Lloyds TSB and Barclaycard, which is funny as they have frozen my OH interest and not mine so in the mood im in I have taken this a personnal. Sorry to go on but you all seem to be the only ones who understand what im going through I have told my sister but my Mum & Dad would go mad as I am in my late thirties and should be standing on my own to feet. Cheers thanks every one.

toots1607 No. 403

DFD : 2022 long way to go !!!!!

As you say, please don't be too concerned! Defaults (however bad) are pretty much par for the course. And freezing interest does seem to be a random choice... It took around 6 months for my debt to start going down and not up.

My parents know about my debt, but they certainly don't know the full extent. I think only a close friend does. What they don't know can't hurt?

Just remember that you're not the only one in this boat, and you're one of the lucky ones to have recognised this and got your head out of the sand.

I'm not proud of the position I'm in, but it's stable and we're all on the road to recovery. In the meantime, if anyone needs advice or help on their debt issues (ready to accept it or not), I'm only too happy to be able to oblige - I wouldn't want anyone to get in the same position that I did.

Try hard not to worry, get on with your normal life (admittedly a more stringent budgeted one!) and let CCCS do their stuff. You will get the odd letter from creditors, so either let CCCS know, or communicate in writing or on the phone. Just make sure you don't ignore any specific requests.

jasperconran

HHH wrote: »

Dont worry about Blair oliver scott. the letters are sent out all the time but in factthey are very easy to deal with and their telephone people usually very helpful

thanks for the reply. I am still worried but not as bad as I was. I have been reassured again by a CCCS councellor on here as well.

My OH sent a letter giving me authority to talk to BOS but they claim they have not received it yet. BOS should have received the letter on Saturday, so I was thinking about calling them again on Friday, what do you think?

CCCS advised not to call BOS again as they will be receiving their first payment on Tuesday. Apparently it can take them ages to update records/paperwork, which I think is a worry for all us poor souls who are waiting for responses!!!!!!

Let me know what you think. cheers JC

toots1607

ianmak wrote: »

As you say, please don't be too concerned! Defaults (however bad) are pretty much par for the course. And freezing interest does seem to be a random choice... It took around 6 months for my debt to start going down and not up.

My parents know about my debt, but they certainly don't know the full extent. I think only a close friend does. What they don't know can't hurt?

Just remember that you're not the only one in this boat, and you're one of the lucky ones to have recognised this and got your head out of the sand.

I'm not proud of the position I'm in, but it's stable and we're all on the road to recovery. In the meantime, if anyone needs advice or help on their debt issues (ready to accept it or not), I'm only too happy to be able to oblige - I wouldn't want anyone to get in the same position that I did.

Try hard not to worry, get on with your normal life (admittedly a more stringent budgeted one!) and let CCCS do their stuff. You will get the odd letter from creditors, so either let CCCS know, or communicate in writing or on the phone. Just make sure you don't ignore any specific requests.

Thanks ianmak you have made me feel more human and not so isolated today. I think now im a lot happier person and dont feel that I have a black cloud bringing me down. Also I forgot to mention that I had a call from MBNA , put through to First Union to see if they could get me on a remortgage, I spoke to CCCS and they advised me to tell them no way. I dont know if anyone else has had this done. :)

Talking this way helps alot cheers everyone to listening to my gabble.

sunfleur

Hello peeps

It's been a while - I sound like I haven't been to an AA meeting for a while LOL

If you remember I joined last July I think. We started with CCCS first payment on August 1st last year. Since then most creditors have settled down to a certain degree. Some stopped interest and charges straight away but still send us letters and defaults etc. We tend to write them professional letters stating our side, that CCCS are in charge of sending them money and just stating the status quo.

Others are total numskulls and are putting on arbitary charges or interest. One stopped interest to start with then claimed we hadn't sent our payment on the date they wanted it - despite the fact that the CCCS send the payment at the same time every month - so then started charging us interest and other charges again. We have never missed a payment to CCCS but the bank kept moving the dates. We sent them a strong professional letter asking for that money back and they sent one back saying they would be really nice to us and cut the interest to 6.1% - nice of them not LOL

CCCS said that we should keep a close eye on what each creditor says we owe - which we do anyway - and how much interest/charges they are adding, then after a year we should ask them to remove or stop or lower them, whatever we need to do, then if we think these have been unreasonable or they are just adding to our debt at a high rate then we may be able to go to the ombudsman who isn't very happy with the banks for doing this. Because after a year of paying our side and proving ourselves reliable payers etc we are seen as being serious to want to get out of debt. So if the creditors are not helping us to do that then they can be smacked on the hand. Just depends on individual debts/banks and circumstances though. Suffice to say we are looking every month where we are with each one and we have all the paperwork neatly arranged from the beginning of this whole thing.

Another creditor has only sent us two letters despite us sending them two or three. We seem to be getting the 'if you don't do this, we will take you to court' letter right now as it's the only creditor that was a loan - it was very near the end of the loan at that and not that much money which was due to be paid off this year. It seems they may be one of the worst yet but don't know - they are accepting our payments so that's all we care about at the moment.

The one really annoying creditor just keeps sending us letters with 'telephone us' in large letters on the paper and insist that they will not send us any statements, tell us what we owe or discuss our account except by phone, and we can't get onto our web account to check either. We just keep sending them letters saying, not going to phone. Our next move with them is to send THEM a statement saying what we owe them from when we started, taking into account all of our payments to them so far and see if they agree with that. When I asked a CCCS counsellor about this she said that banks see it as a privilege for customers to be able to communicate by letter so if you are a defaulter pleb like us you only deserve to be shouted at down the phone! Ha! Not going that route.

So that is the nuts and bolts of where we are creditor-wise. We had a six month review with CCCS and they were pleased that we had managed to save quite a bit from when we first did our SOA for them to now by reducing phones, insurances and cutting out one car! However, the money we saved we are allowed to keep in our budget as our daughter receives DLA and so quite a few of her costs were put down individually as that is what she gets the money for - special needs swimming lessons etc.

So we are doing remarkable well. We are not £1 more in debt since last June, have paid off £1500 - some of that in interest still but quite a bit not. We got through Christmas with whistles and bells (without going overboard at all) and still having food in the house/freezer money in the bank and we haven't come close to the bottom of our bank account - by that I mean we haven't got down to the last £1 in any month yet.

Also we had an emergency with the brakes on the car and needed four new tyres really badly last Thursday. We were going to get the money in yesterday so were trying to limp to that but it was a death trap so I rang my garage, who I have known for over 15 years and actually asked if they could do the brakes and could I pay them yesterday. They were lovely and said of course so we got new brakes last Thursday and then the owner rang me and said I need four new tyres and he fitted them and said I could pay for them yesterday too so I did. The bill? £472 Yikes LOL But it was budgeted for and we paid that. This was cash from in the bank after Christmas - a miracle if I ever heard of one.

On top of that we got a call from someone wanting to buy DH's old car AND we got £80 in M & S Vouchers for buying our new insurance last year. We didn't know we were going to get them as we just got the insurance for the best value/price! So we are going shopping for clothes, DH and I on Saturday. We could never afford to buy clothes when we were in debt! Go figure!

So that is our long update. I will be around for a few weeks reading stuff because I find that a few weeks reading the boards intensely teaches me something new then I sometimes get a bit depressed reading some of the stuff so need a few weeks away then I come back again. I love to come here and one other board though to encourage or get advice. I started some counselling sessions last week at our Dr's and it went OK. I have begun to actually go out every 3 or 4 weeks to the flicks where I am going tonight too. I meet a friend who buys the bogof cinema tickets with orange as it's an odeon where we go so we pay half price each - it's great. I find it lifts my spirits to get out even if I don't want to go.

Welcome to the recent newbies and Hugs to you Twitty and wave to ianmak for keeping the threads going and high five to the tooth fairy and all of you regulars.

Sunfleur