Payplan Debt Management Co.

Plastic_Paddy_3

What does anyone know about a company called Payplan, althought they say they are a debt management company, they claim to be a charity and say they charge no fees at all, can this be true?

Debt_Free_Chick

Plastic_Paddy wrote:

What does anyone know about a company called Payplan, althought they say they are a debt management company, they claim to be a charity and say they charge no fees at all, can this be true?

In this case, yes. Almost completely true. If I recall correctly, they are not a registered charity, but a "not for profit" company. So close to a charity .. at least they are not out for profit, which is where customers normally pay.

I understand that many banks, lenders & credit card companies make an annual donation to PayPlans' running costs. They say they do this as they want those in debt to have access to real help.

On other debt management boards (The Motley Fool, for example) they are highly praised.

They will not charge you a fee. All your money goes towards paying your debts. However, you need to have £100 per month surplus cash - after paying your household expenses - to pay off against your debts.

Payplan is recognised by many lenders and, once accepted by Payplan, you only need to tell your lender that you have a repayment plan with Payplan and they will go away immediately and leave you alone!

If you prefer, you can run your own debt management plan. Go to this website (run by a charity helping people with debt), click on Debt Advice on the left hand menu, select Eng & Wales or Scotland, then Self Help Pack. This walks you through the whole process of running your own debt management plan and includes letters to send to your creditors and tactis as to how to del with them

Good luck

https://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk

chantilly_bex

Debt_Free_Chick wrote:

Payplan is recognised by many lenders and, once accepted by Payplan, you only need to tell your lender that you have a repayment plan with Payplan and they will go away immediately and leave you alone!

This is the first time I have ever posted here but just had to reply to this message.
We are now age 21 and 23, but as students my hubby and I got ourselves into debt, and after attempting to consolidate and getting into more contacted Payplan.
They set up a payment plan, were we gave the £370 pounds a months to pay off in various amounts to our creditors.
Once this was in place and we had signed the dotted line, we didn't hear from them unless WE contacted them.
As for you creditors going away and leaving you alone...no chance!The letters and nasty phone calls became even more frequent.
Lots of little mishaps occurred, such as Payplan losing account details for a creditor and instead of contacting us, just not bothering to pay them thus incurring fees and interest which despite promises that all fees and interest would be gone, just piled up.
On more than 3 occasions Payplan missed payment, thus occuring more fees and interest.
One creditor had a pay by date set for the 27th of each month, Payplan paid theirs out on the 29th, so for 2 yrs we were missing payments we thought Payplan had paid for us, thus incurring yet MORE fees and interest. Payplan never contacted us to inform us this, we only found this out from the creditor after they caught us out by phone (we had taken to screening all calls due the high number of nasty calls from creditors). When we phoned Payplan we were told to start making an extra monthly payment directly to the creditor to keep us a month ahead. This was too little info, too late and besides if we were capable of dealing with creditors ourselves we would have done that in the first place.
2 years into the plan we are £1700 more in debt than when we began.
Payplan are the worst thing that ever happened to us, and we are currently remortgaging our home to attempt to pay off debts and be rid of Payplan for good.
My advice is stay away.

Debt_Free_Chick

Are you sure it's Payplan, these ones here

https://www.payplan.co.uk

The only reason I ask is that if you search for Payplan on The Motley Fool's Dealing With Debt Board, you find nothing but praise for them

http://boards.fool.co.uk/Messages.asp?mid=9088213&bid=50079

I'm happy to be corrected, but we are talking about the same PayPlan aren't we? Even Martin recommends them! :-0

Plastic_Paddy_3

Thanks for the info, I will investigate further and see what else I can find out, I will let you know how I get on. If anyone else has any other info please let me know.

Debt_Free_Chick

Paddy

If you now feel uncomfortable with Payplan you can try these charities instead

https://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk

https://www.cccs.co.uk

Good luck

seldom_wrong

Debt_Free_Chick wrote:

Paddy

If you now feel uncomfortable with Payplan you can try these charities instead

https://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk

https://www.cccs.co.uk

Good luck

Another debt counselling charity is christians against poverty. Their services are free. Their website is

www. CAPuk.org

They aim to get people out of debt in 4-5 years time.

chantilly_bex

Most definitely Payplan.
They came highly recommended to us too, by the CAB, but my experience is totally 100% true. (unfortunately!)

ffs

chantilly_bex wrote:

Most definitely Payplan.
They came highly recommended to us too, by the CAB, but my experience is totally 100% true. (unfortunately!)

I am very sorry to hear of your experience. The advice most often recommened by all sources of independent advice is to use a fee free debt counselling service, such as CCCS or NationalDebtLine, and PayPlan also seems to fall in to that category. If their service has made your position worse as you say, then it would be very useful if you could give us more details. In particular, as you were only 19 and 21 when you set up the DMP, what exactly were your debts? And with which lenders? Which lenders accepted your DMP and which continued to charge interest and fees? What have you done since? How did you manage to arrange a mortgage while you were in a DMP? Or did you have a mortgage while you were both students, if so how did that work if you had no income other than student loans? Your situation sounds quite unique and worrying.

chantilly_bex

Hi there
Our debts are in the region of £20k excluding student loans.
We both worked 25 hrs a week as well as uni.
We got a 100% in 2003, stupid some people might say but figured out £100 cheaper a month than rent.
Without going into too much detail on here, our debts are with various store cards, credit cards, 3 loans one of which was to consolidate, HP and catalogues. It is the catalogues in particular we are having trouble with re fees and interest and the late payments Payplan made.
Please nobody tell me how stupid we were to get all that credit we were young and naive, and both independent from our families and just wanted to set up home together and save for our wedding!
At the minute we are still running with Payplan, but have also lodged an official complaint.
We are also in the process of remortgaging to pay off the debt, we were lucky to pay £55k for our home but its now worth £90k due to work we did on it (via HP and loans d'oh!)
We are hoping to get about £18k from the remortgage and offer reduced settlements to our creditors.
Anyone know how we get the money to them because we don't have a cheque account or debit cards?
Thanks everyone

chantilly_bex

All excepted our DMP, but the catalogues in particular would not freeze interest.
As for the mortgage, we were both students, but my hubby was on a placement year and was earning good money.
Plus it was with Preferred and they'll give anyone a mortgage!