Payplan Advice needed please

firefox2k2

Hello I am new to the forums, my name is Paul, myself and my wife have been on a DMP with payplan since May 2009, we pay around £450 a month, its a struggle but we are managing, the problem we have is our creditors (Mainly Halifax) still have not frozen the interest, I have spoke to payplan about this a few times and they just tell me that creditors are not obliged to do so.

On the largest of the Halifax loans (owe around £7000 still) Halifax are slapping on around £85 interest a month, we only pay them £110, as if that isn't bad enough we are being hit with £20 every other month for default sum charges. How can they legally do this??

We have another 2 smaller loans and are being charged monthly interest on them all by Halifax.

When we started the plan in May 09 we were told typically a DMP lasts 5 years, that would of made our completion date sometime around 2014, having checked today the estimated completion date is now Dec 2015.

I spoke to Payplan before Christmas who told me it did seem a bit high on the amount of interest being charged but it was probably due to having no formal agreement in place with any of our creditors. I was told they were going to make a formal offer but have since heard nothing.

Is this typical of a DMP? to be frank we are no better off than we were when we started.

Sorry for the moaning especially being my first post and all.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

podperson

Payplan should have written out to all your creditors asking them to freeze interest and charges on the accounts (check with them they have definately done this!) unfortunately the creditors are under no obligation to actually do it. Since you have been on the plan over a year it could be worth asking them again - either get Payplan to do this or if you aren't happy with how they are dealing with you then could either switch to another company (eg cccs) or take it over yourself.

mozzyc

I would send out all the letters yourself using templates on here to get all the interest stopped. I was sending almost every month at one point to the creditors that hadn't stopped. Don't leave it to payplan, use them just as a means to hand out your payments to the creditors, and do all the bargaining etc yourself using templates on here.
You'll also find all the templates on your Justabank Website, which you should have a log on for. Once logged on click on My Payplan, and then Create Letters.

dancingfairy

Some companies really are ridiculous with this sort of thing - they don't get that people are struggling and genuinely trying to pay it back. Get Payplan to send out another letter with the situation on, if still no joy write a formal complkaint to Halifax , if they fail to reply, or reply with something that is frankly not good enough you can then complain to the ombudsman.
Franly they don't have to stop interest and charges but I believe in the banking code it states that banks should treat customers fairly and in my opinion the above is not treating them fairly.
Unfortunately going down the comaplaint route seems to be the only way with some companies to get any sense out of them. Other than that you can hope to get other creditors paid off, so you can pay Halifax more, wait for your general situation to improve- ie better job etc ,save a small amount and offer a full and final settlement or stop paying for a few months until they send it to their debt collectors in the hope the debt collectors will be more amenable to stopping interest and charges - if you wanted to stop paying Halifax then Payplan would likely terminate your plan and you would then have to go it alone or then go with CCCS or another organisation once you had made progress with Halifx. This route does have it's pitfalls though as it does leave with less of a stance should Halifax initiate legal proceedings as it doesn't show you in as good light and doesn't show that despite Halifax being a pain that you have stuck to your side of the agreement.
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mozzyc

One more thing - you should also use the Justabank to make sure that creditors have accepted offers made.

firefox2k2

Morning and thank you for the replys.

I took the advice and logged into our justabank site and printed off letters to send to our creditors.

I have just had a reply from Halifax on one of the accounts we owe money on.

They cannot consider freezing interest until they have received the following:

a full list of creditors and balances owed,
a breakdown of our monthly income and outgoings,
a monthly offer of payment.

Payplan have all these details and have had them for the last 20 months so why are Halifax asking for them?

Surely if a formal payment plan had been presented to Halifax by payplan then they would have these.

I really do not know what to do next as we are still being charged ridiculous amounts of interest by nearly all our creditors after being on this DMP for 20 months, on one account Halifax are charging £100 a month and we are only paying £60 so we are actually getting deeper in debt.

It all seems a waste of time and no one seems to care.

kirstle99

Hi,

We are with Payplan and had a similar problem with Barclaycard when they moved our debt over to their in-house DCA (ended up charging us interest equivalent to 6 months payment to them!). All I did was scan the letters I sent and recieved and emailed them to Payplan asking if they could deal with this ASAP. It did admittedly take a couple of months to sort out though. Hang in there!

HTH

saterkey

Personally I would make an appt with Halifax myself take all the required info with me that they have asked for (even though payplan has it) and try to sort it out yourself, maybe ask Payplan to send it as well in the meantime to the Halifax. Send a follow up letter after your meeting with Halifax, thanking them for seeing you, reitering what you agreed in the meeting (if you did) put agreed payments in writing to them and send a copy to Payplan that way everyone knows whats going on. Keep everything nice and polite and hopefully youll get some results though you might have to comprimise on some things but get something for others. you never know.

If it doesnt work one month try ringing again different branch different person and try again and again. Persistence sometimes works.

I have heard of people claiming back unfair bank charges not sure if that applied but you could try that too.

good luck