Experience of immediate financial?

boothy1969

I was contacted today by Immediate Financial by a very quick n "silver~tongued" salesman trying to get me to sign with them. I tld me he could write-off 75% of my debt, which is a total lie.
I tld him that the sort of company's he works for are like bloody vulchers, preying on people that are struggling financially to start with and that id be ashamed doing the kind of work he does, ie- Hooking in vunerable people in financial difficulty!
He replied that if he was me he'd be ashamed getting myself into debt the way i have! I couldn't believe my bloody ears, the cheeky swine!
CCCS are the best company to turn to iv been tld, which is exactly what im going to do!:j

boothy1969

One debt solution ODS are currently being investigated by trading standards and have scammed sooooooooo many customers!

its_maths_not_magic

To be honest, I was going to go with stepchange but changed my mind at the last second only because I was able to talk to the debt companies and come up with a payment plan on my own. If that hadn't happened, I would certainly go with stepchange. What I wouldn't do would be to pay someone to do it when it can be done for free.

What I have found is that debt collection agencies are staffed by actual people - some good, some dodgy, some helpful, some aggressive but ultimatly they want the same thing as you do, to have the debt paid off. When they realise you also want to clear the debt they generally try to help create a situation where that happens. I have a few payment plans set up, and are going to have more soon, and they all were easy to work with. I might have been lucky, so far, but getting the payment plans set up was the easiest part of the process. Good luck with whatever you chose to do.

babygac

Hi

I originally was with smooth financial, and they went into administration so immediate financial took over all accounts.

They offered me a debt settlement plan with my biggest debt and said they saved me £1499, and pay my smaller debts £1 per month.

I was told originally when I agreed to the DSP I would be debt free in 16months, and payments has not changed so I thought great. That should end all debts this October, now if I carry on I won't be debt free until August next year.

Their fees are 20% of my debt. Which totalled just over £1500! So what they saved my on one debt totals their fees!

My debts are seriously old and I think I can have them settled by December this year, but immediate financial says I would still owe them £689.50 in fees by then. I want to settle now, how can I get out of this without owning them? Please help! Any advice would be great.

Monkeyballs

Best advice is don't give people money for something you can do yourself...

I just looked at the Immediate Finance website and spotted this on their DMP page;

What fees are payable on a debt management plan?
You will pay a fixed monthly fee of £38.50 or 50% of your monthly payment whichever is lower. There are no set up fees on the debt management plan and no penalties for leaving the plan.

What are the debt management fees for?
The monthly debt management fee is for the general day to day administration of your plan, providing you with a dedicated client liaison officer, setting up arrangements with and distributing funds to your creditors, dealing with post and any phone queries from you and your creditors, requesting that interest and charges are frozen by your creditors and providing an annual review of your circumstances.

Otherwise known as a rip off... Avoid at all costs!

I'm with Step Change and can't thank them enough

MB of G

babygac

Monkeyballs wrote: »

Best advice is don't give people money for something you can do yourself...

I just looked at the Immediate Finance website and spotted this on their DMP page;

What fees are payable on a debt management plan?
You will pay a fixed monthly fee of £38.50 or 50% of your monthly payment whichever is lower. There are no set up fees on the debt management plan and no penalties for leaving the plan.

What are the debt management fees for?
The monthly debt management fee is for the general day to day administration of your plan, providing you with a dedicated client liaison officer, setting up arrangements with and distributing funds to your creditors, dealing with post and any phone queries from you and your creditors, requesting that interest and charges are frozen by your creditors and providing an annual review of your circumstances.

Otherwise known as a rip off... Avoid at all costs!

I'm with Step Change and can't thank them enough

MB of G

Many thanks.

Does the no penalty fees leaving the agreement stand for debt settlement plan as well as the debt management plan?

Monkeyballs

babygac wrote: »

Many thanks.

Does the no penalty fees leaving the agreement stand for debt settlement plan as well as the debt management plan?

To be honest I just Googled their name and clicked on the site... I've done the same again and was a little shocked to see this;

What fees are payable on a Debt Settlement plan?
The plan operates on a no-win, no-fee basis. Our fee is worked out as 25% of your total debt. We are entitled to this fee if we have negotiated reductions of 25% or more with your creditors when we settle debts. We will never charge you more than 25% of your total debt and only if we have saved you this amount or more. We are entitled to draw these fees at any point on the plan so long as savings have been made. We may charge a closing fee of £300 if you leave the plan before all your debts are cleared but not if you leave within the first 18 months and we have failed to do any settlemenst. The closing fee is drawn from your settlement account at a rate of not more than 50% of your monthly payments at the beginning of the plan. For further details read our Terms & Conditions .

What are the Debt Settlement plan fees for?
The fees cover a review of your financial position, arranging a courier to pick up your documents, gathering information from your creditors, negotiating with your creditors to try to freeze interest and charges, sending offers to your creditors, dealing with any post or queries from you or your creditors, providing you with a dedicated Client Liaison Officer, on-going distribution of monthly token payments and for negotiating with your creditors to settle your debts for less. It also covers the day to day administration of your plan and an annual review of your circumstance

So, if I'm reading this correctly if you had £10k of debt and they got a 25% reduction you'd pay £7.5k + a fee to them of £1875!!! So that means you've only actually saved £625!!!!!!!

From my dealings, most creditors depending upon status of your account (and most DCA's certainly) would offer an automatic 25% discount if you just contact them yourself...

AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID

MB of G

dancingfairy

o.K so £38.50 a month is going towards their fees? is that correct?
If you leave then you will owe them £300?

Do you know if they are paying the money over to your creditors or whether they are saving the money up to try and make a full and final settlement? If they are saving the money up for full and final settlement then the same could happen to you as happened to a company earlier in the week which went bust and took everybodys money with them as it wasn't held in a seperate client account.
It would be worth phoning stepchange or payplan and asking their advice but it may be worth ditching this fee paying company and then either doing a dmp through stepchange or payplan or doing full and final settlements yourself.
I'd find out a bit more about the fees this company thinks you owe before you try and extricate yourself.
Good Luck
df