Brogden struggles with dmp / personal loan / hbos / albion

Standingtall

wannabee_in_credit wrote: »

I have a dmp with CCCS and a Sainsbury's loan that has been passed to BOS to deal with. I have never had a problem with them at all - but I'm personally much happier that the vast majority of my communications have been done via cccs. I've only spoken to them a couple of times on the phone but found them to be quite reasonable. I'm paying about 1/3 of my contractual payments, but interest hasn't been frozen unfortunately so it'll take me longer to deal with.

I know I am probably stating the obvious wannabee, but did you send off all the template letters form National Debt line site, regarding interest?

geeka

I had a halifax card and once i went via the cccs it was transferred to BOS and they were fine with freezing interest and just accepting the payment. been paying them for 4 years now and as i increase the amount every six months or so to them (and all creditors) via CCCS review they are fine, ive had no contact with them (other than statments) for 4 years.

dont get me started on BARCLAYS though!!! what a bunch of total ****s.

geeka

geeka wrote: »

I had a halifax card and once i went via the cccs it was transferred to BOS and they were fine with freezing interest and just accepting the payment. been paying them for 4 years now and as i increase the amount every six months or so to them (and all creditors) via CCCS review they are fine, ive had no contact with them (other than statments) for 4 years.

dont get me started on BARCLAYS though!!! what a bunch of total ****s.

I've used the CCCS and they are brilliant, they do all the work for you pretty much, you give them the details and they write to them with your SOA and what uyou want to offer them, they ask for interest to be frozen.
Barclays wouldnt do it so i asked them via an letter from me but they wouldnt budge. The 2 other creditors (Halifax and MBNA) froze the interest straight away, not paid any since i went via CCCS.

I can't speak highly enough of everything the CCCS has done for me.

Brogden

Thanks for all of the help I have been given so far guys.

I have just had a very long conversation with Albion collections in connection with my Halifax credit card. I did mention I was not decided as to whether to do a DMP with CCCS or do everything myself. Full interest and penalty charges are being applied to this card and I was also warned about it being moved to Blair Oliver & Scott.

I am to revise my income & expenditure for Halifax. I always assumed that all cc companies would want to be sure that they were getting a payment from the available funds pro-rata to the balance with them as a proportion of total debts. Obvioulsy this is the way CCCS would do things. I have just been advised that this is not the case and to test this asked 'if I had a smaller debt with another creditor and was paying them more than you....you would object and not accept the arrangement and ask for more wouldn't you?' I was told the answer was 'no' and that Halifax would accept whatever was affordable from me regarless of what I was paying everybody else!!!

Anybody agree with this from their own experiences?

Halifax like to charge interest on arrangements albeit at a reduced rate and I was told this would be at the level of 0 to 1% per month. I have the feeling this is 'banded' depending on the size of the agreed payment proportionate to the outstanding balance.

Anybody have any experience of this?

Cheers
Brogden.

Deep_In_Debt

I'm on a dmp with CCCS and I've found the DCA's better to deal with since they freeze interest and accept lower payments than the original creditors. Creditors will make it sound a bad thing if your debt gets passed to a DCA. I actually asked my creditors to pass the debts on as I knew the DCA's would be easier to deal with.

My Sainsbury's loan and Halifax credit card were transferred to BOS and they have been easy to deal with and everything going well.

CCCS will pay your creditors pro-rata payments. I suggest you stop speaking with these people on the phone and keep everything in writing - creditors and DCA's are usually full of threats and hot air on the phone. Let CCCS deal with it all if that is the way you are intending to go or use template letters from the National Debtline website.

Brogden

Thanks Deep in Debt.

You are completely right about those in the creditor's call centres saying it is a bad thing if the account is moved to a DCA like Blair Oliver & Scott.

The worry about the account being moved to Blair Oliver & Scott is, however that they can take you to court. What is everybody's experience here......if there is already a payment arrangement in place and BO&S take the account.........will they honour the existing payment arrangement and not bother to take you to court.........even if the payment is a fraction of the contractual amount (and there are arrears?)

Any comments Deep in Debt or anybody else much appreciated.

Brogden.

eyeopener2

Hi

Blair, Oliver and Scott are Halifax/bank of Scotlands in house debt collectors. In other words they are just another set of desks in the same office. (BOS, Bank of Scotland). The threats from call centre muppets are just that, empty threats so don't worry about them.

BOS could take you to court, as could the Halifax but they won't yet, if at all so don't worry about things that may happen. I've been on my DMP for 19 months now owing £24k originally and not a whiff of court action.

The best thing you can do is to contact one of the DMP providers like CCCS or payplan and just get the ball rolling.

I have numerous loans and credit cards all of which were originally much lower than the contractual payments. Tesco loan was about 20% of the contractual payment. Lets face it, if you could pay the full whack and arrears you would be in trouble in the first place.

Don't bother ringing BOS again or Albion (the other in house collectors for Bank of Scotland who own Halifax) and get on a sort your DMP.

Everything else is all b**&^^ trying to scare you into paying what you can't afford, which is just what you don't want.

Ring CCCS or Payplan and get things sorted.

E2

Deep_In_Debt

Unlikely that BOS or any DCA or creditor will take you to court if you are paying what you can afford. Creditors threatened it with me when I first started on my dmp but DCA's never did. They'll threaten it, but as I say, it's largely hot air and bluster.

I'm quite a long way into my dmp - hopefully cleared in September or there abouts next year - originally CCCS quoted me 9 years and it will be just under 5 years. Mainly because the DCA's have been good (the original creditors weren't) and I'm chucking everything I have available to clear my debts.

BOS originally accepted my £83pm offer of paying off my Halifax cc and Sainsbury's loan (well below my minimum repayments) and now I've upped my payments to them and am now paying more than the minimum amounts on both my loans under my dmp and they have still kept interest frozen as long as I don't go below the minimum of £83.

I've had court threats from various creditors and I challenged them to take me to court - the creditors then sold the debt on to DCA's and nothing more has happened in 5 years.

sickasachip13

Hey Brogden

We're with CCCS and can't recommend them enough. In response to your earlier Q for me, Halifax originally accepted the reduced payment (which for the first few months was around 1/8th of the contractual payment) they than quickly passed it to BOS - which, as has been stated is their in-house collection department - and they first sent the usual letter of you owe us £xxxx and we want it in 28 days. I nearly dropped, but then rang them and found them to be great to deal with, accepted the reduced payment - at the same rate as Halifax - and things have just rumbled on since then without any probs. In terms of the %, Halifax and BOS have never charged me any % on any of the accounts since the DMP kicked in.

I hope this helps!

SAAC

orchid2010

We have had no problems dealing with Blair Oliver Scott, we had troubles with Bank of Scotland themselves they were horrible.

My OH had taken out a loan with BOS in the early 2000's, with the PPI and when he lost his job the PPI did not pay out and they would not take reduced payments. In the end they agreed to reduced payments if the loan was transferred into joint names (being naive we did not know this was not a good thing to do). OH had a temporary job by this time so things were better. We eventually set up a DMP with Payplan in 2004 and most of our debits were given to DCA's including Blair Oliver Scott.

In 2006 he became seriously ill and being on a temporary contract lost his job and has been unable to work since.

Payplan were unable to continue with our DMP and we had to set up our own with 25 creditors paying nominal amounts. We have been very lucky and all of our creditors have accepted this and we are not charged any interest. We get problems from Fredrickson International and HFO, some of the others do an annual review and we just increase our payments by a few pence.

It takes a bit of persistence but in the end they get the message that you cannot afford to pay anymore than you are.

One point I only ever deal with any of them by mail and not by phone.