DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 8

Growurown

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

Bad news 1: Car cost another £265 to "fix" last weekend and is still playing up

Sorry to hear about your car woes. Mine goes in next week as it is making a very disturbing noise.

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

Bad news 2: I hate M&S whose current charges will extend our debt to them by 44 months. If I had any choice, they would get £1 per month forever :mad:

This is not just any loan, this is an M&S loan:D

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

Good news: 166 days into our DMP, we have managed to pay off £8,202 which adds up to just over 10%* of our debt. :j

Congratulations that is a great result

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

* Current figure is actually 10.0878164% on my work calculator, this information is provided just for my twin debt geek HH

You are scaring me now:eek:

moohound

Is it normal for creditors to put fees on when you stop paying normal amounts and do token payments? Will they carry on doing this?

Sainsburys bank have put £90 on, if they do this every month it will take 99.5 years to pay it off!:mad:

Blackhorse have put £50 on.

My DMP starts on the 28th of this month, and I have spoken to all the creditors, but they all seemed surprised that they won't get a SOA and details of how much they will each get until the DMP actually starts. They must have more than just me on a DMP surely?

Growurown

moohound wrote: »

Is it normal for creditors to put fees on when you stop paying normal amounts and do token payments? Will they carry on doing this?

Sainsburys bank have put £90 on, if they do this every month it will take 99.5 years to pay it off!:mad:

Blackhorse have put £50 on.

My DMP starts on the 28th of this month, and I have spoken to all the creditors, but they all seemed surprised that they won't get a SOA and details of how much they will each get until the DMP actually starts. They must have more than just me on a DMP surely?

Yes it is normal for fees to go on at the beginning of a DMP. Lots of people report that their debt increases in the first month or two, and it did in my case. Once everything was up and running most of the fees and all of the interest stopped. Halifax are still charging us a pound a day for the overdraft. Nat West told me that interest and fees stopped after 28 days, although they wouldn't accept our offer initially.

I have always been surprised at how little the call centre reps seem to know about DMP's considering the amount of people who are on them.

Time_to_face_the_music

moohound wrote: »

Is it normal for creditors to put fees on when you stop paying normal amounts and do token payments? Will they carry on doing this?

Sainsburys bank have put £90 on, if they do this every month it will take 99.5 years to pay it off!:mad:

Blackhorse have put £50 on.

My DMP starts on the 28th of this month, and I have spoken to all the creditors, but they all seemed surprised that they won't get a SOA and details of how much they will each get until the DMP actually starts. They must have more than just me on a DMP surely?

Hi moohound :hello:

Yep unfortunately it is normal, our first DMP payment had very little effect on our debts and mostly went on fees, charges and interest from the first month of our DMP

I think the worst was NatWest whose fee took us over our overdraft limit, then charged us £6 a day for being over the limit, plus all the associated interest. They are still charging us interest now, almost 6 months down the line, as are M&S and Lloyds TSB :mad:

Have you given your creditors your DMP reference number? In our case, that was enough to make MBNA and Opus happy, the others took a bit longer to come onboard but they did stop or dramatically reduce interest within the first few weeks. :T

Hang on in there, it does settle down but as I have said many times here, it's a real roller coaster at first

Time_to_face_the_music

Growurown wrote: »

Sorry to hear about your car woes. Mine goes in next week as it is making a very disturbing noise.



This is not just any loan, this is an M&S loan:D



Congratulations that is a great result



You are scaring me now:eek:

Our car is making noises, cutting out and vibrating on idle. Seems to point to us needing a new fuel filter but we had one a few months ago, which could mean it needs a new fuel pump which is not going to happen. I hope yours turns out to be something painless and cheap.

M&S can stick their loans and everything else where the sun don't shine :mad:

Thank you for the congratulations and blame HH for the geekiness, she brings it out in me

bertman

I have sent token payments again this month to all the companies as our DMP payment won't be taken until 1st August, this means that the companies won't be paid by CCCS until end of August, its strange but we haven't had any phone calls, but we have had new statements showing we haven't paid last months minimum payments. I guess the tokens this month make me feel better but won't actually do anything!
All my balances have gone up which is no surprise but all have frozen interest until early August until they get details from CCCS which they have now. Only MBNA have responded and accepted the payments but CCCS say that most don't acknowledge the letters!!
I will be happier once the first payments have been sent from CCCS as then the plan will be properly up and running. We are wishing our life away!

moohound

Making extra payments

Hi there all DMP long haulers!

I can sometimes get overtime(rarely these days ) and on call payments (sporadic and unpredictable) I would like to use these to paytowards my debt when I get them.

It would make the most sense to me to pay the money to the creditors who are adding charges/interest, has doing this caused anyone any issues? or would it be better so save this money for Full and Final payments?

I am in the same position as bertman, i cant wait for the DMP to be properly sorted and underway.

I know you are supposed to treat creditors fairly and not favour anyone above another.

Also I believe you are supposed to keep an eye on outstanding balances yourself, how often do you do this?

Time_to_face_the_music

We make overpayments to creditors still charging interest. We know we are not supposed to do it but if we don't, our DFD will keep getting further away. Our aim is to negate the monthly interest added on which currently adds up to around £220 and would add another 7 months to our DFD. We are currently working on the NatWest OD with over 50% paid off, when that has gone will move onto M&S, then Lloyds TSB.

Are you with CCCS? If so, you can access your online account at any time. We adjust our debts every time we receive a statement and every time we make a payment. There have been a few threads on the main DFW board recently about nasty shocks at the "end" of a DMP and the poster has then found out they still owe a lot of money. We are determined this will not happen to us so are obsessed with keeping everything precise and up to date.

I don't know anything about F&Fs, it may be silly but we are determined to pay every penny we owe so have never looked into them but am sure someone will be along with some good advice soon

Growurown

moohound wrote: »

Also I believe you are supposed to keep an eye on outstanding balances yourself, how often do you do this?

That is really up to you. Some people do it every month. I checked the statements we received every month but we don't get so many now as some of our debts have been passed over to DCA's. I am coming up for my first annual review and they have asked me check all the balances on my debts so they can be updated. If you check your balances regularly you will know if the creditor has started to put interest or charges on, and then hopefully you can do something about it sooner rather than later.

Growurown

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

Our car is making noises, cutting out and vibrating on idle. Seems to point to us needing a new fuel filter but we had one a few months ago, which could mean it needs a new fuel pump which is not going to happen. I hope yours turns out to be something painless and cheap.

I hope so too.

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

M&S can stick their loans and everything else where the sun don't shine

Absolutely! Quite agree.

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

Thank you for the congratulations and blame HH for the geekiness, she brings it out in me

I will but don't tell her I said so;)