DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 8

scottish_stresshead

Hi

I am just about to start a DMP! I have debts of £1,895 (I know its not much but £1,090 and £283 of this is overdrafts that ive been trying to pay off for a couple of years but because of the charges im getting no where, and the other amount is a credit card and 3 catalogues)

Im away to be paying £100 a month which currently Im paying over £130 al together so saving of £30 a month which is going to be so much easier for me..my catalogues are quite small amounts (£28, £56 and £80 so these will obviously be the ones to be paid off first and glad I can top up payments when I see fit)

So hi again lol

scared-sick

I have been reading lots of advice on here and many thanks to those of you who have already answered my many questions!

I am just starting out on the dmp, have applied for a new bank account etc. Can I choose when to start the dmp? I would like to start it 1st April, purely as I need to get new bank account, get wages, ctc and maintenance changed over and I think all this is going to take a bit of time. This means I will have to send token payments to creditors for 2 months.....is this acceptable?

This would be easier and faster if I didnt have to change banks but I owe current one £500 cc and £800 od....do I absolutely have to change banks?

Jenjen

Hello everyone

Our DMP is now up and running and creditors have all received their first payment this week. Some have credited it to our accounts and some haven't so far. Is it normal for some of them to take a while? Most have now stopped interest as far as I can tell or at least reduced it to a minimal amount (3%)

We've had 3 letters from creditors today which have unsettled me slightly.
1)A Statement from HSBC with an arrears notice, but they have reduced interest to 0% and there are no charges so I'm not going to worry about that one.
2)A letter from Barclaycard regarding my small card (Less than £500) asking why CCCS haven't paid them yet. This was dated 19th Jan and from what I can see CCCS did pay them on 20th Jan so I'm not going to worry about that one too much.
3)The third letter is also from Barclaycard regarding DHs big card with them (around £4500). They are claiming they are still waiting to hear from CCCS and want us to contact them. But I know this isn't true as CCCS wrote to us the other day to say that Barclaycard had rejected their offer. DH also spoke to them the other day regarding a letter saying they were increasing his interest rate and he was told on the phone that CCCS had been in touch. They want an update from us by the 18th Feb.

I'm inclined to write to Barclaycard asking why they rejected the offer should I just ring CCCS and ask them to deal with it? I will also get DH to log in tonight and see if they have credited the payment to the account.

The letter does say they have put a temporary stop on interest and charges at least but I get the feeling they are going to be by far the most difficult of all the creditors.

Jenjen

scared-sick wrote: »

I have been reading lots of advice on here and many thanks to those of you who have already answered my many questions!

I am just starting out on the dmp, have applied for a new bank account etc. Can I choose when to start the dmp? I would like to start it 1st April, purely as I need to get new bank account, get wages, ctc and maintenance changed over and I think all this is going to take a bit of time. This means I will have to send token payments to creditors for 2 months.....is this acceptable?

This would be easier and faster if I didnt have to change banks but I owe current one £500 cc and £800 od....do I absolutely have to change banks?

Yes you must change bank accounts because your current account could withdraw your od at any time leaving you no access to the money in your account when your wages etc go in. They could also use your wages to take payments for your credit card.

CCCS should be able to get the ball rolling with your other creditors and hold off telling your current bank until your income is safely in a new account. They did this with us and it allowed us to get on with setting up the DMP at the same time as setting up the new bank account. The whole bank set up process only took around 2 weeks though so you could probably go for 1st March start if you want to.

However I have seen a lot of people on here choose to delay the start slightly and just make token payments so they can build up an emergency fund first. We didn't do this but there is a part of me that wishes we had.

Good luck with your DMP

Jenjen

Just realised I haven't got a number for this thread. How do I go about getting one?

scared-sick

Jenjen wrote: »

Yes you must change bank accounts because your current account could withdraw your od at any time leaving you no access to the money in your account when your wages etc go in. They could also use your wages to take payments for your credit card.

CCCS should be able to get the ball rolling with your other creditors and hold off telling your current bank until your income is safely in a new account. They did this with us and it allowed us to get on with setting up the DMP at the same time as setting up the new bank account. The whole bank set up process only took around 2 weeks though so you could probably go for 1st March start if you want to.

However I have seen a lot of people on here choose to delay the start slightly and just make token payments so they can build up an emergency fund first. We didn't do this but there is a part of me that wishes we had.

Good luck with your DMP

Thank you Jenjen,

Delaying will give me that added bonus too. I just want to make sure everything is in place correctly before I start.

Also, I dont want any of the creditors phoning me at work or at home to be honest, I have seen on here the template letters you can send to ask them only to deal with me through written letters or through phone calls with cccs....can I send these letters with the original 'I am on a dmp, here is my token payment' letter? Or do I have to deal with them and speak to them initialy and stop them if they start harrassing me?

Sorry more questions!!:o

Jenjen

scared-sick wrote: »

Thank you Jenjen,

Delaying will give me that added bonus too. I just want to make sure everything is in place correctly before I start.

Also, I dont want any of the creditors phoning me at work or at home to be honest, I have seen on here the template letters you can send to ask them only to deal with me through written letters or through phone calls with cccs....can I send these letters with the original 'I am on a dmp, here is my token payment' letter? Or do I have to deal with them and speak to them initialy and stop them if they start harrassing me?

Sorry more questions!!:o

I'm not sure of the answer to your question to be honest. I didn't send them anything other than the CCCS letter and we haven't yet had a single phone call from any of them, just letters and a couple of emails. I would say on the whole all our creditors have been pretty good about it all and we haven't felt hassled at all. The letters have hotted up slightly in terms of level of threat but it has been nowhere near as bad as we expected. We were advised that if they did ring just to ask them politely to write instead and to give them your CCCS reference number.

kirstie1244

Hi All

I started DMP in November last year with CCCS. Unfortunately most of the debt is with HSBC (2 overdrafts £3k, 2 personal loans £7k and cc £280) and Barclaycard (4 cc, £800, £5k, £3k and £2k).

HSBC are phoning all the time and we are given them our CCCS number, they are now requesting a letter of authorisation to deal with CCCS and an updated SOA, but I thought CCCS would have provided this to them in Nov. Should I send them any of this information or contact CCCS to deal with this. Also one of the overdrafts was £1500 but due to them not cancelling the DD for loans they have taken payments then refunded payments then whacked a load of charges, so since Nov the balance has now gone up to £1900, do I have a right to get these charges reimbursed.

Another query I have is over the loans, we only had the capital left on the loans so don't know if they will charge more interest, could someone advise

With regard to Barclaycard they have accepted the reduced payments and have not nagged us like HSBC but have only dropped interest to 6.9% I was hoping they would go the 0% or at the most 3%, anyone have any idea how to achieve this.

I'm sorry for the long post but hoping for some answers as I feel a little disheartened by CCCS as I thought they would have dealt with some of these issues on our behalf.

Many Thanks

Kirstie

BlushingRose

Jenjen wrote: »

Just realised I haven't got a number for this thread. How do I go about getting one?

Scroll back up a bit and send a private message to ianmak, he's the numbers man :-) There is a list of numbers (how to find it is on ian's sig) check you're not there first x

BlushingRose

kirstie1244 wrote: »

HSBC are phoning all the time and we are given them our CCCS number, they are now requesting a letter of authorisation to deal with CCCS and an updated SOA, but I thought CCCS would have provided this to them in Nov. Should I send them any of this information or contact CCCS to deal with this.

I seem to remember that there's a template letter in the CCCS pack which effectively says that you're with CCCS now and to deal with them, it gives your reference number and a telephone number for them to ring. Check it out and perhaps send it again? CCCS can't authorise creditors to deal with them themselves, you have to authorise it.

kirstie1244 wrote: »

Also one of the overdrafts was £1500 but due to them not cancelling the DD for loans they have taken payments then refunded payments then whacked a load of charges, so since Nov the balance has now gone up to £1900, do I have a right to get these charges reimbursed.

I think there's a template letter on the boards somewhere that basically says that you are on a DMP, in hardship and they are not supposed to charge you whilst you're not a DMP (can't remember exactly though)

kirstie1244 wrote: »

I'm sorry for the long post but hoping for some answers as I feel a little disheartened by CCCS as I thought they would have dealt with some of these issues on our behalf.

They do deal with a lot of stuff - how much contact do you have with CCCS? Might be worth ringing them and asking them about some of this stuff?